Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (2013)

OT: (Why are all the reviews I wrote so far negative? I look like a whiner. I hope I'll have a better rating to give to my next game.)

Short, but simple:

I wanted to like this game so bad, but I don't like pirates, at all. I don't hate them but they personally just do not interest me. So this game was doomed to fail for me from the start. I only gave it a shot because I want to have played all AC games, but I just couldn't get past sequence 8. SO.MUCH.SAILING.... Real bummer. This was the worst AC game imo. I even liked Liberation more. There, I said it.

Not sure if I will get AC Rogue after this one. That game seems very piratey too.

Spoiler-free review.

Rating: 9/10

Pros: This game delivers on the pirate experience better than any media I've ever seen. Sailing the open ocean, engaging in ship-to-ship combat, boarding enemy ships, following treasure maps to buried treasure, navigating island jungles and shanty towns, raining cannon fire from your ship and laying siege to enemy castles, cutlass and pistol combat... Everything you could want to do as a pirate, you can do. Using the classic Assassin's Creed parkour movement to climb to your ship's Crow's Nest, run across the rigging, jump across onto an enemy ship's mast, shoot the scouts there, then swing down a rope and hit the deck boots-first before you pull out your sword and start hacking away at everyone on board... I went out of my way to repeat that experience dozens of times, and it's still one of the coolest gaming moments I've ever had.

Cons: The Assassin vs. Templar war that all the previous Assassin's Creed games have had as a theme returns here, but it does not mesh well with the game's second story line (becoming rich through piracy). I found it jarring whenever the main story missions jumped from "be a pirate" to "aid the Assassins". I believe it could have meshed well, if better executed, but the studio seem to have made deliberate decisions not to do so.

Overall, a fantastic game. In the past, I had played each Assassin's Creed game within the year of release. Up until Assassin's Creed 3 that is, which I disliked so much that I stopped playing after 3 hours and didn't touch Assassin's Creed again for 8 years... I'm glad I came back to the series though, because Black Flag is fantastic. I plan to go blind into the next games in the series too, until I'm all caught up.

I remembered this game as a terriffic game but the games review system of each and everyone of the quests reminds me that 1/10 of each mission is getting a 4-5 star from me. The rest is getting ones.

I'm sorry but this is hands down the worst AC game.

Boring, repetetive missions. sneak, follow, naval (NOT FUN) missions, follow someone, repeat, repeat, repeat.

DONT BUY, DONT EVEN DOWNLOAD FOR FREE!!

ACBF es un juego increíble y uno de los juegos que más saca la cara por toda la franquicia, lleno de puntos fuertes muchos para numerarlos a todos y es en general una excelente experiencia.

La historia es inmersiva en ambas líneas temporales, la dificultad es un buen balance entre un juego exigente y uno casual, los personajes de la historia son interesantes y bien desarrollados, los controles son algo incomodos, pero intuitivos, la calidad grafica es impresionante, las misiones son diversas y el juego se encuentra lleno de coleccionables. El juego posee algunos defectos esperables en tropos de la historia y el flujo de algunos eventos cliche, pero estos son en general perdonables.

Donde el juego en verdad brilla es en alta mar, una experiencia que a 2020 no he tenido la oportunidad de conocer otro juego que la equipare. Desde las canciones de altamar, la configuración de la nave y personalización hasta los efectos en los diferentes climas y momentos del día son una experiencia impresionante gráficamente increíble y sobre todo divertida.

Assassin's Creed games are starting to feel like an old friend. I enjoy them because they take no effort engage with and I know exactly how they'll unfold. This one was pretty and the island hopping was a nice feature. Hunting down the various collectibles was surprisingly enjoyable.

The thing that blows my mind is just how incredibly repetitive the main missions are. Move on, AC: evolve and adapt!

I really enjoyed the Abstergo stuff in this game. The way stories were told in the present day was done well and it was a nice twist on the previous formula.

Definitely the most lackluster AC game I've ever played. I started it four years ago and really got into it because of the music and naval battles. However, I soon got sick of it because the main character is utterly unlikeable. There's only so many times I can look past his shortcomings, and so the game went onto the bench until a few days ago. Literally the only reason I finished it is because it says AC in the title. Edward is so unlikeable it ruined the entire game. And when they decided to give him a personality in Sequence 10, that sadly was much too late. I can't sympathize with him, don't relate to his problems, and must wonder why the companions even stick around for someone like that.

Now, rant over.

All in all this is a decent game. Is it as entertaining or engaging as the other AC titles? Hardly.

I don't know why I didn't realize it until the end of this game, but AC4 protagonist Edward Kenway is the father of Haytham Kenway from AC3. So if AC2, Brotherhood & Revelations are the "Ezio Trilogy", I guess that would make the late PS3-era games the "Kenway Trilogy" (assuming the Kenways are in Rogue, too, which I suspect they are).

Anyways, about this game... After a steady decline in the quality of Assassin's Creed games after AC2, this one was actually good. I got lured into doing Assassin side quests and trying to get every collectable on the various islands. I spent more time than reasonable doing the Kenway Fleet trading minigame. I hunted for whales and sharks; and I fought naval bases & big lunking Man o' War ships.

And then about 75% of the way into the storyline, I realized that all of these side activities really didn't have a purpose but to keep you distracted from the main storyline and playing the game. But, at least they drew me in, which is much more than I could say about AC3's super-lame side activities.

The pirate story is shallow but serviceable. The modern day Abstergo story is convoluted and nonsensical. There's A LOT of additional codex info you can watch, listen to, or read; but I eventually lost patience with it and stopped paying attention whenever I hacked an Abstergo computer.

All-in-all, AC4: Black Flag is s super-okay game that kept me coming back for more.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, for Xbox 360

Rating: 8.5/10; Great

Highly recommended for AC fans, and action fans who have not tried the series yet. Naval warfare enthusiasts may want to play just for the naval combat.

Black Flag is a third person action adventure game with heavy focus on stealth and naval combat. The game world is somewhat open in that you can sail on all of the ocean on the map, though land areas are a bit more restrictive; only specific areas of land can be explored with most of the land on the map being unreachable.

Gameplay while on foot is solid for the most part. Climbing and parkour are easy to accomplish by pressing the “free run”, “climb” and directional buttons, though it can sometimes be unintuitive, causing Edward to do something other than what you had in mind. There are 2 serious flaws with the entire free run system. First, there were way too many times when I accidentally jumped (not fell). Sometimes this was mildly annoying (if there was water below), but if there was solid land below then you just suicided or took so much damage that you might die if attacked. The second problem occurs when trying to flee from enemies. In order to run you have to use the “free run” button, which leads to wasting time with unnecessary climbing when all you really want to do is go as fast a possible. It is especially annoying when you miss a doorway and waste time trying to climb the nearby unclimbable wall. There really should be a separate button for just running. I can say that the parkour has since been significantly improved in later games.

On foot combat is fairly well done, though it tends to be a bit awkward when friendly npcs are involved; it was clearly designed for multiple enemies vs just you. Part of this has to do with the unintuitive targeting system, as your attacks will be directed against the highlighted enemy, which is something that the game does not explain. Combat tends to be a bit too easy if you are patient, mainly because the enemies attack one at a time. As long as you are proficient at killing each type of enemy, you can take on an absurd number of them at once. I do think that each additional enemy attacking should significantly increase the chances of you dying, because that is how it would work in real life. Despite this though, the combat is fun and mostly relies on timing and pressing the correct button(s) for each enemy type. There is a thing on the UI which shows what action you will perform for each of the main buttons; this is present for the entire game and helps you know what can be done in combat. Some games with a similar combat style show an icon above an enemy telling you want button to press; this game is a little more subtle. A red icon lets you know to counter, and a white outline lets you know to break defense, for example.

Using the correct buttons in combat leads to instant kills, but you can also just mash the attack button to kill enemies over multiple hits, though harder enemies are immune to normal attacks until you either counter or guard break them (depending on the type). There are also a variety of fancy moves that you can perform, including disarm, human shield and ranged weapons. Speaking of range, you can use a variety of ranged weapons to take out enemies in either close/mid range auto aim, or slightly longer range free aiming. All ranged weapons are powerful, but are limited by ammo and long reload times for guns.

Stealth is a large part of the game; you can use line of sight, height, bushes, swimming underwater and blending with civilians to be invisible to enemies. Enemies follow fixed patrols and are deaf (unless you whistle or fire a gun), thus making it fairly simple to sneak around and assassinate. You can even kill someone from a bush (automatically dragging them into the bush) in full view of another enemy without raising suspicion. Suspicion will be raised if an enemy sees you or a dead body, and they will spot you very quickly most times. Only far away enemies like snipers show a meter with suspicion raising slowly enough for you to take corrective action. It is also difficult to escape from enemies once detected because they will tackle you and search hiding spaces. Overall the stealth system is reasonably fun without being tedious, though is not very realistic at all. I think the biggest flaw relating to stealth is the fact that if you are detected, you can simply slaughter everyone in combat, which somewhat ruins the tension and immersion.

By far the best part of this game is the naval combat. You can fast travel anywhere you have been, though new places must be found by sailing. The camera view while sailing is located just behind Edward, who mans the wheel. This combined with the beautiful environment, variable waves, storms, spyglass and sea shanties make for a very immersive experience. Sailing around the ocean is simply fun. It gets even better in combat as you must defeat enemy ships in real time while managing shooting, defense and navigation. Almost like being in a real sailing ship battle. The weapon you can shoot depends on which way you are looking (2 broadsides, chain shot from the front, and fire barrels from the back), and you have full control over aiming and firing. Damaging sails and masts make enemies slower, allowing you to get out of firing range and deal with other enemies, or attack from their blind spot, while damaging the hull allows you to shoot swivel guns into weak spots for big damage (these are not manually aimed, you just press the button). The most interesting part of this combat though is that you also have to drive the ship. You have to keep track of what is in front so you do not crash, wind direction affects speed, and your level of sail affects turning and speed. Since the most powerful weapons are the broadside cannons, the goal becomes to out manoeuvre the enemy so that your side faces their front or back so you can inflict massive damage without taking much in return (known as crossing the T in real life naval combat). So it is good that naval combat is both fairly realistic and fun, despite the fact that the small brig you sail in the game should not be able to defeat frigates and ships of the line.

While sinking ships is fun, to get the most reward you have to board and capture them. Smaller ships can be easily captured by shooting swivel guns to kill a few crew. Larger ships must be boarded and include annoying random objectives (such as climbing to the top and removing their flag). While ship boarding is epic because of all the npcs fighting on your side, this is also where the combat is the most annoying because of the way it is designed for solo play. Boarding gets tedious after a while, but it is the only reliable way to get materials for upgrading your ship.

After capturing a ship you (usually) have the choice to scuttle it to repair your ship, let it go to reduce wanted level, or add it to your fleet, which is a good strategic choice. You can later sell the ship if you put it in your fleet, though that currency is not the same as money because it is used exclusively for the fleet mini game. The fleet mini game allows you to send your ships on trading missions in exchange for money. You get goods and increased odds of success by first battling enemy ships. Missions can take from minutes to many hours to complete and is simply something you set up to reap the rewards, either while playing the game or not (because the timers count down while the game is not running). While this mini game is interesting and a good way to make some money, it is far too tedious because of its combat where you must site there and watch each 2D ship fire one at a time. How about an instantaneous combat option, because I would much rather be playing the actual game than this mini game? Thankfully, the entire thing is optional.

Optional content is the name of the game in Black Flag. There are a variety of side activities and collectibles, most of which are shown on the map (I am looking at you templar hunts). Though I did not personally enjoy all of them, they do strike a fairly good balance between more fun content and unneeded padding. The only one that I thought was poorly designed was the deep sea diving in regards to sharks. You are supposed to evade sharks using stealth, but I found that excessively difficult so I just ignored them, took bites that should have been fatal and relied on health regen. Worst case, just die and respawn.

The main story missions are fairly well done for the most part. The game includes an internal feedback system and I gave most missions 3 out of 5. A few got 4, and some got 1 or 2. There were too many tailing/eavesdropping missions, which I do not find fun. Timed missions where you have to chase an enemy or get to an objective were the ones that got 1 star; they were terrible. It is a good thing that this game makes very frequent checkpoint saves during missions.

Black Flag is a highly immersive and enjoyable experience that has very little going against it. A few poorly designed story missions are the only truly bad aspects of the game, while there are so many great parts to enjoy outside of that.

Pro

• Can pick up and use enemy weapons (only really useful for axe and musket though. Would be nice if you could throw enemy weapons)
• New abilities, tools and mechanics are continually introduced throughout the game
• Highly immersive world, with weather, npc dialogue, npc music/singing
• Good story, characters, voice acting and dialogue
• Highly enjoyable real time naval combat
• Enjoyable foot combat with many different options
• Most things have icons on the map
• Guns are powerful and have somewhat realistically long reload times
• Frequently saves, even during missions
• Fast travel
• 100% checklist inside the game by category and area, helping find everything to do
• Variety of cosmetic clothing and ship upgrades that are rendered during cutscenes
• Lots of optional content
• Can replay story missions
• Game rewards cheat codes for doing achievements (though it explains that the game will not save if you cheat)

Con

• Naval contracts disable fast travel; they are treated like main missions rather than side activities
• Quick time events for big cat combat
• Menu does not skip to the bottom when pressing up at the top
• Some activities change your equipped weapon (not good if you get into combat without realizing the game changed your equipped weapon on you!)
• While in combat with multiple ships, boarding one enemy pauses the greater battle and you can repair. These other ships realistically could easily sink your ship while you are busy boarding, or board you
• Foot combat with multiple enemies is too easy because they do not attack at the same time
• Can be awkward to switch weapons in naval combat because it is based on looking rather than pressing a specific button to instantly switch (D pad would have been excellent)
• Game does not explain how to use heavy shot (I did not even know you could shoot naval weapons without aiming)
• Some jungle areas have poor mapping
• Can’t choose which shanty the crew sings
• Too many missions involve tailing and eavesdropping
• Timed missions, which are mostly absurdly difficult
• Fleet management mini game has extremely tedious combat
• Deep sea diving is poorly designed because of having to deal with sharks (which cannot be harmed or driven way) and time (breath)
• Edward is not an assassin or trained as an assassin for most of the game, and yet he is able to do everything an assassin can, and do it well. Game does not explain this well
• Some time into the game, you get the modern day scene involving a looking around tutorial. This tells me they meant for this to be the start of the game, then changed their minds and could not be bothered to remove the tutorial aspect

Hard to believe this game was free for Xbox gold given how much I enjoyed it. I spent much of the game using scimitars (for high damage), wheel lock pistols (for range) and templar outfit until I unlocked the best swords, pistol and mayan outfit. My favourite way to assassinate was the berserk dart; essentially the equivalent of a one shot one kill sniper rifle. Stealth was exciting early on when I was weak, but later I preferred to just get things done as fast as possible, taking chances and fairly often getting into sword fights.

I finished 93%. Missed one shanty, one buried chest and could not care less about optional objectives for story missions. The naval combat is tons of fun, and I feel I would want to load up this game every now and then just to fight some ships. I seriously could have done without the inane hacking, collecting and deep sea diving. I do not have the DLC and have not tried multiplayer.

Sailing the high seas of the Caribbean, plundering trade vessels for that sweet loot, drinking rum on the sandy beaches of a hidden pirate cove. Black flag is a great pirate game. For some reason it's also an AC game.

You play as Edward Kenway, a pirate who accidentally gets caught up in the war between the Assassins and the Templars. I haven't played any other AC games, I only got this one because I liked the setting. I didn't really know what was going on but I still enjoyed the story a fair bit.

Gameplay is split between running, climbing, jumping, hunting and fighting around cities, towns and wild jungles on foot. The other is spent sailing your brig, the Jackdaw fighting other ships, scavenging for treasure, diving on underwater wrecks and exploring the many islands on the open world map.

I definitely liked the sailing and pirate side of the game more. Attacking and boarding other ships is a lot of fun, as is just exploring the map while listening to your crew singing sea shanties. If you enjoyed Wind Waker’s open world then this will be right up your alley.

The only downsides to the game are some boring missions (especially the modern day sequences), simple button-mashing combat, and a lack of stealth options. Apart from that it’s a great pirate game with a sprinkling of Assassin’s Creed.

A great game that should not have been an Assassin's Creed game.

I loved the game. And I would love it even more if it had nothing to do with the Assassin's Creed franchise. You follow the story of Heytham Kenway as he sails the Caribbean Sea during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Visually this is not far from the previous Assassin's Creed game - it looks really well and the colourfully vibrant setting of Caribbeans makes really easy on the eyes. However this is the first game where the NPC pop-ins started being visible. Not something I cared about much but worth mentioning.

The gameplay while remaining pretty much the same as in previous installment feels completely different. They mostly took the sailing part of the previous game and turned it into a whole game. You'll be spending most of the time sailing the sees, visiting island, and taking on the enemy ships in beautiful breathtaking sea battles taking multiple ships at once if needed.

Granted the naval fights are far from reality and the whole world pauses including enemy ships while you board the a single one. You can even repair your own vessel in the middle of the fight after successful boarding which makes the battles feel a bit arcady but still fun.

I think Black Flag is strongest when it comes to exploration. All the locations are interesting and beautiful. Changing weather adds a lot to the general charm. It's one of the few games I almost 100% and I enjoyed every little bit of it.

The story of Edward is pretty decent and we see him grow through the game. But the whole Assassin's vs Templars feels a bit forced. You don't really feel the Assassin's Creed 1 or 2 vibe and it feels just added on. The characters though are pretty interesting including captain Kidd and Blackbeard with the Pirate struggles and great story missions.

The assassination bits if not on ships felt a bit to desire. The setting does not fit in well with what assassins gameplay is all about. A lot of open fields, cities don't feel to dense - very little rooftop running and blending in with the crowds.

As an Assassin's Creed game this will not reach the top of the list, but as a Pirate game it's great. And I would recommend it highly if you're into Pirating.