Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced is out now, and following on from my initial impressions below, I have put a good few hours into the title to finally give an honest opinion.
Essentially what we have here is a slightly stripped back remaster of the 2013 original, which initially came out on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii U.
For many Assassins Creed Black Flag fans, myself included, is to this day one of the best Assassins Creed games released, with the highly charismatic protagonist Edward Kenway, a supporting cast of well known pirates and influential folk from the Caribbean in the 1700s.
Following on from the slog that was Assassins Creed III and the dreary protagonist Connor, Edward is a breath of fresh air. Taking the naval stuff from the prior game and then having the whole pirate theme was and still is a welcome return to form. Assassins Creed Black Flag was always going to be popular given the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were still doing really well, but the games were a bit meh!
When I say slightly stripped back, it doesn’t ruin the game in any way. The original smaller DLCs with Sacrifice Island etc are all there; however, the larger Freedom Cry expansion is missing, as is the multiplayer, which is no biggie. The biggest change comes from the real world seeing you as the player as a new intern at Abstergo. You head to the rather nice looking office and your own cubicle where you access Edward’s memories. After set memories are done, you will return to the office and can have a wander collecting items and reading various notes, and the shelves behind you start filling up as you go further into the journey. All of the modern day stuff has been completely removed from Resynced, and I personally feel it is better for it, dropping you right into Edward’s shoes with no messing.
The story is decent enough involving the Templars, Assassins and finding the Observatory, but the adventure itself is where it is at with Black Flag. The map is huge and broken down into smaller sections to liberate and find the secrets. Everything is interconnected via the sea travel with plenty to see and do as well as collect while exploring the waters. This is how to create a worthwhile open world with collectibles meaning something, like the sea shanties where your crews repertoire gets bigger and bigger the more you collect.
The graphics are the main draw for this remaster; visually the characters now look a lot more natural than they once did with higher polygon counts, advanced lighting and weather, cloth physics and not forgetting ray tracing. The world itself is as beautiful as ever, again with a new lick of paint and lighting, but I have to say the original 2013 environmentally was a looker, especially on PC.
Overall, even if you put countless hours into the original Black Flag, this remaster is well worth picking up. My only minor gripe is the same as the other original titles, with the controls sometimes fighting against you – such as the various quirks which will make you fall to your death, etc.! Other than that, you have the usual store front seen in all recent Assassins Creed games with purchasable skins and the likes, and anything free is as the very bottom of the 4 point scroll down after the paid stuff.
Performance on my Ryzen 9700x, 32Gb DDR5 & Radeon 9070XT, all setting maxed out except ray tracing at 1440p and using FSR Native with frame gen enabled, I average out at 160fps with peaks over 200fps, so limiting the fps counter to 120 was a must! So performance is literally on point with no issues.
Original First Impressions: (posted July 15th)
Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced has landed and has been quite possibly one of the worst kept industry secrets much like the Oblivion remake! The original Assassins Creed Black Flag landed October/November for the different formats in 2013, so nigh on 13 years now, and has always been highly praised for the setting, visuals, sound direction and great protagonist with an excellent supporting pirate cast like Black Beard and many more recognisable names from that era and locale.
Utilising the excellent Anvil Engine from Ubisoft the game certainly looks the part, and scales well across a wide range of PCs, and fully supports various upscaling and frame generation etc, as well as a whole host of different available configurable settings, plus plenty of accessibility options, which Ubisoft always include with their games and which is greatly appreciated.
The story itself is pretty much the same as what we experienced all those years ago, Edward Kenway who is a bit of a pirate and privateer ends up in a naval battle and gets washed up on shore. Unbeknownst to him, he ends up pursuing an assassin and gets an ancients cube. Donning the assassins garb, and the assassins name, initially, he takes it upon himself to deliver the item to Havana and make some quick money. Of course, he needs a ship so you rescue Stede Bonnet (the brilliant James Bachman) in what is essentially a stealth tutorial and after said rescue you will head off to Havana where riches and glory awaits…
I am currently still hanging out in Havana which is a pretty small area of the larger open world collecting items and activating sync points and I have still not collected everything there after a few hours exploration as well as familiarising myself again with the older style Assasins Creed parkour and controls.
Thanks to our friends at Ubisoft for the review code.
Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced is out now on Xbox Series X / Xbox One, PS5, and PC/Steam.
You can also buy the art book, The Art of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced
Important info:
- Developer: Ubisoft
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Players: Single player
Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced – Launch Trailer
FINAL SCORES:
GRAPHICS
SOUND
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT9
9
8
8OVERALL 8.5
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!