Gamer
Designer
Writer
Graduated High School with a diploma in Computer Science and Maths. Hold a degree in BA Games Design and Art from University of Southampton, part of the Russel Group.
Present-day passions include writing stories and learning about environmental creation.
Assassins Creed IV - Black Flag: Review and Ideas
First a disclaimer, I have been a fan of the series since it was launched back in 2007, as such I am aware of all the games up to this point and all of the suggestions here are just my opinions based on my university knowledge as a Game Designer as well as my experience as a player of different genres along the years. That being said, enjoy the read and share your opinions with me.
All of the games up to this point, except for the first one, I completed 100%. As such I am aware of almost everything in the story and gameplay elements. This being out for so long, I will just review the game and share my opinions on different gameplay elements and what I believe would have been interesting to see.
Now, one of the first things that I want to mention about Black Flag is that it feels like a spin-off, more than an actual Assassins Creed game. Now do not jump quickly on me let me explain.
The first game focused on re-gaining your ranks through the brotherhood. You also had to gather info, through stealing and listening, about your target, before finally being prompted to kill your target, while hiding in the crowd.
The Ezio Collection focused on rebuilding the brotherhood, and the missions, much improved, still focused around the assassination of your targets. You still had to help different people as a means of collecting help for your final task. They had a certain edge to it if you will. I will admit that the different locks provided like be undetected or only kill a specific person was beyond frustrating at times.
The third game in the series - now this is were stuff started diverging quite a bit. Gameplay-wise, the third was a considerable improvement over the previous games, animations a lot smoother, freerunning feeling more satisfying to a degree. Collectables still felt a bit heavy, but workable none the less, especially with the rewards. Making money was still there, although it feels like you needed to work a bit more for them, compared to the previous Assassins Creed.
The addition of the naval battles was a welcome distraction from the main gameplay, although again, I, as a completionist felt compelled to complete all the optional objectives, as those still affected the synch rate, which in retrospect made me tired and left me off the game for a few days after unsuccessful tries. At its core, with its story, the game still felt like an assassin one.
Now for the AC IV - Black Flag. First let me start by saying the story was awesome, especially for me, with a penchant for pirate stories. What I felt it lacked, was that for a good part of the story you are not even considered an assassin. The way that the story was told could have been improved to some degree. After Mary Read was killed, suddenly Edward wants to help the brotherhood. I just felt such a disconnection to how he was portrayed up to that respective point. While there are small signals as to how he slowly switches his mindset, the sudden change was a bit much.
In the whole game, the final three assassinations, which conclude the game, actually felt like real ones, fun ones. Me going undercover, finding a nice hiding spot, as well as lying in wait to kill Woodes Rogers was incredibly satisfying. It felt that even though this man had so much power and protection, me finding a way behind it and assassinating him, without him even knowing was the best.
So I would say that the pacing of the story was quite irregular. A sudden jump at the end made me semi-detached from the whole story. Pacing the story, so that Edward was at least considered an initiate in the Brotherhood at the middle of it would have made it better, at least for me.
Gameplay-wise, a lot of the action happens on the water, which given the story, works, but for an AC game, was a bit short of my expectations. An interesting alternative would have been after you were in the brotherhood, some sort of side-missions, in which you could enrol as a sailor for one of your assassination targets. Afterwards, say during the boarding of a ship, you could kill the captain(your target), and none would be the wiser as to what happened to him, as it was during a fight.
The weapon stats feel obsolete to some degree, as with good timing, you can kill all of your opponents through counters. As I understand a change has been brought in the next titles after this one, but I have yet to play those. The counter has its place, do not misunderstand me, but I think more thought into how it works would be better. From the top of my head if the stats of an opponent weapon are better than yours, then those should not have the possibility of being countered, but can be blockable. Kind of a combination with the 1 & 2 system combined with Brotherhood onwards.
Now the collectables are on a whole other scale. As a completionist. Oh my god, they were so tiresome. They should have been reduced to a half of what they were, or maybe a third. Or another idea. Make them as a sort of side-quest type, where you need to go through some designed level, at the end having a nice big chest with like a 10,000 Reales or more. Having to collect 200 chests of like 100 Reales is just bothersome, and it subtracted from the game experience itself.
On the matter of Armour, especially the Mayan one. It was kinda disheartening that you could only get it about 1 sequence before the endgame. I would have loved having it from the middle of the game at least, sequence 6 or 7. It feels like it's not even worth it to collect it for a final sequence, even though the attributes were amazing. Fine, you need to collect Mayan rocks. That is reasonable, but blocking them behind sequences takes from the pleasure of the game. Maybe let the player have access to all of the collectables in the middle game, make it synch with the story to some degree perhaps. Like after collecting most of them, after joining the brotherhood mid-game, you would get the final stone from Ah-Tabai, after finishing an assassination mission from him.
For the hideout. I enjoy the idea of restoring it, but the fact that I would not get a source of steady income, a la AC II, Brotherhood and Revelations, kind of left me down. I would imagine that after restoring the pub, general store, ship store, you would at least get a part of their income as thank you for funding their rebuild. Hopefully, the next games re-implement it.
All in all, the game itself was enjoyable, but pacing issues with the story as well as different sidequest and collections, especially for a completionist like me, took away from the overall experience of the game. It is still high on my list though. Feel free to share your opinions in the comment section.