Ah how I long for the days of yore where I as a lad dreamt great tales of a life at sea, how exciting I thought it must have been to exist during the Caribbean’s Golden Age of Piracy, to have swashbuckling adventures on the high seas and live by ones own laws. So much so that I spent vast amounts of time pondering and imagining such adventures, ah the freedom of youth to reflect on such things, that childish age known as your early 20s.
And so you would think as both a fan of pirates and the Assassin’s Creed series in general, Ubisoft Montreal’s Black Flag would be an easy sell. Living vicariously through Connor’s grandpappy Edward Conway as he associated with the likes of Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Anne Bonny. While it does succeed, somewhat, as an open world pirate game it significantly fails as an Assassin’s Creed game. Edward himself is most definitely a pirate, his assassin’s robe a “prize” secured from a man he killed, his free running and assassination skills not trained but rather something that “comes natural.” When Edward finally does hear of the Creed he appropriates it as his own version of pirate law; gone is the charisma of Ezio or the justice of Connor, you’re stuck with a criminal through and through, and a character it’s going to take you a long time to get to know or like.
Tell us your story Edward, make it a bit richer than “I want money”
Taking a long time is this game’s entire MO. The opening proceeds at a snail’s pace, giving Edward a haphazard and head scratching introduction to the forever ongoing war between the Assassins and the Templars, the game parses out side missions dressed up as quests very slowly, and it will be about a good hour or so before anything truly interesting happens gameplay wise. It’s all the same running and climbing and hiding you’re accustomed to from other Assassin’s Creed games, with at times unresponsive controls that will faceplant Edward hard into the ground rather than gracefully jumping from rooftop to rooftop or ship to ship.
Stealth is yawn inducing and frankly, worse than ever with poorly programmed AI enemies that seem to respond to pre-set actions rather than anything the player does. Unfortunately stealth seems harder enforced than it has in any of the Creed games since Brotherhood, down to having stealth sea sections. You read that correctly, your big burly boat is forced to stealth during some missions. Almost every mission on land is uninspired, and I guarantee you 90 percent of them are tailing missions (remember how fun those were?) with an absolute stealth requirement (i.e. you can never be spotted) that slows down the gameplay, clashes with Edward’s pirate identity, and ventures into the realm of completely not fun.
Even the modern day storyline continues along with a few easy and tedious puzzles, this time casting you in the role of an Abstergo employee but still forcing you to deal with Desmond’s plot line. It’s as though Ubisoft looked at everything they have done wrong in previous Assassin’s Creed games and went “Let’s do that in full effect this time.”
So, as an Assassin’s Creed game it’s a relatively poor entry, if not the poorest. However once you get Edward’s ship, the Jackdaw, and get access to the open waters of the Caribbean sea the game begins to excel. You’re going to make most of your finances in this game plundering ships of the British and Spanish, as any proper pirate might do, ship battles are much streamlined from AC3’s seafaring side missions, and it’s absolutely fun to take a prize, appropriating a downed ship’s crew and cargo for your own. Your crew will sing shanties while you’re at sea, and if you’re a brave and fierce enough captain they’ll cheer for you each time you’re at the wheel. Boarding another ship is also seamless, gone are AC3’s cutscenes, and you’ll get a rush out of leading the charge on to an enemy ship.
There’s plenty more to do at sea as well, traveling to uncharted islands to find treasure or hunt game, harpooning sharks for crafting and cash, you can free up the seas for more of your nefarious deeds by attacking forts from the deck of the Jackdaw. The game also introduces diving sections and while the term “underwater” is usually cause to bite your nails in most video games, diving in Black Flag is not only rewarding in granting you materials and coin, but it’s often visually rewarding. My first diving mission I had to pause and check out the impressively rendered manta ray swim overhead, while dodging a school of jelly fish.
While the game truly comes to life at sea, it’s also where the storyline loses this focus. It’s unfortunate, because there are only so many enemy vessels you can sink or treasures you can dig up before you want to press the game to see what’s next. Story missions often carry an artificially ratcheted up difficulty, spawning one too many guards, or throwing a hurricane your way, or sending a couple of galleon’s to hunt you down on top of what’s already likely a tedious mission completion parameter. Sea missions at least tend to be a bit more varied in their gameplay, showing active thought went into some part of the game design, just not all of it as you’ll occasionally find a sea based story mission will gently “suggest” you upgrade the Jackdaw… A gear check if you will that artificially extends the gameplay by having you farm for more ship materials.
The story isn’t very rewarding either, assassins and Templar feel forced into the narrative, Edward rarely does anything interesting and when he does, the plot quickly forgets about it. What was fun to see was indeed, the other pirates, figures such as Mary Read, Charles Vane and Edward Thatch have little information available, and so Ubisoft took far more liberties developing their characters than they did, say, the founding fathers, watching the evolution of Blackbeard or the brutality of Vane was a treat, it’s just a shame Edward couldn’t properly support the narrative.
On a final note while the game was at times visually impressive, playing it on the Playstation 3 I ran into a few early slowdown issues and at least one crash. These eased up as the game continued on, though if you’re considering it you may want to buy it on the PC and next gen platforms.
While this looks awesome, sadly it resorts to AC3’s tired QTE sequences.
It’s difficult to rate this game, I feel if it weren’t an Assassin’s Creed title I would have found it a bit more favorable, but then I imagine I wouldn’t have to put up with a lot of lame and forced stealth sections, reminders that “Edward is an assassin…. For some reason” , and while at sea I could be loud and rambunctious, on land I often had a forced quiet. In the end Black Flag brings one too many frustrations tacked on to make it an enthusiastic recommendation, but if you’re a huge fan of Assassin Creed 3’s naval battles (and for some reason, the tailing missions? Doubtful) then Black Flag might be the title for you.
