Impressions of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

I finished part 4 a couple of weeks ago.

The game turned out to be really great. So far I spent longer on it than on all the others, 45 hours in total. Though I also started playing it a long time ago, somewhere around January. So far it was the most colorful and engaging Assassin's Creed game. A colorful main hero, a slacker who decided to make a fortune through privateering and eventually became a pirate. I kept wondering how the story would tie a pirate to the assassins. It turned out to be simple and straightforward, and the plot was a bit not even about that.

The plot itself, I have to say, did not impress me. In the modern-day sections you play as some employee extracting ancestors' memories for a company that makes movies and all kinds of entertainment. Nothing special really happens there, but it does shed light on how the previous game ended and what happened to Desmond. The pirate adventures themselves, the story ones specifically, were about average. Though of course it is funny to watch the Black Sails series and play this game at the same time. In part, the same events as in the series, the same characters, and famous pirates like Blackbeard and Charles Vane. Just with different emphases. But everything that does not concern the main story is simply gorgeous. You sail a ship, disembark wherever you can. Everything is seamless, with no cutscenes or interruptions. You simply sail up to an island, let go of the wheel, jump off the ship, swim to it, get onto land, and poke around there doing side missions or simply stealing someone's goods.

The world itself is wonderful too. Islands, villages, cities, ships, very bright colors. Different locations, from jungles to proper cities like Havana.

The naval battles deserve a separate mention. What in Assassin's Creed III was just optional naval missions is now a full part of the game. You sail around, fire different weapons, choose tactics for battle, upgrade your ship so it can take more hits and bring down stronger enemies. For example, if you end up between two ships of the line, even maximum upgrades may not save you: they will simply blow you to splinters from both sides. And what is cool is that after smashing up an enemy ship, you sail up and board it. Again, everything is seamless: you leave the wheel, keep firing while the ship is being pulled in with boarding hooks, climb over to the deck, and then start cutting everyone down left and right together with your crew. It is done really well.

Besides that, you can capture forts. And that is done well too: first smash everything there with cannons, then sail up, land, and throw yourself into the thick of the fight in the fort, cutting everyone down left and right.

They were not shy about blood either. The main character finishes people off in a very bloodthirsty and brutal way. Besides being a pirate, he is also a bit of a fool. So there is a fair amount of humor in the game.

Actually, it seems to me the main story itself took very little time. But everything outside the story was genuinely interesting. Well, except for the dives. I just do not like swimming underwater and dodging sharks for the sake of some chests. But for the first time in several games I wanted to collect everything in the game. In the end I collected all the Maya keys, all the Templar keys, and unlocked both types of armor in the game. Even so, I still did not collect absolutely everything, I reached 90% synchronization, and when the story finally ended, after the credits I lost the desire to keep digging around in the game. Maybe I simply started to feel sorry for the time, since there were still several unplayed games ahead.

The graphics pleased me: everything is beautiful, with lots of detail. But once I caught a funny glitch: textures disappeared and the character's insides showed through in the screenshot above.

Overall, the game is really very good. Before this, the Ezio games were great, and this one probably left no weaker an impression. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!