Beat 88% during free trial of Ubisoft +. Since I got Black Flag for free on xbox 360 I was not inclined to buy the original version of this dlc. I did look at the standalone at some point but felt the price point and content were not to my liking. Despite having some misgivings going into this game, I …
Beat 88% during free trial of Ubisoft +. Since I got Black Flag for free on xbox 360 I was not inclined to buy the original version of this dlc. I did look at the standalone at some point but felt the price point and content were not to my liking. Despite having some misgivings going into this game, I greatly enjoyed it. It was like a bite sized slice of Black Flag with a pretty good story, but did not offer any really new mechanics. I did not like the random slave events that were always present in the main town, such as freeing slaves from cages and auctions. They were infinitely repeatable and respawned very quickly, making it feel like I was not making any impact at all on the slavery situation. Unlike the plantations which became abandoned for a while after raiding. They also interfered with missions by putting additional enemies and restricted areas in the way.
It only took me 2 play sessions to beat the game. I actually did a fair bit of stealth due to mission design encouraging it, and plantations offering more slaves to free if the guards were not alerted. The combat was still very easy though. I enjoyed the new brutal animations for the machete, though that was the only melee weapon type he could keep. The blunderbuss was great for killing groups at close range, though I kept the precision one equipped rather than use the ultimate hand cannon. As usual I ignored most of the optional objectives, unless they offered new story. A few of the tailing missions were annoying and I rated them 2 stars, while most missions I gave 4 or 5 stars; very good ratio. The worst mission was the sinking slave ship with damn QTEs. Of course the naval combat was the best part of the game, and it did not take long to max out my ship. I went for ships with a lot of metal and boarded them for maximum loot. I went everywhere and got every chest, except for the island where I found the precision blunderbluss; I could not find all the chests there. I had way more money than I needed and wasted a lot of effort looting many slain enemies. I did the 1 diving shipwreck and was glad that there was only 1, since that was among my least favourite parts of Black Flag. I harpooned a couple whales but felt doing 1 of each species was a waste of time. I never found the Jack Daw figurehead, but I don’t care about cosmetics. They seemed pointless in such a short game, but I do appreciate that the naval combat could be endless.
Not as good as Black Flag though it was worth playing. I would not buy it now that I have beaten it for free.
8.0/10
