By the time you have finished reading this sentence, you could have played through the Battle of Forli...twice. Kidding aside, I noted what time I sat down to play the game and was finished within an hour. That's not skipping any cut scenes, and includes failing a mission once. That does include one trip on Leonardo's flying machine which, I'm pretty sure was put it so people could get the achievement related to it without having to play through it again.

You begin the game with having to take the Apple of Eden to Forli, which is a fortress run by Caterina Sforza, accompanied by Niccolo Machiavelli. Just having these characters show up intrigued me due to how little they were in the game, but they seemed like great characters. After a brief conversation, the group takes off back to Forli where it has been sacked by the Orci brothers.There are six missions, but they blur together that it seems like one mission. Two or three missions are body-guarding missions where you must protect Niccolo and Caterina.

The combat seemed a little easier than the last time I took a jaunt through the neighborhood. It feels as though enemies don't block nearly as much or as well as in the full game, but that could simply be due to how many enemies you face in a battle. The amount of enemies faced at a single time is considerably higher than any amount faced in the full game. So even veteran players will quickly find themselves resorting to a strategy of button mashing.

Overall, for the price of $3.99 USD (320 MS points) it's hard to complain too much, especially because it gives many players an excuse to run through the beautiful Italian country side and bust some heads. But throughout the entire experience, it just felt that this should have been added into the original game without making people have to pay for it. Or at least given us achievement whores some possibilities for gamer points.

  • Game: Assassin's Creed 2 ~ Battle of Forli DLC
  • Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
  • Publisher: Ubisoft
  • Release Date: 1/26/2010
  • MSRP: $3.99 (320 MS points)
  • Review Copy Info: A copy of this DLC was purchased by DualShockers, Inc. for purposes of this review.