Hard mode for Brotherhood
Ok I think many people n AC2 made up a bunch of restrictions to make the game harder on a second playthrough, im thinking of doing the same for ACB but want to get it right. So before I start maybe we can get a list of stuff that will make it harder.
No destroying Borgia towers. This one will change the game a lot. You can look at viewpoints I guess, but leave the whole Rome in the borgia influence. You can kill the captain as many times as you want, and a lot of the map will be a restricted area ( its different from being notorious). There will also be a lot more guards in the area.
Always Notorious: If you lose it in a mission for some reason dont work to get it back, simply dont reduce it with posters etc
Never buy weapons/armor: With no borgia towers this should be pretty easy to resist, and with banks closed there is pretty much no reason for money either. It will also make missions harder as you wont have a double hidden blade, you will have to put throwing knives and other equipment to work, or simply avoid them altogether.
No hiring factions or using your assassins
No use of medicine.
As for combat, I dont think actual playstyle should be restricted, but I personally like to do as much of the game both on and off missions without being seen at all
Nice post, just four (this used to be one, then I thought of more) questions. How is being in a restricted area different from being notorious? And why can't you use double hidden blades? Can you buy pouches? Can you use assassins to get money from missions for you?
Can you buy pouches? Can you use assassins to get money from missions for you?
Since you're not gonna be calling them in-game then i don't see why not. Recruiting assassins and sending them out on missions is one of the best parts of AC:B.
Yea why not, though I dont think you will need money. Leonardo sells you the other blade, so since buying stuff is one of the restrictions well you cant do that ( unless you want to, I recommend buying the glove)
As for restricted areas, if a guard sees you the arrow immediately gets a red outline, and he moves towards you. If you are notorious, the arrow slowly fills up with a yellow colour, and then it gets a red outline, only then will they come to your last sighted position. So its actually easier being notorious than being in a restricted area, which is why its harder if you leave more towers up
Is that the case for AC 2 aswell (minus the Borgia towers obviously).
5 Throwing knives seems a little steep. Especially since you can throw three at a time (one of the best additions to the game IMO).
WHAT?! How?
Anyway you dont need too many as you will have a pistol as well. You only need to kill 1 guard and have the rest be distracted so you can slip by. If it is tough you can always loot more
WHAT?! How?
Hold X/Square with throwing knives equiped. You could learn it in AC2 but here you have it from the start.
I thought you only threw one knife, not 3. Sweet il try it out soon
I'd give up open combat altogether (except where the game forces it upon you). The combat completely lacks challenge once you've got a grasp on the kill streak system, even if you only use the one dagger you're forced to buy early on. It would be far more challenging if you had to run away after every stealth kill and hide/blend to escape.
I wish I had the time to learn more about programming. I'd love to make a trainer for the upcoming PC version and make it so your health never goes above one block, your money is always zero and the loot ability doesn't work. I'd probably even look into removing the block ability in combat, encouraging you to run (with your single block of health) instead of fighting. This might make some of the forced battles quite challenging, but I think most of us are up to the task.
I wish I had the time to learn more about programming. I'd love to make a trainer for the upcoming PC version and make it so your health never goes above one block, your money is always zero and the loot ability doesn't work. I'd probably even look into removing the block ability in combat, encouraging you to run (with your single block of health) instead of fighting. This might make some of the forced battles quite challenging, but I think most of us are up to the task.
Playing the whole game with ONE health square sounds pretty extreme. It would also make a certain series of missions toward the end IMPOSSIBLE.
Playing the whole game with ONE health square sounds pretty extreme. It would also make a certain series of missions toward the end IMPOSSIBLE.
Thankfully, the nature of trainers allows their effects to be toggled on and off. Advanced trainers can read what part of the game you're on and auto-toggle things automatically for you.
I wouldn't worry about that. 
Sure you could use your Brotherhood
That's another thing I would disable. Calling assassins and arrows storms are just way too powerful.
I make an effort to send my assassins on missions right before I start a mission, its actually a joke how easy they make it
I used them for hunting down pesky pickpockets and corrupt officials on my first playthrough. But I agree, over powered and you only really need 1 or 2 tokens. The only advantage of three is the arrow storm.
Once I finish my stealth playthrough I'll definitely try this, but it's like 3X cash on Uncharted 2 tomorrow so maybe later.
A quick point is that you have to destroy 4 Borgia towers during the game (1 at the start, 1 to help Bartolomeo and 2 so you can recruit 4 assassins to help wth the colloseum mission), so should we decide which 2 towers those should be or it can be a random 2?
Why would you NOT wanna destroy all the Borgia towers? I understand the desire to make the game more difficult but the whole point of the story is to remove the Borgia influence in Rome.
Instead why not just make it you have to kill the captains in a certain way?
Why would you NOT wanna destroy all the Borgia towers? I understand the desire to make the game more difficult but the whole point of the story is to remove the Borgia influence in Rome.Instead why not just make it you have to kill the captains in a certain way?
The idea is to keep the game more challenging all the way through, especially when moving around the city on foot. Burning down Borgia towers significantly reduces the number of guards in that zone, and guards will no longer respawn at nearby guard posts either. Guard posts were always a ton of fun and it sucks that we can't get them back in the post-credits gameplay.
ACB needs a toggle like in Crackdown where all the enemies respawn and all the zones revert back to enemy control again, but you retain all your levels and items and story progress. Similar to replaying memories, but instead it would just restore all the Borgia towers and respawn all the guards (and captains). Available during post-credits gameplay only, of course.
Because of all the points I already listed.
Look this isnt going to be something you want to do on your first, maybe even second playthrough. The first playthrough I pretty much play how the game wants me to play and do everything normally, buy armor etc. This is to make it challenging, I couldnt care less if i remove the borgia's influence at this point as I have already played through the story, it would be like replaying a memory that you already got full synch in and doing it full synch anyway instead of making things different
I'm planning a no armor (other than the good one you get), no medicine, no ui run.
But that's as hard as I'm going to make it. No armor is not going to leave me with a lot of health to work with, and no broken medicine to spam means every fight you have to concentrate because you can't just eat up on the magic pills.
I probably will go with only shop bought weapons, no quest or "ultimate" weapons.
If you wanted to go with assassin's, why don't you just not use arrow storm and don't level them up using contracts. Make them work for it. That'll make using them a calculated risk because they are going to level very slowly off fights alone.
Seeing as you've briefly mentioned memory replays, what actually happens when you replay a memory? Does the story then continue on after them meory or are you returned to a particular point (ie. the outside world or Ezio's current actual position in the game?) As you can tell, I haven't replayed any memories yet 
You're returned to the point you were at before you replayed, on anther note I'm playing hard mode right now
Okay thanks. How are you getting on with it then?
Quite well, it's certainly fun. It does make you think about how you're going to approach restricted zones as well. The only thing that disapointed me was the fact that the armour you have to buy looks ugly 
The only thing that disapointed me was the fact that the armour you have to buy looks ugly
Agreed. At least in AC2, all you had to buy were boots, and they looked better and matched the official character art. But having to buy ugly spaulders that you can't unequip is lame.
Giga wrote:
The only thing that disapointed me was the fact that the armour you have to buy looks uglyAgreed. At least in AC2, all you had to buy were boots, and they looked better and matched the official character art. But having to buy ugly spaulders that you can't unequip is lame.
Agreed as well!! I hate the armor you're forced to buy in brotherhood. I prefer look over armor. The Armor of Brutus looks way to heavy for an assassin to be running around with. I force myself to wear the armor of brutus with Armor of Altair outfit or Desmond outfit on. My conflict there is i love the desmond costume..i just prefer running around in an assassin robe. And i never liked armor of altair from Ac2, and its not much dif now. Although its growing on me
Might play with Altair skin then, at least in this run you wont have a crossbow to ruin its look.
Might play with Altair skin then, at least in this run you wont have a crossbow to ruin its look.
What do you mean?
Jack thinks the crossbow looks bad on Altair, I personally dissagree but whatever
Well in style it looks all right, but one of the reasons I play as Altair is because his suit is more low profile than Ezio, who looks like some knight. The crossbow ruins that low profile look
this is why dyeing your clothes should lower notoriety. Or just flat out stealing civilian clothes. To take this to the extreme would be to take guard armour but that's a bit much.
Jack thinks the crossbow looks bad on Altair, I personally dissagree but whatever
Me too. Doesn't anyone remember the opening scene for ac1 with Altair equipping the crossbow? 
I think most of us know this but it was taken out because of historical inaccuracies. Basically there WHERE no crossbows back then.
Wait a minute. What's all this about Altaïr and a crossbow? 
If you use a Uplay skin with Altair suit, you have the crossbow. Same goes for Ezio in normal clothes and Raiden. I agree that it looks stylish, but I usually choose Altair for a low profile look
That thing about being notorious VS being in a restricted area isn't true...
Check this video, look for the mission "Turning the Tables" at 7:42
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASn_170mALY
Look closely at the bars above the Papal guards. Their bar fills as per usual.
Maybe so, but I think it is because they are targets and have different sort of coding. I would be more happy if you showed me a scenario outside a mission, or even a mission where the guy isnt a target
This mode sounds really interesting. I think a good way to keep you from using medicine would be to equip something else such as your dagger/throwing knives in the place of your medicine button (left on the D-pad).
I'll have to try this once I'm 100% sync in everything (almost there actually) 
I never even used medicine in a normal playthrough, was no need
I never even used medicine in a normal playthrough, was no need
You never fell off a building, got shot by someone hanging out of the melee group, got pegged by a horse rider who rides in unexpectedly, or got grabbed and hit before you could break it?
I think you mean "I never had to use medicine to survive a fight". Me neither. But I do use medicine a lot to patch up the tiny nicks and cuts Ezio gets from time to time. Not having access to it at all means they can build up over time unless you get to a doctor. It does change the way you approach the game.
In AC2 just a cutscene would heal you completely, removing the need for medicine entirely (unless you're in the habit of getting drunk and going roof jumping in video games). Do you know if mission starts and cutscenes heal you in this game?
No, when I mean I didnt use medicine in this game, I mean I didnt use medicine in this game, period.
Im not perfect, I fall off buildings and such. But if I die, then I respawn with full health. If I dont die and have like half health, I just carry on. I rarely even die in a fight thanks to the combo system, and even with 1 bar you can take a bit of damage and heal. You also refill your health when you start missions I think.
Heh, that's pretty cool actually.
I'm trying this mode out as of now.