Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Complete Edition

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Complete Edition on PC is a third-person action-adventure game built around stealth, parkour, open-world exploration, and direct melee combat. Ubisoft's current store listing uses the simpler name Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and labels it Standard Edition, so Complete Edition should be treated as a legacy bundle or catalog naming convention rather than the current storefront title.

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft, Brotherhood continues Ezio Auditore's story in Renaissance Rome. Its defining idea is that Ezio is no longer working alone: he rebuilds a network of Assassins, weakens Borgia control, and turns a hostile city into an operational base.

Rome, rooftops, and the central gameplay loop

Brotherhood uses a third-person camera and combines free-running traversal with stealth and responsive swordplay. Ezio can climb buildings, cross rooftops, blend with crowds, hide in environmental cover, and use elevated viewpoints to reveal parts of the city. Movement is usually the fastest way through Rome, but the game regularly asks you to slow down and observe patrols, routes, and mission boundaries.

The campaign alternates between structured story missions and an open city filled with optional activities. Typical objectives include assassinations, escorts, tailing sequences, rescues, races, investigations, and infiltration challenges. Combat is more aggressive than in earlier entries, rewarding counterattacks, quick target switching, chained executions, and the use of ranged tools when several guards surround Ezio.

Rome is not just a backdrop. Destroying Borgia Towers removes enemy control from districts and opens access to local businesses, recruits, and additional activities. Rebuilding shops and landmarks creates a practical economic loop: invest in the city, generate income, purchase equipment, and use the stronger infrastructure to support further exploration.

The Brotherhood system and tactical tools

The feature that gives the game its name is the Assassin recruitment system. Ezio rescues civilians from armed guards and brings them into his organization. Recruits begin as inexperienced apprentices, then gain experience through assignments managed from pigeon coops. Successful missions improve their rank and make them more useful in the field.

Trained Assassins can be summoned during encounters to perform silent kills, distract guards, or attack targets while Ezio remains mobile. Building the right timing into a fight is often more effective than trading blows with every enemy personally. Once the relevant support meter is filled, Arrow Storm can eliminate multiple exposed enemies at once.

Ezio's toolkit includes the hidden blades, sword and other melee weapons, throwing knives, poison, smoke bombs, a pistol, parachutes, and several specialized devices. The game also introduces sequences involving Leonardo da Vinci's inventions, including the flying machine and other mechanical set pieces. These tools create more solutions than simply approaching every objective with a sword drawn.

Mission variety, optional content, and mastery

Brotherhood's campaign is divided into sequences with optional synchronization objectives. These restrictions may ask for a particular approach, a time limit, limited detection, or a specific combat condition. Players who want more than a straightforward story run can pursue full synchronization and revisit missions to improve their execution.

Optional activities include assassination contracts, thief and mercenary missions, faction challenges, treasure hunting, renovations, and the Lairs of Romulus. The latter are exploration-heavy tomb sequences with climbing, traps, and combat, making them a useful change of pace from the city's assassination missions.

The game also includes the modern-day Desmond sections and a number of narrative side threads involving historical characters. That structure means Brotherhood is not a pure stealth sandbox or a conventional role-playing game. It is a guided action-adventure campaign wrapped around a gradually expanding urban playground.

What Complete Edition means on PC now

Current Ubisoft storefront information lists Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Standard Edition, while older PC catalog entries and bundle names may use Complete, Deluxe, or Da Vinci terminology. The practical distinction is important: the name Complete Edition does not guarantee that every historical online reward, unlockable item, or multiplayer feature remains accessible today.

Ubisoft decommissioned Brotherhood's online services on October 1, 2022. The shutdown removed multiplayer, in-game account linking, and other online functions. Ubisoft also warned PC owners to activate affected single-player downloadable content before the service closure, so legacy copies can differ depending on when content was claimed and how the game was acquired.

The single-player experience remains the main value of the package. Players should verify the exact edition description attached to an existing key or library entry instead of assuming that a Complete Edition label automatically includes every former bonus. This is one of the most useful distinctions between the title supplied in older catalogs and the current Standard Edition naming.

PC controls, launcher, and localization

On Steam, the PC version requires a third-party Ubisoft account and uses Ubisoft's PC launcher ecosystem, historically shown as Uplay and now associated with Ubisoft Connect. The game supports keyboard and mouse controls, while storefront data lists partial controller support with Xbox controllers specifically identified.

Controller users should expect an older input implementation rather than modern plug-and-play support for every device. Xbox-style pads are the safest documented option. Other controllers may require platform-level remapping, and Ubisoft support has noted that newer devices such as DualSense controllers are not officially guaranteed to work correctly.

The listed interface languages include English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Full audio is not broadly listed across those languages, so players should distinguish between interface localization and spoken dialogue when checking a particular storefront entry.

Who should play it?

Brotherhood is a strong fit for players who want a focused historical setting, a story-led open world, and a stealth-action loop with meaningful traversal. It is especially suited to fans of Ezio's character arc, urban exploration, collectible hunting, and combat systems that let a single well-trained protagonist command supporting assassins.

It is less suitable for players looking for modern co-op, active competitive multiplayer, or a deep character-build system with extensive loot and dialogue choices. The game's progression is based on equipment, city investment, mission completion, and recruit development rather than a contemporary skill-tree or gear-score model.

Players mainly interested in acrobatic melee combat can also compare its darker platforming ancestry with third-person action adventures such as Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. The two games differ in setting and structure, but both emphasize timing, environmental movement, and close-quarters encounters.

Comparable PC experiences

For a more combat-focused open world with stealth, domination mechanics, and enemy encounters that evolve around the player's actions, action sandboxes like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Complete Edition offer a clear mechanical comparison. Its Nemesis System is different from Brotherhood's recruit management, but both games connect exploration with targeted takedowns and expanding control over hostile territory.

Players who prefer assassination planning inside dense sandbox missions may find a stronger stealth comparison in creative third-person stealth games such as Hitman. Hitman is mission-based rather than an open city adventure, yet both games reward disguises, observation, route planning, and replaying objectives with a cleaner approach.

Within the Assassin's Creed series, Brotherhood is the middle chapter of the Ezio storyline and is best understood after Assassin's Creed II and before Revelations. Its identity comes from concentrating the series' parkour, assassination, and historical fiction ideas around one city while adding a recruitable organization that directly participates in play.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood FAQ

Is Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Complete Edition still the current PC name?

No. Ubisoft's current store listing uses Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and identifies the product as Standard Edition. Complete Edition is a legacy catalog label that may describe an older bundle or edition listing.

Does Assassin's Creed Brotherhood have multiplayer on PC?

No. Brotherhood's multiplayer and related online features are no longer available following Ubisoft's service shutdown. The offline single-player campaign remains playable.

Does the PC version include The Da Vinci Disappearance?

Historical PC editions and older Deluxe or Da Vinci listings were associated with additional content, but access depends on the specific license and activation history. Ubisoft's shutdown notice stated that affected PC single-player content had to be activated before the service closure, so the Complete Edition name alone is not enough to confirm every bonus.

Can you recruit and control Assassins in the campaign?

Yes. Ezio can rescue civilians, recruit them, send them on assignments to gain experience, and call trained members into combat. The system is a major progression layer rather than a cosmetic faction feature.

Does Brotherhood support controllers on PC?

Yes, but storefront data lists partial controller support, with Xbox controllers specifically documented. Newer or non-Xbox devices may need remapping and are not guaranteed to work without configuration.

Is Brotherhood an open-world RPG?

It is an open-world third-person action-adventure game with light progression systems. You improve Ezio's equipment, rebuild Rome, develop recruits, and unlock activities, but it does not use the extensive dialogue choices, loot tiers, or character-stat model associated with later Assassin's Creed RPGs.