Assassin's Creed: Pirates

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.