Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (2013)

Take one cup of parkour, half a cup of sword fighting, add a cup filled to the brim with ship combat and add two different teaspoons of horrible plot and you've got the recipe for this game.

Possibly the best AC (I wouldn't know it's only the second or third I'd played), I found sailing around the Caribbean quite fun, the parkouring about in island towns neat if not challenging and the gameplay in the modern-day parts utterly boring and redundant. Same for the hokum story about evil Templars and noble Assassins, although that's par for the course for this series. It's a testament to the quality of the core gameplay loops of running on roofs and fighting sailing ships that I was willing to take in the ridiculous collectibles and silly mini-games...and again, the plot(s).

Arrrgh, it was fun while I could get new and better ways to fire a canon and swing on a rope and I'll skip mentioning how the now-free DLC removed all semblence of balance from the sword fighting.

First off, I was just selecting which version of the game I played and boy do I feel for the developers. Holy hell was this released on everything at the time. I forgot that this was at arguably the height of cross generation shenanigans.

All in all I really enjoyed this entry and I will keep this brief to highlight the positives, because to be honest the only real criticism I could throw at the game is a few missed opportunities. Your 'home base' pirate island didn't feel like something I really had to interact with in any meaningful way and felt somehow like a downgrade from the Homestead in the previous game. Maybe if I could have customized it a bit more of had to defend it or maybe it is because they bounced some of the timer and clicker gameplay out into its area - the fleet campaigns accessed from the captain's room on your ship. Very reminiscent of similar mini-games at the Homestead.

On to the positives...

• Caribbean provided a welcomed change to a colourful and fun setting
• An excellent dig at modern Ubisoft and inclusion of the current day assassin-templar narrative. Finding codecs and fixing computers was good fun
• A protagonist who comes to the creed only at the end of his journey and learns to find meaning in his life beyond seeking riches--he has nothing of value after amassing gis fortune
• The naval open world and activities were very unlike anything previous but make a lot of sense given the setting
• It continues the design framework from AC III of the kitchen sink method--there’s plenty of padding for those who want it.

In re-visiting these notes and typing this up I think I've worked up an appetite to dip into this game again. Always a good sign!

By the third Ezio game I was suffering AssCreed fatigue and I quickly gave up on it. I’d played the two previous games in fairly quick succession but the similarities in Revelations were glaringly obvious by that point and I just couldn’t bring myself to continue. Even the lure of the wonderful architecture and the likeable protagonist couldn’t draw me back to yet another game with repetitive side missions, numerous pointless collectables and stylish but shallow combat.

Also, tailing missions. Fuck tailing missions.

AssCreed III never really appealed to me because of the historical setting and I only played a little of it. That game had a dull protagonist and a dull setting; with the architecture of 18th century America not matching up to what Europe had to offer at the time. This diluted the parkour, the one gameplay mechanic that might have kept me playing for longer.

This is all a big preamble to me saying that Assassin’s Creed IV bought some of the fun back to the franchise for me, by making pirate ships a new core mechanic. The sailing and naval combat are a big part of the game and it’s good, arcadey fun. It also helps that the protagonist is fairly likeable, in a roguish kind of way (ala Ezio).

Anything outside of the ‘being a pirate’ stuff is the same old Ass Creed (worse in some cases) and it gets boring quickly, but the piracy setting and gameplay additions are enough for a recommendation.

On a final note, Fuck U, play.

7.5/10

Least fav. of the AC games so far, what I remembered as an epic pirate adventure turned out to be a muddled, boring mess and I struggle to see why it's held up as one of the franchise's best.

Criticisms:

• Plot is non-existent, Edward has little to no motivation for doing anything that he does (aside, perhaps, from 'i promised my wife who I abandoned that I would get rich')
• Parkour and Combat are both significantly worse than in AC3, Edward will only climb certain things sometimes and outright refuses to pull himself up on so many ledges it drove me banoonies. The parkour becomes especially frustrating during stealth missions.
• Ship Combat/ Boarding Ships is fun at first but wears thin very fast
• Major Towns are all boring
• Missions felt way more repetitive than before as there's a lack of big set-pieces and an emphasis on trailing missions (which are more of a pain than usual due to the controls being janky).
• Edward is boring, beyond his half hearted cheekiness he just lacks emotional depth (somewhat remedied later on, but I don't see him being mildly upset about all his dead friends as character development)
• Assassins and Templars are both... just sort of there? I suppose this foreshadows the series' turn after Syndicate but I think it's worse here because both groups are present without any real stakes
• They removed the 'Assassin Tombs', which reached their peak in AC3 so it really sucks they're gone
• Graphics are poor, with a lot of pop-in (more pronounced because of the game's age and the other games in the series receiving remasters/ AC1 getting improvements on Xbox One)

Anyways, good things!

• Voice Acting is brilliant, and while I found the main plot and Edward lacklustre, the supporting cast were really colourful and well written
• Modern Day section actually interesting (!!) - I really enjoyed hacking the abstergo computers (albeit it does get repetitive) for the extra intel (the Market Analyses videos are particularly great). They also manage to link the historical timeline with the present day in a nice (if somewhat ridiculous) way
• The Caribbean feels well realised and immersive, I think locations could have been more diverse (as in many islands are the same 10 square feet of a harbour master, a tavern and 3-6 collectables) but it's a great representation of the setting
• The underwater sections were actually FUN (!) and controlled really well
• Cameos from Shaun and Rebecca were nice
• If you care about the historical period, it's always a good time to hang around the people of the era (Anne Bonny was my fav this time)

For the love of the money is the root of all evil

This is a famous quote from apostle's Paul advice about money. Well, I am a Reformed Christian and my review about games care much about my world vision ("cosmovision"), as well as I know the developers and the pop culture has their own vision. ^^'

Anyway, I am not a huge fan of the AC plot, but I am a huge fan of its scenery and beautiful landscapes, recreating amazing historical sites. I started to use Black Flag not only for playing a game, but also to relax my mind admiring God's creation inside the game: beautiful beaches, small isles, colonial sites, wonderful waves, the sounds of the insects at night, etc.

Surely, the world is beautiful, however, we know that we aren't perfect. The Total Depravity of humans could be seen clearly in the game (thankfully not exactly "visually").

Edward Kenway - Gave up a superior treasure for a fleeting one

Kenway preferred to create his fleet to seek fleeting goals. We meet a well married and lucky man, however, his heart was seeking riches and not willing to just stay with the love of his life. He committed a lot of mistakes and only understood more about the meaning of life, when he already lose a lot.

In short, without spoilers, one could see that life is not about be rich, but that life is about the dear ones. We are responsible for ours acts and we should harvest what we sow today (it is a Biblical rule). Playing this game made me be thankful for having my family, my loved ones and reflect the inverse of the Assassin code: there is a Truth and surely not all things are permitted. =)

I really don't get why the AC code is this and why they think this is wise, for it is not, since it only sounds like a post-modern theory of philosophy (relativism of the truth), and saying something like "moral animals" of any Evolutionist theorist. >.<

The beauty of the morality, the beauty of the own beauty (the art, music, etc.); the meaning of love or justice (not considering them just like chemical processes inside my brain), is something really important in my vision, otherwise, we will spend our lives like Kenway did for a long time.

Finally, I think that I really liked this game for it was able to bring advice, although it did not share a precise doctrine, it tries to bring something good, bringing humanity to the characters, although all their mistakes and sins. In real life, although we are sinners and do a lot of mistakes that we regret, there is a Truth and Hope, whose name is Jesus Christ.

I think AC Black Flag is like a Greek Tragedy, not so sublime, obviously, but creating some kind of "katharsis"; an emotional action-drama of hope for a future after bad choices. =)

Anyway, forgive my English, since it is not my native tongue. About the rest of the game (graphics, music, gameplay, etc.), well, it was nice. My only complain was that I played on PC and my controller could not reach the highest running speed. So, when I needed to pursuit someone, I had to use the keyboard and mouse.

Intro

This is the first AC game i sort of enjoyed. Until i didn't. It helps a lot that you're not an assassin and that half of the game doesn't involve AC nonsense. I would give it 2,5 stars if i could.

The Good

• Ship-to-ship combat is fun. Broadsides are always fun, they were the best part of Rebel Galaxy too.
• Darts are a solid addition. Love the Berserker dart that makes enemies kill each other.
• Upgrading your ship and building a fleet is fun (at first).
• Whaling is fun (the first few times).
• The Caribbean is a nice setting.
• Shanties!

The Bad

• Your home base is 100% pointless. There's no reason to visit it and it doesn't even earn you money.
• Your crew is 99% faceless and irrelevant.
• Having to kill x of y animals to upgrade your equipment is annoying.
• Whaling gets boring after a handful of times.
• No "refill all ammo" option in shops.
• Why do i have to swim to shore? Where are my rowboats?
• QTEs for animal attacks.
• Often there is no fast travel option to your ship, which is awful.
• Levelled ships are just awful and pointless.
• You can't rename captured ships.
• The first hacking option is annoying.

The Ugly

• They artificially pad gametime by having prohibitively high upgrade costs.
• Everything about diving is bad. The underwater stealth mission is the worst.
• It takes forever to unlock certain items. I was at over 50% completion and still don't have rope darts. Apparently you get those in mission 12.
• Boarding gets boring. It's the same shit over and over and over again.
• The same goes for conquering forts and general exploration (chests/secrets).
• The second hacking option (wobbly line) is awful.

The Truly Dreadful

• There's an insta-fail stealth mission. That's what made me quit AC3.
• At one point you have to follow James "definitely not a woman" Kidd through a ruin. I kept failing. Edtard failed to make jumps several times. At the end i kept falling down the crumbling bridge. It turns out i was too fast (wtf) because you're supposed to stop before it very slowly collapses. I only discovered that by accident.
• Roughly half of the main missions are godawful trailing missions that you constantly fail because they're awful and because Edtard can't crouch behind a fucking waist-high wall.
• The third hacking option made me quit hacking altogether. Fucking Frogger?

Conclusion

This could have been good but Ubisoftinthehead seems to insist on ruining AC at all costs. It's a shame this game is so lazily and poorly made. Combat could easily have been made more interesting, which goes for your crew/fleet/homebase too. Now it's a bunch of shallow content that's spread too thin.

I don’t understand why this is such a beloved AC game. Running, climbing, and sword fighting are jerky and awkward. Land missions and optionals are boring, especially with so much hiding and waiting. And I picked this off the shelf because I was in the mood for all these activities that are common to AC games!

People say the ship battles make up for it, but those are just as awkward to control and often just a mess of confusion. I guess I’m supposed to enjoy all the sea shanties I’ve collected?

So I gave up on this one partway through when I realized I wasn’t enjoying any part of it.

Playing through the lackluster sailing of Odyssey made me nostalgic for the ol' Jackdaw. Luckily, UbiSoft was having an Assassin's Creed sale on the PS4, still this one was the most expensive because they know it was one of their best sellers. By now, most everyone has played this game or know what it's about, but here's my take nonetheless.

The sailing is what makes this game standout. They dabbled with it in AC3 & realized they had something there & rightly made a whole game dedicated to it. The sailing is simple to learn and there's a good weight to steering the Jackdaw around, but there's a joy in mastering more advance maneuvers, sailing circles around big man'o'wars. And that's the other aspect of the sailing, the ship combat. It doesn't matter how many ships I take on, it never gets stale. Everything pulls you into the action. The rapport of the cannons, Edward yelling commands, the crew shouting, the great battle music, and the visuals all make for a great ship fight. The only part of ship battles that can get a bit old are the boarding sections.

During the boarding sections, you're pulled from command of the ship and back in the boots of Edward, which means a return to the combat system that's always been the low point of the series. Ed fights like a slow moose. Sometimes it's impossible to time a counter, especially against the musket men on the top of ship masts. And it can take a while to kill one enemy if you get swamped, because you're constantly countering and Ed has a habit of pushing the enemies far away from him out of attack range, which is annoying when you're trying to finish one particular baddie off. Granted this is an assassin game, so you're encouraged to be stealthy.

The on-foot assassin levels are the weakest. As most people say, "This is a great pirate game, but a bad Assassin's Creed game." Most are tailing a target across an island or sneaking into a plantation to knife someone. It's okay, but nothing special, still better than that boat stealth mission in the Carolina swamps.

There's some side missions in this open world as well, I skipped most of them this time around, but I did participate in some of the whaling missions. Those are fun and exciting as well. It awakens a sort of man vs nature battle within the player & aiming the harpoon takes a bit of skill. And if I may go on a bit of a tangent, I remember UbiSoft getting guff for having whaling in game and they defended it for it's historic accuracy. Now they're bending history in the new games to fit modern sensibilities. Sorry, back on focus.

I loved the music in this game, lots of good piratish music & of course the sea shanties that are designed to be catchy. I could spend hours just sailing the soothing waves listening to the crew sing away. There's also some ambient music that wasn't piratey, but more almost sci-fi, which works with this series "time travel" aspect.

I think one of the biggest reason this game is so beloved is the history works great with the story. Pirates already have a romantic mystique in our culture. You have icons like Blackbeard who are known for swashbuckling and looting, basically the real historic figures already have an interesting story worth telling. It's harder to make an action packed game when you have to work with historic figures like Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli who spent most their time behind a desk. The time spent with these fellow pirates are the best part of the narrative and you've got a whole mix of characters; the mentor figure of Blackbeard, the hot-headed Vane, Mary Reed who somehow fooled everyone as James Kidd, and Hornigold. Upon this replay, I really enjoyed the story arc with Hornigold. He's a bit of a turncoat, but he's also the only one who sees the writing on the wall that a pirate republic won't work.

I wished the story was centered more just around the exploits of these pirates, but there's the Templar plot that pops up every now and then. Luckily, it's framed as a treasure hunt, a great pirate trope, as you search for this ancient observatory. It's also better than other Templar/Assassin plot-lines in other games because Edward isn't an assassin, not really. He's just a guy with dreams of wealth. For me, he's one of the more relatable protagonists. He's not concerned about stopping Templars, or upholding the Creed, or getting mired down in all that ancient civilization nonsense, he just wants to be rich.

This was one of the first games after the Desmond Miles future plot line, and I honestly found this future plot the best for the AC series. It frames AC as a real-life series in game & you work in the entertainment department creating AC games. It's a little boring being a mute employee who just takes a tour of the office, but it fits the best. It isn't so intrusive like Desmond's line, but it's more interactive than the boring cutscenes with Bishop.

As always, this is what I want an AC game to be, less Assassins, more just being a hero of history. Now, I'm moving on to the black sheep of the series: Unity.

It's not a bad game, but it's just not a very fun game.

Black Flag is much like the other AC series, but with less city activity and more of you awkwardly bumping your sailing ship into small islands to go find a monkey to kill or a little glittering thing to collect.

They have gone overboard with the item collection (manuscripts, sticky notes, animus fragments, musical notes, treasure chests, maps TO treasure chests, hackable computers, mayan keystones, templar keys) whose rewards are very rarely worth it.

The sailing is fun, but quickly gets repititous (mortar the other boat, broadside cannons, board the boat, kill the crew) maybe 40 or 50 times if you want the resources to upgrade your own ship. Your crew does sing your collected shanties though, which is easily the best part of the game.

Also, making me harpoon all those sea animals to craft a pouch to hold 5 more darts is pretty awful.

Though I am a fan of the series this game left me the most disappointed so far. The main character is not very likeable and his connection to the Assassins is rather flimsy. Though later on in the game this does improve it doesn't feel as much of a result of character growth, but rather necessity for the story.

The main character is just so disinterested in what is going on throughout most of the game. Throughout most of the game his only motivation is the money. Had this game not been labelled Assassin's Creed this might not have bothered me as much and it could have just been an entertaining pirating rump, but I feel an Assassin's Creed game should have its focus more on ever ongoing war between the Templar and Assassin.

Due to my disconnect to the main character, this was the first game where I was actually more intrigued by the bits outside of the Animus, where I actually felt like I was sneaking around in the open. Sadly the hacking mini games do become a bit repetitive and there is very little pay-off story-wise in the end.

The ending to both Edward Kenway's story and the one outside of the Animus seemed rather rushed and nonsensical. The sudden appearance of the daughter, who then gets to sail right back again and then a son who's mother we never see, and sure he's Hatham, but don't just tack all of that in through a little cutscene at the end of the game. And the sudden reveal of Roberts in present day, who then shoots you up with some poison, but not enough to kill you and just so he can immediately get shot. What was the point to including that?

Maybe in the next games there will be some answers to some of those things that irked me at the about this story, but for now it just comes across as a bit of a jumbled mess, which on top of a game with an unlike-able protagonist, did not leave me enjoying the game all that much.

I spent many, many hours sailing around with the Jackdaw, plundering ships, finding treasure and other side quests. Sadly the role of the Assassins in this game is very limited as Edward never really cares for them in the story, he just happened to steal an Assassin costume. Yes there are some templars, yes there is some mystical orb thingie, but Edward (as a true pirate) doesn't really care for the big picture except when it concerns his wallet. Also the parts at Abstergo were disappointing. At the beginning, snooping around made me nervous, as you don't know what will happen when the boss notices your side activities. Sadly, it all ended in a meh conclusion. As for the gameplay, this game does have its typical yell at the scream moments when Edward jumps in the wrong direction or climbs something you don't want. For some missions this can be frustrating (like the follow the circle of hearing missions), but overall the gameplay is solid enough to be enjoyable. I love the rage/sleep darts and maybe overused them a bit during stealth missions. Having a sniper kill all your enemies for you is very satisfying.

In short, the game is a lot of fun. Exploring the seas and searching for treasure, hunting and the other side quests will consume a lot of your hours. The main story is a bit disappointing due to lack of Assassins and the lack of security at Abstergo. If you would skip the Abstergo stuff, the game could easily be called Pirate Creed and be a game on its own. Still, a very good addition to your game library even if you are not into the Assassin's Creed back story.