Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag

[Maf]

No, you’re not allowed to quit until you got all of those pirate’s wood

 

...

 

...

 

What?

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, I remember this being a 60 hour game or something. You might be able to shave off ten or so depending on how many or how few side missions you tackle but it's not a short game. But if you don't enjoy it just stop right there because it's not going to reinvent itself in the second half.

 

Also might want to steer clear of AC in the future. Took me 129 hours to complete Odyssey (which is quite a bit better than Black Flag in all fairness).

[bellow]

Having said all that I've just done a major session and got myself into sequence 10. Googled that there's twelve to the main story.

 

I think I can hold out for that.

[Maf]

Don’t trust what you read on the internet you still have like fourteen five thousand sequences to go

[DisturbedSwan]

I mostly dumped the story after the opening until I was finished exploring, think I was probably at least 40 hours hours in before I picked up the story again.

 

The story isn’t the best but the exploring is what made the game incredible for me.

[bellow]

I'd agree with that, but up to a point. Exploration here doesn't yield the same rewards as in a big scale RPG, where you can chance upon a killer piece of kit or a hidden character with an epic quest to fit you up with. In fact you're basically told what your gonna find in text or map pointers before you get your feet dirty on a new island.

 

And that equates to some cash in chests, some useless collectables, or the same puzzle over and over.

 

That did keep me happy for twenty hours, though, as did the sea battles, but repetition levels that buzz off in the end.

 

I'm quite happy to see this thru, though. @Maf just tried to scare me off, drawing on my natural aversion to excessive length.

[bellow]

Credits have rolled at just under 40 hours. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I do still have issues with some of the 'workings' of the game. 

 

It seems to do so many things in the gameplay but always slightly worse than it's done in other games, as though it's not quite fully formed. Like the combat is a weak, messy version of the batman games, the platforming is sometimes just an annoyance, with the protagonist hurling himself on anything but the path you're aiming for, and the stealth is just feckin weird. You can't even duck behind a bush or a box, or crouch in your approach to a kill. You have to do this impossibly slow standing walk to take someone out from behind. Stealthy, it ain't. 

 

The seafaring was pretty great though. That actually seemed well put together. 

 

 

[regemond]

So the series run through rolls on. This, Rogue, and Unity, then I think I'm done for a while. I played Syndicate again not too long ago, and the newest ones are a far enough departure that I think I'll be happy leaving it there.

 

Anyway, BF was the first AC game I really, REALLY enjoyed in the series. I used to play these when the gtm forum was still a thing, and I knew there was 'something' there, but the series just never used to click with me. It's this one that changed my mind and got me fully on board (sorry), and I can 100% see why that was the case. Desmond's story has concluded, and now Abstergo are a game developer, and the Animus is a VR platform. This means you're no longer reliving your ancestors' lives, but playing a story about a random Assassin's life. 

 

It's great fun. The naval combat has been expanded and refined from 3. The easier traversal, while still a bit finnicky, has been refined from 3, too. The map still feels huge, and the story is so stupid that I can't help but enjoy it. I've been bouncing around hunting animals on land and at sea, taking down random pirates, causing all sorts of shit for the British and Spanish fleets.

 

Honestly, the modern day sections were absolutely shit on from a great height by, well, everyone. I'm in the minority for this, and I know I am. But I love these little sidetracks from the main game this time. I love the first-person view (although I'd never got to play the DLC on Revelations before, so that might be why I was more receptive to it). I love finding the QR codes, and I really like the 'hacking' puzzles, especially because it means I don't have to start fucking about with completely out of place puzzles while sailing the West Indies.

 

As a cross-gen title from the PS360-PS4 and Xbox One-era, there's a weird, waxy quality to the graphics, and everything has this weird level of saturation to it. I assume it's to hide the fact it was very much a last-gen title in next-gen (at the time) clothes, but it's one of the biggest distractions for me.

 

I loved this game at the time, and I love it now. It's one of the few AC games that stands up to the test of time for me. Syndicate has its charm. Ezio's trilogy exploded the series. But this - this is the pinnacle of 'old' Assassin's Creed.

[shinymcshine]

I loved BF on 360, but just couldn't get into Freedom Cry (when it was free on PS+) - probably nothing wrong with it, I just didn't get the same vibe and I'd lost the flow of how to play AC by then.