The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

NON-STEALTH

Game: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (Ezio Collection)
Memory: Crepi Il Lupo
Style(s): Combat / Flawless / Flow

Ezio Auditore defends himself against the Followers of Romulus using only the ancient weapon of the Assassins: the Hidden Blade. Desmond Miles successfully retrieves the genuine version of this Memory. This is a recording of the true events that played out.

Analysis of the footage reveals that the Followers of Romulus, despite outnumbering the Assassin thirteen-to-one, fail to land a single hit while Ezio engages in a fluid dance of death that leaves no one standing.

"Pure Killchain" means that when I start a kill animation, I keep up the "Combo" without dropping it until all hostiles are neutralized.

This is the closest I've gotten Assassin's Creed to look like Devil May Cry.

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Notes: (This is all stuff TheHiddenBlade already knows about, but for the new eyes out there.)

The Counter timing window on the Hidden Blade in AC Brotherhood is quite wide, which lets me feel more confident in countering any incoming attacks and beginning the Killchain. The Followers of Romulus outnumber Ezio thirteen to one, and taking even a scratch of damage will prevent Desmond from reaching Full Synchronization with this Memory. This mission is essentially ACB's first true test of the player's skill with the new combat system. Killchains are valued above all else here, and this Full Sync requirement will make sure you know how to use them, at least if you want to look cool while doing it. It's possible to turtle up and just Counter everything that comes at you in an AC1/AC2-esque fashion, but that's not very stylish. We want to look cool.

The biggest thing to note is that you can Counter an incoming attack even while you're in the middle of an animation heading toward the next enemy in your Killchain. If Ezio is reaching to kill a nearby enemy but another one is slashing their weapon at him, you can "cancel" your kill animation to flow into a Counter at any time. This is the cornerstone of why this video can work at all. As far as I know, the game considers Counters part of an ongoing Killchain and will just roll with it, no problem. I could just be thinking of AC3/Black Flag/Rogue which definitely do, but I'm pretty sure this is the case for Brotherhood and Revelations as well.

This is my favorite Assassin's Creed combat system ever created. It's not about being hard to play, it's about being hard to look cool and fluid. It's about being tough to look like a kung-fu expert, not about a newbie finding it frustrating to get through an encounter. That, to me, is a kind of genius that often goes unpraised. I don't like the AC3/IV/Rogue/Syndicate combat system as much, and I like the Unity combat system even less than them. To me, Brotherhood was the perfect balance between having to stay alert and the game encouraging flow. It's the combat's peak to me, and it forever will be until a truly better system, one that also emphasizes flow and grace, dethrones it some day.