I’ve just completed my playthrough of the third Assassin’s Creed in the series, and the plot is thickening. At least, I think it is. While Ezio’s story has been relatively simple, the over-arching Desmond/Templars story is getting weirder and a bit more convoluted.

I’m starting to enjoy the series more now. It’s apparent that Ubisoft were learning from their mistakes, with combat being much easier this time around. It was actually a bit too easy. I had little need to upgrade my weapons because Ezio will kill execute anyone after three or four hits regardless of what weapon he’s using.

It was obvious from the start that Brotherhood was more of a spinoff side story than a full-blown sequel, with its singular city and scaled down weapons and armor sets. It picks up directly after the events of Assassin’s Creed II and shows the ramifications of his letting Borgia live. The Borgia not only recover but take over Rome completely, and it’s up to Ezio and his band of assassin’s to liberate the city, little by little.

And that’s what I did for the majority of the time I spent with Brotherhood. I spent many hours, and a ton of florens, on renovating and reclaiming all the shops and banks in town. Which was, in hindsight, pretty damn pointless. Sure, buying businesses gets you more income, which lets you buy more businesses, but aside from the odd armor piece or weapon I bought, the money you earn really isn’t used for anything. The game was relatively easy due to the better combat system, and the ability to call in other assassins and arrow strikes practically breaks the game. All your consumable items can be retrieved from looting the bodies of the soldiers you kill. The only thing that gains you any tactical advantage is the removal of the Borgia towers, which you’ll need to do regardless.

I enjoyed the game for the most part, but I’m starting to see a pattern with these AC games, especially since I’m playing them practically back to back. Not counting the first AC, which didn’t have much of a story period, the first two games of the Ezio trilogy start out really strong, then almost completely fall apart about three-quarters of the way through. The final sequences of Brotherhood not only devolve into a series of lengthy “Follow” activities and with stealth missions that will result in instant failure if a guard so much as sees you. If he gets a knife in the face literally two seconds later, what does it matter if he sees me or not?

The most frustrating thing about this particular story though was the repeated “Kill Cesare” mission points that kept resulting in the guy getting away. Then, at the penultimate scene, he still escapes death when he’s arrested, leading you to the actual actual end when you finally, really get to kill him. The payoff wasn’t nearly as good as it would’ve been if the game didn’t cheat me out of killing him the five previous times I was supposed to.

In all, I enjoyed Brotherhood but I felt like the economic side-activities were ultimately pretty pointless, as they didn’t offer any tactical or gameplay bonuses, and seems to exist solely for the purpose of padding game time, which it certainly did on my account. In fact, there were several side activities that I didn’t even bother with, and none of it seemed to affect the gameplay at all.

I’m looking forward to jumping into Revelations and wrapping up Ezio’s story, but I’m going to be a lot more skeptical on anything that’s not crucial to the story though. This is starting to take a lot longer as the games are getting bigger.