Assassin's Creed: Pirates

Stepping away from the path of the main series, Ubisoft brings a complete mobile game that looks great and plays better, and becomes a good choice no matter if you’re looking for a complementary experience for AC IV or an individual one.

Assassin's Creed Pirates is surprisingly addictive, with its cool battles and all its side-missions that let you upgrade your ship.

Want to wreak havoc all over the high seas? Then Assassin's Creed Pirates is a great way to do so, Assassin's Creed fan or not.

The story is interesting and moderately compelling, and lasts a decent amount of time to boot. The missions can feel a little bit easy and overly repetitive, but when you’re just playing it in 30 – 60 minute chunks, it doesn’t feel as bad as it otherwise might.

Assassin's Creed Pirates is overall a nice, sometimes questionable spin-off for the main series, based on the naval battles and explorations.

Assassin's Creed: Pirates is a very silly game, but it's a great distraction if you're left wanting more after Black Flag. With a host of content, tons of customization and fast-paced combat, there's hardly a dull moment in Pirates. The fact that there's no money-grubbing microtransactions to ruin the experience is the cherry on top.

Assassin’s Creed: Pirates is a sharp-looking collection of pirate-themed activities that never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts.

A unique new approach for the classic Ubisoft saga designed exclusively for iOS and Android systems. Good fun and intuitive controls.

The Ubisoft Assassin's Creed mobile spin-off starts out well, and then became an Infinity Blade with galleon, failing to convince most of the players.

Assassin's Creed Pirates is about shallow sea combat and fast boats. A simple, but entertaining snack.

One could certainly argue that there’s a far amount of monotony in other Assassin’s Creed titles as well, but at least those have large open worlds to provide some variety. That key is missing from Pirates and keeps it from being a better offering.

There’s a massive sense of reward in eking out every resource and collectible from a given region before turning to raze the next, and there's plenty of opportunity to do it. An unfortunate lack of freedom just makes that return on your time a diminishing one.

With fun exploration and beautiful visuals, Assassin's Creed Pirates skirts close to greatness, but settles for being an enjoyable diversion.

A mobile version of the great game. It is magical because of its debugged controls, fast-paced missions, and neat graphics. However, it struggles in its narrative, battles, and hardware requirements.

A big silly game full of repetitive combat and simple missions, Assassin's Creed Pirates somehow still manages to be fun.

Pirates is a game of lots of little pieces that combine to form a patchy but largely coherent slice of pirate life. Could it stand to be a little more in-depth, a little less piecemeal in the way it hands out tasks? Certainly. But if you just want a solidly entertaining pirate game that you can dip in and out of, safe in the knowledge that there are hours of gameplay ahead with no paywalls, this is definitely worth downloading.

We all love games based on a pirate's life (well, maybe Ninja doesn't) but we need the right amount of challenge in it. Assassin's Creed: Pirates is blessed with stunning visuals, lots of things to do and fun naval battles, but it gets repetitive too early and is not challenging at all.

Naturally, it isn’t as attractive as its console cousin, though zoom down to eye level during its majestic sunsets and the shanties belted out by your crew make for a reasonable facsimile of the console game.

Sailing around the ocean and discovering treasure is fun, but the ship battles that make up a majority of the experience wear thin quickly. And with a mostly uninteresting story and thin connections to the Assassin's Creed series proper, Assassin's Creed Pirates is just floating dead in the water.

It’s a pity that such a fun, arcade adventure requires grinding so early on, because it serves no other purpose than to hinder progress. Pirates is an enjoyable jaunt played in short bursts, but one that promises a little more than it actually delivers.

While Assassin's Creed Pirates manages to capture a bit of that sea-faring magic, it never quite delivers the pirate experience I wanted.

Pirates isn't a terrible game, but its pedigree means it needed to aim higher. Black Flag's ship combat was extremely refined, but Pirates comes off as a shallow imitator, and will undoubtedly leave players wanting.

Assassin’s Creed Pirates has no wind in its sails making it one to skip despite the high profile nature. There’s a big name, deluxe graphical design, but extremely simplistic and repetitive gameplay, which sinks this ship.

Great open world, tons to do, amazing visuals, naval battles and a solid soundtrack. Sounds great? It would be if not for the total lack of any challenge. The simple fights never propose anything close to danger and the feeling of repetition soon sets in. Assassin’s Casual yaaaar. So much potential wasted.