The sense of exploration in the game is amazing.īlack Flag features three different primary cities, Havana, Nassau, and Kingston, each with their own distinct look and feel. It's not as crazy and free-for-all as Grand Theft Auto's shenanigans, but you definitely feel like your choices are yours. What Black Flag does well is give you a sense of freedom, on land or on sea. In restricted areas, there are ships with vision cones that you either avoid or fight. Forts on the high seas are just like ACIII's forts on land. When you make sense of all sailing provides, it actually maps rather well to existing Assassin's Creed systems. I fought some ruffians at a tavern, killed two guards, ran to my ship with more chasing me, and set sail, leaving them behind. If you want to, you can just sail.Īnd open-world sailing works. Black Flag is very clear about the context of all your actions - Edward's got to get paid - but it doesn't force it down your throat. There's a ton in the game to do and it will take you a very long time to do it all if that's your desire. Take over forts, raid plantations, dive, hunt, harpoon, collect treasure, shanties, and animus fragments, find Mayan ruins, fight ships it's all up to you. Black Flag will still be teaching you new stuff into Sequence 6, but there's far more you can do before that.Īnd Black Flag is one big ass open-world with a ton of things to do. I freed pirates from guards without a crew to send them to and pillaged a fort long before the game led me there by the hand. Some of the actions lack context since you haven't gotten to the story bit that fully explains them, but you're certainly allowed to play around. Black Flag drops you right in action and within 15 to 20 minutes, you're ready to do whatever you want on the high seas. One thing Ubisoft did learn from Assassin's Creed III is skipping a lengthy opening tutorial section. Every single one is interesting I did their missions just to keep having Edward interact with them. Speaking of characters, one of the standouts in Black Flag are the Templar Hunts missions, which put you in contact with the lead assassins in certain regions. Even wrapped in byzantine machination upon machination, the characters shine through. Blackbeard and James Kidd are among the standouts, but the rest do a great job as well. It gets Edward from point A to point B, but Black Flag's real strength is in Edward and his supporting cast. The story doesn't necessarily fare as well, but it's a passable effort. Early on, Edward isn't really on any side except his own he's honorable to a point, but coin is what pushes him forward, not his conscience.
Edward's quest for riches made him to become a pirate and they've landed him right in the middle of the age-old war between the Assassins and Templars. Like Connor, Edward's motivations are clear, but unlike Connor his motivations drive the story forward. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a chance for Ubisoft to show that they acknowledge what went awry before and prove they've used their year of development to create a better experience.īlack Flag drops you in the shoes of Welsh pirate Edward Kenway, who immediately struck me as a more charismatic personality compared to his stoic grandson, Assassin's Creed III's Connor.
That game was full of good ideas hampered by poor execution, wrapped in a story that started very slow and sprinted towards an unsatisfying finish. So here we go, Ubisoft chance to prove to fans that they learned from the disappointing Assassin's Creed III.