As you know from my post about AC2 I don't like Ezio, and that didn't change with Brotherhood. I enjoyed the game mostly, especially the Ubisoft trademark things with all the collectables. But the story seemed repetitive after AC2. Same main character, same villains, same basic plot. The only thing I thoroughly 100% enjoyed doing was to restore Rome to its former glory. When I quit all the districts available to me were 90-100% completed.
From the looks of things, even in the very beginning of this game, the plot will turn out exactly the same as in AC2, except we know that Ezio can't kill Borgia because he's the frickin Pope. Everything went pretty smoothly (there were a few annoyances due to the wonky controls that I've come to expect from an AC game) until I got to the mission where Ezio infiltrate a party with the goal to kill The Banker. If you're spotted by the guards you get desynchronized, but they're positioned so that one of them will spot you if you move to kill another of them. So you have to basically just dodge and hide, but they can see from basically every angle. Also the target is moving and if you get too far away you get desynchronizzed so you kind of have to hurry. Also because the target is moving you're not allowed to lose sight of him, because if you do you get desynchronized within 25 seconds. After getting desynchronized about 20 times I gave up and started playing another game. I fully intended to come back to Brotherhood at a later time when I did, but after two weeks I realised that I wouldn't. So I uninstalled the game and read up on the plot what would happen next. And yes, it's pretty much exactly the same as in AC2.
I even played through the DLC telling the story of Leonardo's disappearance and got his war machines away from the Borgia soldiers. And aided Copernicus, although that was less fun.
If that mission hadn't seemed so unfair, or if I had been able to quicksave after getting past each obstacle so that I'd feel like I had made some progress I probably would've continued playing this game. I don't like it when games hold your hand too much, but I also don't like it when I feel like I make no progress and like I'm basically just banging my head against a wall. Having to restart from the latest checkpoint each time I desynchronized made me feel just that.
I'm still planning on playing through the entire AC franchise. But that won't happen any time soon.
