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What is the general consensus on Assassin's Creed Black Flag?

PS4- animations were janky.
Audio sync problems.
Boring real world nonsense in an office.
Sailing was fun.

I didn't get to finish it though.
 
Only AC I played since AC2. At first I was like "Pirates, awesome", enjoying the first few hours exploring the cool environments, sailing and attacking other ships.

Then I realized it was really repetitive, but I can deal with that. But there really were too many "stealth" or tailing missions where that fucking Edward was going up a wall while I was trying to hide behind it, or standing up off a bush because I was at the edge of it. I hadn't rage quit a game in ages but this game made me do it, several times until I sold it without finishing it.
Also upgrading the ship was too complicated and a chore. That whole game is the definition of a chore game for me.
I thought I would never buy an AC game again until I saw all the legit improvements they seem to have brought in Unity. This will be the last chance I give to this franchise...

...until they make one in Japan or China "sigh"
 
Pretty much echoing what everyone else has said, its a great game, however let down by too much tailing/eavesdropping missions. If they had subbed these out for some mandatory diving/harpooning, game could have been close to perfect. As it stands the game is incredible if you look for the fun ie go off story, do your own thing, blow up some ships, kill some whales,ignore the templars.
 
I haven't played any of the previous AC games and this was my first PS4 game alongside Killzone and Fifa.

The missions are a bit repetitive and the combat could be a bit more fluid but graphically and aurally its a fine game indeed.

I really liked the sailing sections and gathering equipment to upgrade my ship was good fun.

I also liked the more tactical trading elements later on and although the eves dropping missions can be hard stick to the rooves and youll be ok.

Sally Brown's the girl for me boys!!
 
Am i really the only one that like Revelations the most? Old eizo was a boss and it had the best looking / most interesting city.

But on the topic of Black Flag, yeah its a good fun game.
 
Sailing gets old pretty fast and there is too much of it. Sailing is only fun when there is stormy weather and you need to think about those huge rogue waves.
 
I'm playing it right now, i'm enjoying it, but it's so slow paced, AC2 and Brotherhood were the peak of the series, getting anywhere or getting money in AC4 takes so much time, it takes time to find a ship, to catch up with it, to damage it, to board it, to decide what to do with it

AC2 you were always 2mins from the next mission, and i feel that in general they need to go back to settings with a lot of verticality

Also i skipped AC3 but i feel like the combat in AC4 is a downgrade on the Ezio games, it doesn't feel as fluid or well animated, and the combat in AC games has never been good to begin with

It's a good AC game though, and its a nice twist on the series, you do really feel like a pirate. I'm also playing on PS3 and still think the game looks incredible
 
PS4- animations were janky.
Audio sync problems.
Boring real world nonsense in an office.
Sailing was fun.

I didn't get to finish it though.

Does the animation hank come from a game with animations crafted at 30fps get altered to 60fps?

It drove me crazy in tomb raider.
 
I thought the whole game was pretty fantastic, and none of it got boring or repetitive for me. It's the first AC game I've played since the first one, so maybe that helped. Plus Pirates are awesome.

The fleet mini game was the best!

I spent a long time with Kenway's Fleet. Really good fun.
 
I thought; It's the third A/C game I've played (played a bit of 1 and Brotherhood). It's the most interesting one, but the series is still too repetitive and boring for me.
 
Well made but rushed and it shows, a bit of a step down from ACIII
 
It was pretty solid, best game in a while. Exploring the Caribbean was fun

It also had by far the least annoying "real world" segments of any title I've played, too
 
Nice looking game really enjoyed the non assasins creed parts. Wish they had just made a good open world pirate game instead. Best ass creed since brotherhood for me.
 
Am i really the only one that like Revelations the most? Old eizo was a boss and it had the best looking / most interesting city.

But on the topic of Black Flag, yeah its a good fun game.

It was pretty solid, best game in a while. Exploring the Caribbean was fun

It also had by far the least annoying "real world" segments of any title I've played, too

Revelations had the least annoying real world segments in that they were 100% optional, i was Desmond at the start, then didn't see him again till the end

Revelations was good, but it was the first game where the yearly dev cycle began to show, it didn't have many stand out missions and didn't add or improve much on Brotherhood, which itself felt like a very good AC2 DLC city

I wish Ubisoft would allow 3 or 4 years for their open world games, and not 1 or 2, they could be so great if given the time to really flesh them out
 
I spent a long time with Kenway's Fleet. Really good fun.

Agreed! I had only Pirate Bounty Hunters in my fleet, because they have better stats, than these normal ships. I wished you had the option to view the fleet fight in real time, instead of in the little animated mini game.

Also, when you get the secret base, I thought the ships you add to your fleet would show up on the docks. Small details like that would be incredible. Imagine if you could call in a ship as assistance to conquer a Fort, for example.
 
If you have an 50+ inch screen, it's worth it just to have the lights off and navigate a thunderstorm at sea.

This makes me want to buy it on my PS4. Is it pretty enough?
I'm primarily a PC player and could play AC4 maxed out on it if I wanted to, but now I wonder if the experience would be better on my 42" plasma with my home theater instead of my 23" monitor and headphones lol.
 
I loved it, a very fun game. Especially the legendary ships, you actually need to be good in the naval fight to beat them. Not just a bullshit 100% sync criteria
 
I just got a PS4 and picked this up for it. It's quite enjoyable. It's got a lot of the same problems as previous Assassin's Creed games and I really don't care about any of the suture shit or ancient civilization crap. I do find collectathon games relaxing though (not that I necessarily defend it as good game design) so I have been doing everything and I'm having fun. Kinda annoying that I can't get a few swords and hip stuff because the community challenges have ended but the stuff you get isn't really important. Ubisoft should stop doing stuff like that.

My favourite thing about Assassin's Creed is that it brings you to unique locations and the Forrest Gump stuff. This one is pretty good with that although I initially had little interest in the setting before playing. I really hope they keep going more and more extreme with the Forrest Gump stuff going forward. I don't care how unrealistic it is, I will be disappointed in AC: Unity if you don't get to be the one who shoots Robespierre in the face.
 
Revelations had the least annoying real world segments in that they were 100% optional, i was Desmond at the start, then didn't see him again till the end

Revelations was good, but it was the first game where the yearly dev cycle began to show, it didn't have many stand out missions and didn't add or improve much on Brotherhood, which itself felt like a very good AC2 DLC city

I wish Ubisoft would allow 3 or 4 years for their open world games, and not 1 or 2, they could be so great if given the time to really flesh them out
They do allow three to four years for their open world games, AC3, 4, and Unity were in development for three years.
 
This makes me want to buy it on my PS4. Is it pretty enough?
I'm primarily a PC player and could play AC4 maxed out on it if I wanted to, but now I wonder if the experience would be better on my 42" plasma with my home theater instead of my 23" monitor and headphones lol.

With the caveat that I'm fairly easily pleased, I thought it looked fantastic on PS4 when you're out on the open water.
 
God, I hated it. I prefer every other AC game above Black Flag. (Yes, even III)

It just didn't feel like Assassin's Creed to me. I remember the great times I spent in Jerusalem, Damascus, Florence, Rome etc. But I can barely remember anything about Black Flag.

But I can see why people think it's a great game if you like that sailing and pirate stuff.

Unity gives me AC2 vibes so I'm hyped as fuck for that, though.
 
Better than AC3 but still an awful game and not worthy of the name Assassin's Creed. Just like 3, Liberations and Freedom Cry.

Unity in the other hand, it will be like going back to the roots, and i like that.
 
I enjoyed it on PS4 but never finished it.

Stuff wot I liked:
- The sailing.
- The setting.
- The visuals.
- Some of the side missions.

Stuff wot I didn't like quite so much
- The story is gash. Stupid, confusing, poorly told. I'd lost track of who was what and what my motivation was after a few hours.
- Its incredibly slow burning intially. Takes hours to start to properly open up the map and the things you can do.
- Some of the ship combat gets tedious after a while.
- Missions tended to default to 'follow, evesdrop'.
- The parkour is the same old idiocy from the previous games where you'll stick to every surface like shit to a blanket other than the one you want, or try and leap off to assassinate someone and end up flinging yourself sideways into the midst of a load of armed guards.
- This Animus crap. Just drop it, nothing ruins the fiction of being a carribean pirate more than dropping out and having to run bloody errands in an office.

Basically the stuff I didn't get on with is what makes a typical Assassins Creed game.
 
Second best in the series behind AC2. Could have came close to being the best if it wasn't for the tedious forced sailing sections completely ruining the pace of the game.
 
I liked the game, but I really missed the real world/Desmond story line. That was one of the things that I liked most about the series. Honestly this one left me feeling meh. More meh than AC3. I will still keep playing the series, but I would prefer it goes back to it's deeper story roots vs simply throwing in what's fun (in this case pirates).
 
They really nailed the atmosphere of sailing and the whole Caribbean theme. The game looks stunning on PC at max settings. The gameplay however is simplistic and the flaws of the previous AC games are still evident. It's mind boggling that you can't crouch walk - it looks incredibly daft how your character is constantly crouching and standing up while moving from hiding spots.

The sailing was pretty well done but messed up the pacing at times. Some of the voyages are tedious and ridiculously far away.
 
Sailing gets old pretty fast and there is too much of it. Sailing is only fun when there is stormy weather and you need to think about those huge rogue waves.

I actually got a lot of enjoyment from just sailing around aimlessly, listening to my guys singing pirate songs, and harpooning the occasional whale and pillaging the occasional ship.
 
I've played all AC games and I just couldn't beat it. It was really boring, I hate the sailing stuff. I got up to the part where the assassin finds out that one guy is actually a girl(which I assumed was known but never said out of respect for her wishes to be a man or w/e since she sounds and looks nothing like a guy imo but whatever) and then just stopped playing. luckily for me I didn't actually pay for the game, I got it for free when uPlay was doing that thing where you can either pick AC4 or Just Dance 4 for free.
 
I don't understand the praise it gets. It doesn't play any different than AC3. I didn't last long, what a bore.
 
I thought it was fantastic, and a breath of fresh air after AC3. I played it on PS4 and thought it was pretty well polished despite some audio sync issues. Still too many tailing missions, but some great exploration and side activities.
 
Big fan of the AC series, and AC4 is my favorite. Really didn't like AC3, but AC4 was amazing on PS4.

Only thing I didn't like, like all AC games, was the modern day stuff. The crap in the office was really boring.

Also almost wish the game was just called "Black Flag" and had no AC association. They could have went deeper into the pirate arena.
 
One of the best in the series. Not perfect...the story was a bit fragmented and disjoined from the previous story-lines, and sea battles got repetitive farming for booty for upgrades. Beautiful game though, performed well, solid game play, and great voice actors/characters.

I would consider it a must play for next-gen, especially at near bargain bin prices, unless you hate the series. Even then, it's worth a try because of how it's different from the others.
 
It's probably my favorite of the series but honestly the entire series would be insanely better if they had never messed with the Animus stuff.

Simply having the entire game series just lead up to modern day without the memory syncs and breaks in time would have been thousands of times better.

I was so disappointed when the first game started the way it did. I play for the past gameplay areas and rush past the modern day stuff.
 
Second best AC game after ACII for me.

I feel bad that I sold it too early after doing/completing everything that mattered. A few months later I wanted to play the whole game again.
 
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