Everyone and their grandmother played and loved the original Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flagbut for some reason the game completely passed me by. It was released at a time when I was simply drowning in university coursework and my mental health was at an all-time low. It was a time in my life where I was barely hanging on by a thread at the risk of oversharing, so video games were the furthest thing from my mind.
Now, it has been newly renovated and played Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is back in syncI think it might help my mental health a bit if I could get back into the game, because it’s legitimately one of the most fun and exciting games I’ve played in ages.
Honestly, there’s nothing that hasn’t already been said about this game, but if you – like me – are one of the four people on the planet who missed the original for some reason, here’s the selling point: you’re a Welshman named Edward Kenway (voiced impeccably by the great Matt Ryan), who loves his wife and children dearly. who loves To that end, he starts working as a privateer (an old naval mercenary doing odd jobs for the government) who soon ends his life as a pirate.
As these games go, Edward is soon drawn into a widespread plot involving a centuries-old blood feud between the conspirators and the Templars, but – in what would later become a divisive trend for the series – Black Flag this conflict is not really interesting. Instead, the game is content to set up a chain of events that sees you meet and go on adventures with all the famous faces from the golden age of piracy, with the main plot unfolding every few missions to remind you of its existence.
A lot has been said over the years Assassin’s Creed departs from the series’ titular killers and their creed, and while that’s worth discussing, you won’t be able to hear it over the sound of broads ripping through wood and metal while Brian Tyler’s gloriously raucous score blares through your ears.
Even beyond the sphincter-squeezing thrilling ship battles, there’s a surprising emphasis on sailing Black Flag Resynced with pleasure Wind Waker –esque vibe. I often lost track of the main quest, my side quests, and time itself as I listened to the ocean waves and the great music, missing out on whatever brig or schooner had made the mistake of sailing into my line of sight that day.
Ship battles are a matter of draining the enemy until they die in the water, at which point you can either sink them and loot the loot, or board the enemy ship, at which point the game turns instantly and flawlessly. Assassin’s Creed again, where you are swinging on the decks and thrusting your sword into the enemy’s face.
Where is the combat on foot? Synchronized again carried out the largest repair and restoration works. Once again, there was a lot of buzz about classic and modern Assassin’s Creed game, and while I’m not interested in litigating my picks at this point, Black Flag manages to combine the best of both worlds. Instead of waiting for counters like classic Creed or just using your cooldown to damage spongy enemies like modern Creed, Synchronized again it just gives you a set of skills and abilities that can be combined in any way you want.
You can swing your swords, shoot your gun, use the rope to zoom in on enemies, kick them, or sweep them off their feet. If you land a perfect parry, you can hit an enemy that can be chained up to four times. These can all be combined in any order, which doesn’t sound like much, but it makes for a delightfully expressive battle system that forces me to go out of my way to pick fights I don’t need because it’s so much fun.
Stealth also received a minor rework in the direction of modern Creed, as you can crouch at will, hide behind low objects, and drag corpses into hiding places to better maintain your cover. Again, nothing revolutionary, but it just puts more control in the player’s hand and tries to eliminate the feeling of struggling with your controls and inconsistent game mechanics just to get things done.
The core gameplay loop of exploring islands, clearing markers from your map, knocking down enemy outposts and completing quests along the way is intact here, as always with Ubisoft’s work, but done with some eye-popping visuals. This may be the only remake in any way more more vivid and colorful than the original. The color palette that Ubisoft has settled on here is a dime a dozen cover, but it’s filled with an inescapable sense of life. The game does – if you’ll excuse the cliché – feel alivethe way trees sway in the wind, sand swirls through storms, and wildlife skims across the land. The weather effects are amazing too, every downpour or hurricane could be the last you see. If you love a good sunset, oh boy do you Black Flag here are some sunsets for you.
I’ve already praised Brian Tyler’s score a while back, but it’s really worth noting how much his music carries the emotional core of the game. Black Flag is pretty universally agreed upon as a final pirate fantasy video game, and at least half of the credit for that goes to the background score, which perfectly encapsulates the irritating nature of its protagonist and the world he inhabits. And of course I have to pay special attention to sea tents. I’m not the biggest fan of slums, but even I have to admit they’re a fantastic atmospheric touch, and having the only music you hear while exploring the seas is a truly inspired choice, something a company with a reputation for only making safe bets would never do. Black Flag truly reminiscent of a time when Ubisoft was taking more and more risks, and when Assassin’s Creed the series reinvented itself with each new entry.
And I think that’s it. At this point Assassin’s Creed the series has been around for so long and has such a diverse and wide fandom that I can’t tell you how to feel about this game based on your current relationship with the series. I can’t say how since I haven’t played the original Black Flag Resynced Nostalgia compares to googles. But I will say this: for a game released in 2026 and my first time playing it, this is easily one of the most fun video games I’ve had this year.
