Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

 PC
User Score
8.3

Generally favorable reviews- based on 3161 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,500 out of 3161
  2. Mixed: 438 out of 3161
  3. Negative: 223 out of 3161
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  1. HEXHUN
    Nov 22, 2013
    5
    AC: Black Flag was announced like a big break through for the series. Unfortunately it fails this in so many ways.
    The single player content is carried out very badly. The multiplayer is totally the same, lacks the sight of the smallest innovations. It was satisfying two games ago... now it feels like Call of Duty...
    The game mechanism are so dumb down, even a monkey could play the    AC: Black Flag was announced like a big break through for the series. Unfortunately it fails this in so many ways.
    The single player content is carried out very badly. The multiplayer is totally the same, lacks the sight of the smallest innovations. It was satisfying two games ago... now it feels like Call of Duty...

    The game mechanism are so dumb down, even a monkey could play the game. A lot of good features from the predecessor games are missing. Specially from the combat... this game was build around it, but still this is the most unpretending part of the game... Everything that was good in AC3's naval combat, devs just trashed all of it.

    - There aren't any diffirences between ships... a 3500 tonne man of war will be as fast as Edward's small ship. The legendary ships are some kind of freaking jokes... they accelerate at 80 m/s and they are equipped with jet engines. WTF?
    - Canon reload time is so low... it takes (even for the man of war's 100 canons) only 3 seconds... just spam full boardside volleys, that is the only thing you will do in combat. Frigates and man of war ships have some future tech gatling canons... they can fire up to 5 volleys in quick succession (under ~10 seconds)
    - You can no longer change canon rounds like in AC3.
    - Ship sails no longer takes dmg, chain-shots lost there whole function... oh wait they've got a new one, now they STUN ships like in damn WoW...
    -This game is so arcade... you have the option to repair your ship AND loose all you notority after you board a ship.

    Melee combat sucks also... Thee E is your ultimate key used for anything... counter, dodge, parry. HP potions removed entirely.
    Edward regain heatlh automatically.. The fast-travel option added to the game, it has some nice side effects too, it can be used anytime, even in combat. Also recharges your full ammo supply (smokebombs, darts too) Eagle vision now tags enemies like the annoying wallhack in Far Cry 3. Assassinte missions are so arcade, you can run straight to your target, don't worry about being detected, because it's no longer cause desync. (mission fail, not even in story mission)

    The world looks big on the map, but its feels empty even towns and also lacks detail. Side activities are so few and even those are so boring, just a tons of ridiculously easy assassination contracts.

    This game won't provide any fun for whose played the older games. Black Flag is a huge disapointment. Made for 10 yrs old console-kids. This game probably don't deserve a medicore score.    … Expand
  2. Hochbichler
    Mar 20, 2020
    6
    Assassin's Creed IV: Black flag is the sixth major installment of the famous stealth action adventure series. I find the setting of this game is very interesting: the Age of Sail, the pirates, West Indies. The stealth/combat system (on land) gets boring and repetitive very quickly. The sailing side of the game is by far the best part of it, although even here would I welcome more shipAssassin's Creed IV: Black flag is the sixth major installment of the famous stealth action adventure series. I find the setting of this game is very interesting: the Age of Sail, the pirates, West Indies. The stealth/combat system (on land) gets boring and repetitive very quickly. The sailing side of the game is by far the best part of it, although even here would I welcome more ship diversity, more upgrades etc. The sea can also get a bit crowded for my taste at times. Naval battles are a lot of fun as is the whaling minigame (criticised by the PETA thugs, of course). Shanties are a brilliant idea and great collective items, specially in contrast to the useless animus fragments. The graphics is pretty good for 2013 game, but the colours seem a bit dull. The font is quite pleasant. The difficulty of this game can be a problem: objectively it is just too easy. The story is interesting for the first half of the game, then it gets partially ruined by pathos and SJW crap. The part of the game that takes place outside of the animus is interesting, but only to people familiar with the AC world/story. Sadly this game contains plenty of greedy microtransactions and equally plenty of SJW crap. Both single player DLCs are perfect examples of that.

    This is a game with a lot of appeal for me, but several unfortunate decision somewhat ruined the experience for me. Final Verdict: 60 %    … Expand
  3. d__b
    Dec 24, 2013
    5
    Basic of making next game in the series is improving on previous games. But Ubi managed to get it backward. Even if resulting game is still somewhat decent, it's still step backward in almost all areas.

    Even flag feature of this game sea combat, got wrose than in AC3. Even if combat system got expanded, it's irrelevant since sea fights are so easy now, and storms no longer cause waves    Basic of making next game in the series is improving on previous games. But Ubi managed to get it backward. Even if resulting game is still somewhat decent, it's still step backward in almost all areas.

    Even flag feature of this game sea combat, got wrose than in AC3. Even if combat system got expanded, it's irrelevant since sea fights are so easy now, and storms no longer cause waves big enough to matter(which was best part of sea combat in AC3, in my opinion). Yes, combat is enjoyable, but less so than it was in previous game. Also, "travel speed" at sea despite being "Animus-side speed to make travel fast" still maes most travels between points few minutes of boring screen staring.

    You remember hunting or crafting from AC3? Well, now hunting got reduced to "hunt 2 of each kind of animals, craft one thing per animal, forget about it". Harpooning is new minigame, I'm not so sure if it's good minigame, so in that case it might be good that you only need to do it few times per animal.

    Hideout present since AC2 is here too, it's big, but upgrading it is pretty much irrelevant, only serving as money sink. What's more, none of vanity collectibles actually affect any part of the world. You can upgrade your ship, sure, but it's like buying upgrades to yourself. Whole economy system present since AC2 is gone.
    Brotherhood gave us "your people", and here fleet takes this role, but it's bloody SimCity all again, play with "friends" or anything will take ages to do. Because Ubi couln't find good reason for their piracy-detergent of online requirement, they just turned part of game into "social" game.

    When you think difficulty hit rock bottom, here comes out another AC game to prove you wrong and define new bottom. In some cases, enemies will even ignore you murdering one of them right in front of them. Killing enemies with gun rarely makes anyone react at all. Only good change in that department is whistling now you have to whistle for a while before guard decides to og investigate, making picking them off one by one less reliable.

    Older games used to have optional missions that were one big jumping puzzle. If you strain youself, you might find one or at most two of those in this game. Historical places? Not in this setting. Beuitifull cities? Not in this setting. Huge buildings to climb? Not in this setting. Collectibles? Well, some are hidden. Most of them are at sea and main challenge is to not say "screw it" and not spend hours sailing from point to point to jump ship, swim to island, pick it up from ground, get back to sihp and repeat.

    Characters? Hmph. Your out-of-Animus character is nobody, he does not speak, has no motivation, could not find any mirror so not sure if he even has actual body. He's just getting used by everyone around him, like a tool. As for in-Animus... Ezio started as a rash youth, and grew. Connor started as kid, and grew a lot. Edward starts as badass without clear motivation or character, and remains as such pretty much whole game.

    Story there is no story. There is some pirating "do what we want" story, small Assassin substory, but overall, it's just "do random things and maybe you stumble across something relevant to this or that plot".

    It's PC version, ported from console, so optimization is terrible, and graphic settings are lacking. There is no gamma correction, so everything is so freaking bright that you just can't see some things during the day. But, at least they enabled mouse control so you can actually select tings on map with mouse, instead of moving map around to center relevant icon and select it.

    Overall, it's not bad game, if it was not part of AC series but standalone pirate game, it could be decent 8 or even 9, depending how "assassiny" elements of game would be substituted. But as part of series, it's worst Creed ever released. So far.    … Expand
  4. Vixremento
    Dec 2, 2013
    6
    Being a fan of AC2 and brotherhood I'd been rather let down with anything that followed and even with the over-hyped AC3 I got seriously burnt. I then waited...cautiously...for the Black Flag reviews and in general it all seemed to point out that they'd corrected their flaws and gone back a little to their roots. Is it true you ask?
     
      Well yes for some bits and sadly...no for the most    Being a fan of AC2 and brotherhood I'd been rather let down with anything that followed and even with the over-hyped AC3 I got seriously burnt. I then waited...cautiously...for the Black Flag reviews and in general it all seemed to point out that they'd corrected their flaws and gone back a little to their roots. Is it true you ask?
     
     
    Well yes for some bits and sadly...no for the most part. AC2 had you really involved and it made sure that you had to do a little more than just "point and shoot" so to speak. Black Flag comes along and introduces us to some more intensive ship control and ship battles that really do feel pretty good to take part in initially. Soon though you do feel that this "pirate-battle-ship-thing" is a bit flat and it starts to get quite boring pretty quickly so it's sad that it has such a huge focus in the game because it really stops being fun after the first two hours or so.
     
     
    Platforming it's just gone I'm sad to say. Every bit of navigation required now is only made more difficult by figuring out which bit of the map it is that you have to navigate around everything in-between that is just pointing and holding down the shift key to get there (and then sometimes you just can't "disconnect" because you've become a sticky monkey to anything that is not at ground level). It's fun right in the beginning but then you soon start to realise that there is actually no challenge to doing any of it.
     
     
    Combat: Pretty much nothing new here boring and as easy as ever (in fact it felt even easier this time around). Sure, you'll have to dodge a few grenades, counter (feels very much like Batmans counter-moves) and break defenses by using a key press...rather un-rewarding in the end especially when you know that a monkey could pull off the same moves.
     
     
    Once again I'm left rather disappointed (and I haven't even touched on the "future" bits that feel about as fun to play as just watching a clip of someone else play the game...hell even that would have been more fun!) and after having played through the somewhat long and fairly boring story I just didn't feel anything special about this game (I actually had to force myself to keep playing through it and all the time I kept thinking "maybe I should just re-install and play through AC2 or AC:Brotherhood again instead). With promises of an upgrade system similar to Far Cry 3 (sure, it's mostly true but pretty much damn boring and not very much required) and the usual "hunt" for collectables being slapped in there I eventually stopped because the game just become sooo long in the tooth.
     
     
    Ah well I guess I should have realised this after revelations that the game has just been effectively dumbed down to a more simplistic experience that what we were introduced to before in the previous titles...maybe I'm just getting old or maybe I'm just trying to expect too much when consoles dominate so heavily. My conclusion: if you loved AC2/Brotherhood and despised AC3/Revelations then give this one a skip. In the end this one looks pretty and plays fairly nicely with my PC hardware yet in the end it just feels overly simplified and too heavily story-focused without really giving too much of a damn about game-play.    … Expand
  5. DanielCorfour
    Nov 26, 2013
    6
    Assassin's Creed 4: 90% pirate, 10% assassin. To see a summary of this review scroll to the end.

    Ubisoft went ahead and did the obvious. They took, the best part of Assassin's Creed 3, really the only really good part, and made a game out of it. Literally, they retrofitted the game engine used in the previous title into this a new game, while barely adding or changing anything. This    Assassin's Creed 4: 90% pirate, 10% assassin. To see a summary of this review scroll to the end.

    Ubisoft went ahead and did the obvious. They took, the best part of Assassin's Creed 3, really the only really good part, and made a game out of it. Literally, they retrofitted the game engine used in the previous title into this a new game, while barely adding or changing anything. This whole game felt like an AC 3.1, rather than a new title.. which, I wouldn't have had a problem with, if they would have fixed the problems that plagued AC3, or actually gave us a good, satisfying story, like AC2, but they didn't.

    Assassin's Creed wasn't particularly good when it came to game mechanics, AC1 and 2 were kind of bad actually, instead, it was built by it's amazing storytelling, beautiful setting, and wonderful soundtrack. I still listen to Ezio's Family by Jesper Kyd from AC2. That song brings back a kind of emotions that I rarely feel with games. AC4, however delivers only one of these, the setting. I'm going to start by criticizing the story itself. It's terrible. First off, it has nothing to do with Assassins, they barely make a cameo appearance, both inside and outside the Animus. The whole game revolves around pirates, and that wouldn't be a problem, if it was a good story. And it starts out good, but then it gets riddled with plot holes, poor writing, scenes that don't make sense, and although they stayed away from the obvious parrot cliches, they added a bunch of them story-wise. The story does make a few twists, but most of them you'll see coming a mily away, and most of them don't make sense. There is no main enemy in the game, and most of the things that happen in the game make no sense. And if you were expecting a great ending.. don't.. it is terrible. The only plot-twist you won't see coming in this game is the ending.. they drop it on you out of nowhere, just when you were expecting the game would truly begin, and then they hit you in the face with a poorly done cutscene, and leave you confused.

    Here's a tip, dear Ubisoft. A story, every story, follows 5 basic steps, not necessarily in this order: Exposition, Rising Action, Progression, Climax, Ending. The 4th is completely missing, and the fifth leaves you confused, when it should leave you satisfied.

    Then there are the actual missions in the story. Boring, repetitive and most of them don't make sense. All you do is follow this guy, eavesdrop on that guy. And on rare occasions you kill someone. Missions involving ships can be interesting, but at times they are the same boring "follow that ship" nonsense. In comparison with GTA 5, or Red Dead Redemption, where every mission was unique and intriguing, here they are boring, unimaginative and repetitive. The same goes for side missions. Assassinations, Naval Missions and Templar Hunts. All of them are basically the same. If you did one then you did all, there's no point in continuing. You play through it once, but you won't want to play through it a second time.

    What saves the game is the beautiful and huge open world game, the side activities(not missions) and the naval combat. The setting is really amazing, although some fans of the series will find it irritating that you won't visit cities that much, only a couple times, and they are small with not a lot of things to do, the setting just didn't allow for that. Most of the time you will do what the game is all about: pirating. Naval combat is really fun, and it's been expanded upon a lot.: you can board ships, capture them, steal their cargo and send them to your fleet, you can attack naval forts and capture them. You can use those resources to upgrade your ship and so on. There are also underwater places you can explore, but there are limited, and in comparison with GTAV, where there was an entire open-world you could explore, here there are only ten locations, but it still looks great, and avoiding sharks and medusas is great fun. You can also raid plantations, which are a ton of fun... basically the side activities are really great, and make this game enjoyable, even though the story brings it down.

    In summary, it looks like this game was made just so Ubisoft can make more money off of the ship mechanics in AC3. Combat and land based mechanics are basically the same as the previous game, although they did need changing and improving. The game engine is the same as it was in the third title, with very little improvement, or change, when it, again needed it. And all of this would not be a problem if the game offered a good story, but it doesn't. The story seems like an excuse to sell an adapted version of AC3, and the story is driven by the game mechanics, and not vice versa. Luckily the beautiful setting, graphics and excellent pirate game save the game and prop up the rating to a 6/10. You can't help but feel, if they only spent a little bit more time, and wouldn't pump out a game every year, it could've been an amazing game.    … Expand
  6. Reidlos65
    Nov 24, 2013
    5
    Good game hindered by the Poorest PC optimization ive seen in a few years. Top of the line rigs hitting 45 to maybe 60 if your lucky? Nah don't think so. The game is fun and story is good considering this is outside the trilogy
  7. Motcritic
    Nov 30, 2013
    7
    While I don't like some aspects of this game, it's one of most fun games I ever played.

    Graphics are great, the towns look very nice, the landscape of both missions and islands is amazing, the sea looks nice enough and the waves behave very smoothly. The character movement is very good, definitely an improvement, you can connect most of the movement you want to make, rarely you will    While I don't like some aspects of this game, it's one of most fun games I ever played.

    Graphics are great, the towns look very nice, the landscape of both missions and islands is amazing, the sea looks nice enough and the waves behave very smoothly.
    The character movement is very good, definitely an improvement, you can connect most of the movement you want to make, rarely you will start to jump and grab places you didn't meant too.
    The missions are mostly well made and fun, and while some might say they are too easy, I think they are just fine because I like to go through the story, I hate bottlenecks of repetitive tries due to chance or difficulty, for the sake of being hard. Sea combat is fun. Boarding ships is fun if you roleplay them, don't go immediately to the goals and you will be immersed into nice visuals and combat.

    But this game has a lot of downsizes. Very easy naval combat, too easy, specially when attacking naval fortress's, the repercussions of pirating are basically none. Land combat is also extremely easy, its all about knowing what type of enemies you are facing and hit the according button, but, its fun, very fun, still way too easy. The map size is extremely small (caribbean islands packed into a 20km per 20km give or take) and the view ranges of enemy ships is ridiculous low, we are talking about having an enemy ship 50 meters away from you and they can't see you!! This game design choice obliterates the immersion of being at sea, the feeling of being alone, of spotting enemies on the horizon, storms are well made but they come and go in a minute, rogue waves and water tornados are just too easy to avoid. Due to the map being so filled with islands and ships, immersion is completely crushed.

    All in all, its a fun game to play, but once you play it the replay value is null, this means that for a open world game something went wrong when they designed it, kinda remembers me of Sleeping Dogs, making an open world that serves no purpose since only the missions have any value.    … Expand
  8. ChoicestGames
    Feb 27, 2020
    7
    For fans of the Golden Age of Piracy as well as stealth action-adventures with a bit of naval combat thrown in, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag ticks all the right boxes. The game also features great cutscenes, animations, mini-games, sea shanties and Ubisoft took the effort to resolve the game in a satisfactory manner (at least with respect to Edward Kenway's story). If you're not intoFor fans of the Golden Age of Piracy as well as stealth action-adventures with a bit of naval combat thrown in, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag ticks all the right boxes. The game also features great cutscenes, animations, mini-games, sea shanties and Ubisoft took the effort to resolve the game in a satisfactory manner (at least with respect to Edward Kenway's story). If you're not into these sorts of games though (i.e. lots of grinding in order to upgrade your character and ship, as well as stealth being a mandatory requirement for success) you could find elements of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag frustrating: I know I did.… Expand
  9. shauntmw
    May 14, 2020
    7
    I play this on UPlay, and play exclusively on the single player campaign only.

    First of all, let's talk about the technical issues that I have faced. The game is very poorly optimized. Despite having a moderately high-end PC, I still get a very bad lag and framerate issue. Disabling V-Sync improves a lot on the lag, but the tearing is too terrible to play with it disabled. There are    I play this on UPlay, and play exclusively on the single player campaign only.

    First of all, let's talk about the technical issues that I have faced. The game is very poorly optimized. Despite having a moderately high-end PC, I still get a very bad lag and framerate issue. Disabling V-Sync improves a lot on the lag, but the tearing is too terrible to play with it disabled.

    There are some software tweaks that greatly improves the framerate. One of them is D3DOverrider. Another is to disable one of the CPU core assigned to the game via Task Manager. Also, the game will suddenly hang when my connection is bad.

    Technical issues aside, the game itself is great! This game put some very heavy emphasis on naval warfare and navigation. Although I hated the naval scenario in the previous game, I totally loved it in this game! The world is huge and full of things to do. The story is great, and I really like that fact they finally minimized the "modern world" part and made it trivial enough for me to not care, and yet put enough interesting backstory into the hacking mini-game for me to explore.

    The stealth mechanic has improved quite a bit, but I don't really like the battle mechanic in this game compared to the older games. The enemies are too easy to kill, but sometimes the battle camera or controls are so bad that you will get killed just by 1 or 2 combos by an enemy, despite having full health.

    I hated the underwater area. It is so bad that I have given up on fully complete the collectibles just because I can't be bothered to play all the under water stages.

    I would have given this game a score of 9/10, but I have decided to deduct a few points because of the bad PC port.    … Expand
  10. qzzzeee
    Jan 2, 2022
    7
    A very good game. Exciting sea battles. Assassins are few, the game is about them, but there are almost none. In general, it is a solid project.
  11. Banhammer0
    Dec 24, 2013
    7
    I tried to not feel disappointed on this one but I was. a lot. In some aspects Black Flag is an utter failure but in others it's amazingly well done and outshine the previous games in the series by far.
    The bad thing: Modern Abstergo plot
    I'm a fan of Assassin's Creed series and I think what they did with the plot is total BS. I'm talking about the modern-day plot not getting into    I tried to not feel disappointed on this one but I was. a lot. In some aspects Black Flag is an utter failure but in others it's amazingly well done and outshine the previous games in the series by far.
    The bad thing: Modern Abstergo plot
    I'm a fan of Assassin's Creed series and I think what they did with the plot is total BS. I'm talking about the modern-day plot not getting into spoilers here, it was absolutely terrible, both the idea and the execution of it. This was the most disappointing part.
    Another bad thing: GLITCHES, ARMY OF THEM
    Every part of the game is filled with minor glitches, patches fix a lot of them but it's super-common for camera to go crazy or the character having problems with scalling a 0,5 meters tall fence, or character falling to the ground in combat for no reason, or weapons clipping and animations desyncing...you get the idea I hope. It's just very rough on the edges.
    Last but not least: Controls
    It's obvious they are meant for consoles and they suck on PC. It's very hard to control character when free running or in combat. No target lock. Weird aiming (at least we finally have it implemented).

    Now to the good part: The World
    The world is HUUUGE. There are some reused assets but it's still a pleasure to explore new places and gather those little collectibles that I never cared about before.

    Also good: The visuals
    This game is beautiful and there is no denying of it, and it's pretty well optimized aside from some FPS issues, but I was able to almost max it out on GTX 570. Surprisingly good job Ubisoft.

    I'm not really going into details because you can google them...I don't care.
    Mixed feelings, best get it on sale.    … Expand
  12. plotlesviolence
    Jun 29, 2014
    7
    I feel kind of weird liking this game when I absolutely loathed AC3, but I'll try and explain why this iteration kept my attention the whole way through.
    STORY/DESIGN: (5/10) - On the one hand, the story is boring, and there's no real climax/payoff at the end, it's just a-bunch-of-stuff-that-happens that seems to rely on player time investment to make us connect emotionally rather than an    I feel kind of weird liking this game when I absolutely loathed AC3, but I'll try and explain why this iteration kept my attention the whole way through.
    STORY/DESIGN: (5/10) - On the one hand, the story is boring, and there's no real climax/payoff at the end, it's just a-bunch-of-stuff-that-happens that seems to rely on player time investment to make us connect emotionally rather than an interesting plot. On the other hand, the main character is somewhat unique in that his major motivation is making money and he aggressively wants to avoid joining either of the warring factions. But the most important part of the story is that, unlike AC3, it is mostly unobtrusive.
    GRAPHICS: (9/10) - this is a gorgeous looking game in almost every respect. There's a good variety of environments, from period cities of varying elevations (to facilitate the freerunning) to deep jungle to tropical islands.
    GAMEPLAY: (7/10) - this is kind of hit-and-miss, depending on what the game asks of you. Each of the 4 gameplay types represents about a quarter of the experience:
    Ship-to-ship combat is good (7/10), kind of like space combat games if you couldn't move up or down, but what makes it interesting is a very developed, shifting 3D ocean that is constantly buffetting your ship and changing the angles. I also like how quickly you go from sailing to aiming a side cannon at individual enemie on a ship, then swing over on a rope and go straight into hand-to-hand combat. One nice touch is that you can sneak-swim onto an enemy ship that's otherwise overpowered for your ship, kill all the soldiers in hand-to-hand, then return to your ship and conquer the now weakened and crippled ship in one shot. What I dislike about ship-to-ship combat is that, other than size and flag color, basically all ships you fight are identical in look and structure. I feel like they could have designed more than one enemy for you. Additionally, it would have been nice to go below decks for combat, instead of just up the masts once in awhile.
    Freerunning (3/10) hasn't really changed from AC3, but the environments are quite a bit better and smoother, particularly in jumping from tree-to-tree. It's very intuitive, but it's still hold-down-a-button and point the analog stick, whereas any true platformer would require individual presses of the jump button. There's also a swimming mechanic for underwater side missions, which is cool, but slow and eventually gets boring.
    Combat (5/10) has a few new enemy types that often require a different button press (i.e. "stun") to defeat certain enemies, plus the ability to throw enemies (off ledges or into other enemies) instead of insta-kill adds another layer. And sometimes you have to press a button to grab a human shield just before you're shot. But it's still way too easy to be fun most of the time.
    Stealth (5/10) is still functional but not improved. It's still based primarily on moving between bits of grass and insta-killing anything that gets near. Your only other options are a berserker dart (makes an enemy attack his friends), hire dancers to distract guards, and a smoke bomb escape; that's fairly paltry compared to any other stealth game.
    DESIGN: (9/10)
    The game starts with you experiencing the major gameplay types (ship-to-ship combat, freerunning, stealth, then combat) all the in the first mission with only a few seconds of cutscenes intruding on that. There are FAR fewer enforced-slow-walk-for-plot-exposition parts than in AC3, though there are still some. Similarly, you spend very little time in the "future" world outside the animus, another great choice, although even this half-hour total was still the worst part of the game. I never even got to the sailing portion of AC3 because I couldn't tolerate the pathetic "platforming" and the fact that they buried the good stuff so late in the game, but AC4 understands that it is a game and puts its best feet forward. There are a bunch of side missions, and you never have to do any of them more than once if you dislike one. And if you just like open-ended missions where you get to a guarded target and assassinate him, there are like 30 of those as "assassin" side missions. So it's a long game (21 hours) but it held my interest long enough for me to beat it. If they could just make you actually press the "jump" button when they wanted you to jump and made the melee combat more challenging/interesting, this game could have been a 9/10 easily.    … Expand
  13. Verdan
    Nov 28, 2013
    7
    This game is bit rushed. When Assassin's Creed gets pushed out. My thoughts are "Oh awesome new story, historical views, new characters yay!". Waiting for a good game. Assassin's creed: black Flag is not bad game by any standard. It's just not ground breaking and awesome like the old ones. The story line is different and will play out to be nice, but side quests...Really? I liked toThis game is bit rushed. When Assassin's Creed gets pushed out. My thoughts are "Oh awesome new story, historical views, new characters yay!". Waiting for a good game. Assassin's creed: black Flag is not bad game by any standard. It's just not ground breaking and awesome like the old ones. The story line is different and will play out to be nice, but side quests...Really? I liked to collect optional stuff from each zone, yet it netted me nothing (I don't really like that i only get 1% when i complete a zone). Outside story mode this game has nothing to offer in terms of gamplay. Pirating is fun for a while, but since you blunder basically same resources (Women, new ships, slaves, art, gold yarrr???) all over...You are not feeling like a pirate.

    Quick fire round to pro´s and con´s.

    Pro´s:
    - Setting is not limited to cities only like older releases
    - Pirate setting is done nicely, you are spending time on a vessel
    - Crafting got useful again and ship customization looks awesome
    - Sneaking, fighting got updated amongst other things.

    Cons:
    - The "Real life" story is left out for good part of the game
    - You don't really have a clue about the grand schemes, so you are not pursuing a goal.
    - Little to no graphical improvements (Well they don't even need to those, but added them anyway. Game looks awesome!)
    - Characters are uninteresting
    - Optional stuff is optional...And useless. Why collect 15 fragments that will not grant you anything expect 0,5 progress sync story.
    - I´m pretty sure i have seen some character models in AC 1 3 as major storyline...
    - You need to wait a long time until story kicks in. Don't get bored until then.    … Expand
  14. mphst
    Nov 28, 2013
    5
    Same mistakes were made again like AC3. Soulness and Nonsense game story is boring. Ubisoft must understand that, last two games is not AC game. Maybe expansion pack of rookie assasins but, i didnt see any assasins whole two games. they need to get rid of being "callofdutiism". they didnt mess up any game like this, even PoP series.
  15. serp86
    Nov 24, 2013
    6
    Great pirate game with stupid Assasins/Templar non-sense. I really dislike the storyline of the Assasins Creed series with it's convoluted non-sensical mystic mumbo-jumbo In this you can mostly ignore those and just sail around pirating you can have tons of fun for hours very early. The rest of the game outside the naval battles is pretty eh. At least the protagonist is aware of howGreat pirate game with stupid Assasins/Templar non-sense. I really dislike the storyline of the Assasins Creed series with it's convoluted non-sensical mystic mumbo-jumbo In this you can mostly ignore those and just sail around pirating you can have tons of fun for hours very early. The rest of the game outside the naval battles is pretty eh. At least the protagonist is aware of how stupid the stuff he sees is and comments on it .

    Ubisoft should just completely drop the Assasins stuff and make game full Naval/Pirate game Cause thats awesome and i fully recommend to buy the game it at a lower price just for that.

    Optimization isn't optimal but it runs very well on my PC on basically maxed details with some glitches here and there. Didn't run into anything major yet.    … Expand
  16. gletara
    Nov 26, 2013
    5
    Ahh a new AC game, remember when ubisoft stated they are putting a lot of effort in Assassin Creed 3? As Ubisoft claimed, the scheduler used for the rendering was ‘rewritten from the ground up and in AC4, the engine will use all the cores it needs until it sees that using more cores brings no more gain. Well it appears that ubisoft lied once more. My I5 2500k so call recommended processorAhh a new AC game, remember when ubisoft stated they are putting a lot of effort in Assassin Creed 3? As Ubisoft claimed, the scheduler used for the rendering was ‘rewritten from the ground up and in AC4, the engine will use all the cores it needs until it sees that using more cores brings no more gain. Well it appears that ubisoft lied once more. My I5 2500k so call recommended processor peg at 100% on 1 core and 5-15% on the rest, 2013 game running single core how awesome is that.After all optimizing game on the pc are not ubisoft priority anyway as stated them self. Good thing is naval combat is nothing short of amazing and revolutionary, a major improvement on AC3 which i do like if it isn't crippled by performance issue. Theme and setting are done very well, lush vegetation in stunning detail. They said the game would perform well even on low end machine, an overclocked 560Ti is apparently getting 40 fps on lowest setting and 800x600 resolution with vysyn turn off. Ashame really this could have been the best AC game yet after AC2 if it is actually enjoyable.… Expand
  17. GPReS
    Nov 12, 2014
    5
    It seems quite fun and intriguing in the beginning, but... then you remember that Desmond is dead and frankly speaking the story is not that mystically fun anymore, than you start to notice that you've played 40+hrs of the game and the story is completed for 12% only, and the game itself - 40%... and you already fed up of this boring need-for-speed like ships (after full upgrade), hardIt seems quite fun and intriguing in the beginning, but... then you remember that Desmond is dead and frankly speaking the story is not that mystically fun anymore, than you start to notice that you've played 40+hrs of the game and the story is completed for 12% only, and the game itself - 40%... and you already fed up of this boring need-for-speed like ships (after full upgrade), hard coded and scripted legendary ships, boring ship fights (as you can kick all asses without significant efforts) and all the other boring and repetitive things. The last so much boring part was Brotherhood, and once again they decided to do this... Unfinished game without soul and creativity...… Expand
  18. meediocre
    May 6, 2014
    7
    Pretty pirate-simulator with some fun naval combat. Let down though by the usual repetitive quests, stupid sword-play combat, and lack of a particularly interesting narrative journey or characters. An improvement for sure on the last AC. The best aspect of the game is traversing the picturesque waters in changing weather conditions on a boat full of pirates singing a song. Not much tensionPretty pirate-simulator with some fun naval combat. Let down though by the usual repetitive quests, stupid sword-play combat, and lack of a particularly interesting narrative journey or characters. An improvement for sure on the last AC. The best aspect of the game is traversing the picturesque waters in changing weather conditions on a boat full of pirates singing a song. Not much tension or drama, plenty of grind.… Expand
  19. freacrou
    Dec 29, 2013
    6
    It is totally missing the epicness of AC2 and AC1, there are no cathedrales or dungeons, instead you can swim in piss with make you feel like a real A$$ pirate and blonde. You would think the world is huge, but there is so much rehashing of content, it is nowhere as big as AC1 and pointless to explore. The characters are rather bland and the killing of Desmond in AC3 made story about theIt is totally missing the epicness of AC2 and AC1, there are no cathedrales or dungeons, instead you can swim in piss with make you feel like a real A$$ pirate and blonde. You would think the world is huge, but there is so much rehashing of content, it is nowhere as big as AC1 and pointless to explore. The characters are rather bland and the killing of Desmond in AC3 made story about the ancestors lose its connection. Whats positive is the sandbox that the developers created. Also they got rid of QTEs, its not as as AC3, but still lacking big storywise. When AC2 was a 10, then I am giving this a 6.… Expand
  20. red259
    Nov 25, 2013
    6
    I took the time to write a review, because I don't want people to get misled by the hype and run out and blow all their money on this game. There is no way this game is a 10. The premise of the game is interesting and the game is ambitions. I enjoy the graphics. However, the controls are absolutely terrible. Its even worse than I remember from brotherhood. Its very difficult to do anythingI took the time to write a review, because I don't want people to get misled by the hype and run out and blow all their money on this game. There is no way this game is a 10. The premise of the game is interesting and the game is ambitions. I enjoy the graphics. However, the controls are absolutely terrible. Its even worse than I remember from brotherhood. Its very difficult to do anything without the game thinking your trying to do something else. I have found the game to be extremely frustrating due to the poor control design. Unfortunately, since the story is not that great the only thing that could save this game is the game play, but you need intuitive controls for that. If this had been the first attempt of a company at a game maybe I could be a bit more forgiving. However, this is another game in a long series of games and apparently the company could not be bothered to fix problems that have existed in their prior games. Bottom line is that it was a game with potential, but poor game design has really taken the fun out of it.… Expand
  21. Thixtalk
    Feb 16, 2018
    5
    Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is a very bad game. This game have nothing good to stay you in the game.
    Let's begin with start:
    1. Graphics. Graphics have not passed the test of time and it is very terrible. Recently, I quietly played in Max Payne 1-2, but in AS IV everything is very bad and not playable, the character just dummies. 2. Gameplay. It's very easy gameplay for children. And    Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is a very bad game. This game have nothing good to stay you in the game.
    Let's begin with start:
    1. Graphics. Graphics have not passed the test of time and it is very terrible. Recently, I quietly played in Max Payne 1-2, but in AS IV everything is very bad and not playable, the character just dummies.
    2. Gameplay. It's very easy gameplay for children. And it isn't interesting. Even swimming on ships they managed to make boring
    3. Story. Disgusting, terrible, frustrating, boring, not interesting. The game does not have charismatic or interesting characters.The very history is developing very slowly.
    4. Parkour. Since AS 2, nothing is changed.
    5. Additional tasks. As it usually happens in the AS, I didn't find any interesting tasks.    … Expand
  22. wolverine67
    Nov 21, 2013
    7
    The game is fun to play, and the graphics for the most part look great. My only observation that stood out was the low res textures for vegetation, and some bad character facial models. But all in all the game has more good than bad going for it, just wonder how they could have overlooked some details like vegetation etc. That being said could take away from the immersion in the game. WeThe game is fun to play, and the graphics for the most part look great. My only observation that stood out was the low res textures for vegetation, and some bad character facial models. But all in all the game has more good than bad going for it, just wonder how they could have overlooked some details like vegetation etc. That being said could take away from the immersion in the game. We are playing as pirates at sea, and roaming around the jungle Islands, so here's hoping for and update Ubisoft, but if not maybe some modder can fix it.… Expand
  23. Aiden_Cora
    Jun 16, 2019
    7
    Great sailing and swashbuckling adventure. Very fun concept of upgrading the ship/mobile base. mediocre Assassin's Creed.
  24. vangomaextreme
    Dec 23, 2013
    7
    This is for all those poor souls like me who have a low end PC that supposedly doesn't quite meet minimum requirements (my case Nividia 630M and i7 2.3 Ghz) but who really enjoy the series and feel bummed that they can't play this game. If you optimize for the lowest settings it still looks pretty good and although the framerate can dip occasionally it is actually playable. So if youThis is for all those poor souls like me who have a low end PC that supposedly doesn't quite meet minimum requirements (my case Nividia 630M and i7 2.3 Ghz) but who really enjoy the series and feel bummed that they can't play this game. If you optimize for the lowest settings it still looks pretty good and although the framerate can dip occasionally it is actually playable. So if you love the series and are willing to shell out it is a fun experience and you can get pretty much the same enjoyment that everyone else is getting just be prepared to make some sacrifices and have the occasional frustration. If you can handle that then you will get to see a fairly remarkable game and enjoy it till like me you can afford your next rig. Besides even people with super duper rigs seem to be having optimization problems so it could be it has just been poorly optimized in general. Bottom line on low end machines it is playable with some sacrifices!… Expand
  25. Thatweirdguy
    Nov 28, 2013
    6
    Good Game but with issues the PC versions always faced Fps bugs, and graphics issues and poor performance other then that it can be considered as a great game
  26. jonoawesomeguy
    Nov 19, 2013
    7
    An important note- despite how great the naval combat is, it literally made me motion sick so I was only able to play a small portion of these sections. If you get seasick, try to avoid these parts of the game. Also, I was unable to play the FPS sections of the game because the FoV was locked to about 60 which also made me motion-sick. Caveat emptor- let the buyer beware.

    As someone who    An important note- despite how great the naval combat is, it literally made me motion sick so I was only able to play a small portion of these sections. If you get seasick, try to avoid these parts of the game. Also, I was unable to play the FPS sections of the game because the FoV was locked to about 60 which also made me motion-sick. Caveat emptor- let the buyer beware.

    As someone who has never actually played an Assassin's Creed game before and someone who has recently completed both Splinter Cell: Blacklist and FarCry 3 (both from Ubisoft) within the past 6 months, to me, Assassin's Creed IV really does nothing new, judging by the heavily borrowed concepts from the 2 aforementioned games. Despite the mostly unoriginal campaign, the graphics are pretty good and the PC port as a whole is decent, with the exception of the Abstergo entertainment FPS parts of the campaign.
    Starting with the gameplay, Assassin's Creed IV does barely anything new and what it provides is essentially the same seen in some of Ubisoft's other IPs. Examples of what Black Flag 'borrows' can be seen through none other than the crafting, hunting, assassinating, body hiding, climbing and looting mechanics. Crafting, hunting and looting mechanics within Black Flag are pretty much identical to that seen in FarCry 3- you craft holsters to hold more weapons, pouches for ammo etc. THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS FARCRY 3. Hunting is also pretty much the same, down to the animations and cutscenes for skinning the corpses of the animals (this time around, they let you skip the cutscene, which is a positive). Onto the assassinating, climbing and body hiding mechanics, they are so similar to those seen in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, that it may as well be a reskin of the game, but with hidden blades or swords sometimes. I don't have a problem with iterating gameplay features, but when these mechanics are so similar to games that the same publisher have the rights to or even released within the same year, I feel cheated. Also, the freerunning system felt like cheating the game- kind of like how Sonic is jokingly called 'press W to win', AC4's freerunning could be compared to 'press shift-W to win'.
    However, the seemingly more original gameplay from Black Flag comes in the form of its combat and naval aspects. The actual combat of the game is very well done, with a free-flowing combat system which makes fights seem very fluid and satisfying. It's somewhat similar to melee combat in Sleeping Dogs. The naval combat is enthralling and engaging. From the previews of the ship combat, I was worried that the naval elements were just going to be the worst parts of the game. Fortunately, they are surprisingly fun- much thanks to the execution of the concept which makes the ship handling feel adequate and exciting.
    The actual PC port is quite well done- plenty of options for users, fully rebindable keys, reasonable controls that actually work very well and the performance is fine (on an ATi Radeon 5800), so long as you leave ambient occlusion on SSAO, shadows not on soft, motion blur off and the antialiasing off (AA made my game extremely laggy and blurry), the game will run fine. It may not have run as well for me as the game is Nvidia optimised, so keep that in mind if you have a Nvidia card. The actual game's graphics are very nice, but in my opinion, does not qualify as 'next-gen'. The graphics are on a similar level to Tomb Raider (2013), but I subjectively think that Tomb Raider has better graphics, again, maybe because that game was AMD optimised so I was able to play it on relatively higher settings. I personally expected next-gen to be on a similar level to Crysis 3, but that may be asking too much.
    If you are looking for a decent PC port, you are in luck. However, if you are seeking a game which has original gameplay, you are looking in the wrong place. Assassin's Creed IV is a good-looking (but not quite next-gen in my opinion) game which has diverse gameplay features, but most of which are unashamedly 'borrowed' from Ubisoft's other IPs, making it seem as if they are merely sticking to a formula to make money.    … Expand
  27. WiiDiEs
    Nov 26, 2013
    5
    Game is great.No questions asked but the optimization is one of the worst i saw in my life.This game is beautifull but tehnically it barely runs.And it has a short story.
  28. Sabatasso
    Dec 4, 2013
    5
    Yet another timesink from with the AC stamp on it. The graphics is quite fine and even though the animations are mor jittery than previous releases it looks good overall. The story isn't really bad but it isn't very good either and you're very confined during story missions, unlike the original.

    The naval part of the game is very shallow yet probably the best part about the game. Enemy    Yet another timesink from with the AC stamp on it. The graphics is quite fine and even though the animations are mor jittery than previous releases it looks good overall. The story isn't really bad but it isn't very good either and you're very confined during story missions, unlike the original.

    The naval part of the game is very shallow yet probably the best part about the game. Enemy ships have a single hit location and once you've damaged it enough you can board it. Sounds arcade-ish? You're right, it is. The waters are littered with floating cargo and survivors, and I mean LITTERED. They're everywhere. Enemy ships pop in large amounts so if you're in the mood for some pirating, you can literaly hang around outside any harbour and shoot anything that moves... and there's a lot of movement. Too much to be honest. The boarding is incredibly boring and repetitive, so you'll soon resort to settle for half the loot and just sink the bastards. With a few upgrades you can sink 2-3 ships in the same time that one boarding sequence takes so you'll actually earn a lot more that way. The only reason to board is to heal your ship mid-combat.

    Otherwise the game is more or less like the prequel.    … Expand
  29. wizilinx
    Sep 24, 2014
    5
    What shame.. No game can be good when it performs like a dog.. I have loads of games (similar to this) and they run smoothly without faffing around. I just don't understand why a games company can do this??? If you look on the web you will see loads and loads of people wanting to fix time lags!!

    Second, the game gets off to a bad start.. The first mission you will probably end up    What shame.. No game can be good when it performs like a dog.. I have loads of games (similar to this) and they run smoothly without faffing around. I just don't understand why a games company can do this??? If you look on the web you will see loads and loads of people wanting to fix time lags!!

    Second, the game gets off to a bad start.. The first mission you will probably end up looking for help. I spent two hours roaming around doing nothing. When I read up on advice it directs you to go into a "red area" which you would assume was unavailable.

    Game gets better and better but normally I would have stopped wanting a refund!!!!!!!!    … Expand
  30. ragerino
    Mar 6, 2014
    5
    The game mechanics and controls of the sandbox are as bad as they have ever been. The pirate ship battles have been nice in the beginning, but fun faded away as soon as they got very repetitive. Especially when the bad controls and game mechanics get in your way. Imagine attacking a huge ship because you need the goods it's carrying. After a long fight, you need to kill 15 members of theThe game mechanics and controls of the sandbox are as bad as they have ever been. The pirate ship battles have been nice in the beginning, but fun faded away as soon as they got very repetitive. Especially when the bad controls and game mechanics get in your way. Imagine attacking a huge ship because you need the goods it's carrying. After a long fight, you need to kill 15 members of the crew and get the flag down. With almost no health you manage it to climb the ship mast and just before you reach the flag the protagonist jumps randomly down the mast and kills himself. Those moments have been frustrating to me. I can not imagine how a reviewer could give this game almost the same or even better score than GTA-V got.

    I could imagine that Ubisofts upcoming title Watch Dogs will be based on the same crappy sandbox. This time I'm going to wait on some user reviews before I buy this game. I don't trust professional reviews any more.    … Expand
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Awards & Rankings

31
#31 Best PC Game of 2013
15
#15 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
16
#16 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
84

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. GameCritics
    Mar 5, 2014
    60
    Ironically enough for a game which centers around the concept of genetic ancestry, however, it continually lets itself down by refusing to break away from its own tired and worn-out heritage,
    Read full review
  2. DarkZero
    Jan 16, 2014
    90
    Fans that were bummed out by Assassin’s Creed III will most likely find Black Flag to be a welcoming return to what they love about the series, with a great story, amazingly crafted world and smart additions to the sailing that make it a refreshing part of the Assassin’s Creed formula.
    Read full review
  3. PC PowerPlay
    Dec 30, 2013
    90
    Makes up for the failings of AC3, delivering a fantastic, engaging open world experience. [Jan 2014, p.78]
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