The Bonfire of the Vanities is lit

Bonfire of the Vanities
Picture uploaded by Abriael

Today Ubisoft released the second DLC package for Assassin's Creed 2, Bonfire of the Vanities.

Some have been disappointed by the fact that the previous one, The Battle of Forlì, was actually quite short, and made more of endless brawls into the city streets (and a city that we already visited on top of that) than of what Assassin's Creed shines best at, assassinations.

Those that shared those disappointment will be happy to know that Bonfire of the Vanities suffers not of such flaws. Quite the contrary.

First of all, my playthrough lasted about three hours, that for a "bite-sized" piece of downloadable content, is quite a mouthful, and plenty given the price. For sure a pleasant surprise.
The second pleasant surprise is that the story is centered not only in the old Firenze we already visited, but also in a brand new district beyond the Bridges over the river Arno, the area that we couldn't visit during the original game.

The new district, built around Palazzo Pitti, has the same level of visual quality of the other ones (even if it doesn't have monumental landmarks like the Duomo), and is definitely enjoyable to explore. It even features a new kind of stunt Ezio can perform, by running on some springboards that allow him to jump farther to previously unreachable roofs.

Content-wise, the DLC will be pretty familiar to the fans of the original game. There is very little brawling, as most of the nine old-style assassinations included actually require you not to be spotted by the guards. The variety of environments and situations make for a quite interesting spread in gameplay. One interesting tidbit. If you have problems getting the "No hitter" achievement/trophy, given that guards tend to run before you kill the required ten, during one of the assassinations (the captain of the guard), you'll have plenty light guards coming at you, and they will not run. If you manage to avoid getting hit, you'll get the achievement easily. Just make sure to immediately run between the pillars, so that the archers won't hit you from above.

The story is compact, but well fleshed out, it also brings a very nice closure to Ezio's personal troubles at the end (of course I won't spoil it). All in all it's definitely another strong point of this DLC.

All things summed up, I'd say that Ubisoft really nailed what a "bite-sized downloadable content" should always be. Unfortunately, many of the DLC we get for most games are either too short or simply too small to truly justify their prices, but this isn't definitely the case of Bonfire of the Vanities.

The DLC is either offered by itself, or in a bundle with three Templar tombs that originally were in the Black collector's edition. While it's nice of Ubisoft to offer the content to the ones that missed the limited edition, I would not advise getting them unless you're a fan of extreme platforming (similar to what you find in the Assassins' tombs). They don't offer any story at all, the fighting is very limited, and the rewards sadly insufficient (just about 3000 florins each). Given that money is what you need the least in Assassin's Creed, especially if you're quite deep into the game, it's definitely not worth it.
If you like jumping from platform to platform for about 15 minutes a pop, probably getting through a couple pretty frustrating jumps, and doing some sightseeing, then this content is for you, otherwise don't bother and just get the stand alone Bonfire DLC.

A little word of warning: if you get to the DLC on the PSN from the "What's new" menu, you'll be directed to the stand alone Bonfire. Since there's no way to get the Templar locations described above by themselves, if you get the standalone Bonfire of the Vanities DLC, you won't be able to get the Templar locations without buying Bonfire a second time (like I had to do, meh, after playing through it, I wish i didn't), wasting a few dollars/euros.