After many years I tried Black Flag as I was interested in the pirate theme. Luckily I was impressed. Coming into the franchise fresh I feel I'm missing some key points in the story that would of been through the games library arc but the main story of Edward was easy to understand and surprisingly interesting.
I liked the open world nature of the game. Being so vast at the time would of been novel as only few games achieved this on 7th Gen hardware.
The graphics are beautiful (except for the characters faces) still hold up today. There are some minor frame drops but hardly noticeable.
Music is fitting. My favourite is being on your ship sailing in the seas hearing your crew sing shanties, really builds the mood of pirate theme.
I just find blending assassins/templars with pirates in the Caribbean a little jarring.
The upgrade system is fair. However, I did find I had to do some grinding for the resources needed at times.
The game is worth your time clocking about 45hours on the main story and extras. There is some critiques I have though:
- The platforming can be janky causing some frustration. I did die a few times where the character was climbing instead of running (or vice versa)
- The open world is refreshing, I didn't feel the world was exactly "alive" compared to games like GTA. So travelling to islands seem like "copy-paste" and takes some immersion away
- Post the 3/4 mark, the games missions tends to repeat themselves too often