Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced
Ubisoft
The iconic solo pirate adventure returns. Strike fear in your foes as you board and sink enemy vessels as Edward Kenway, captain of the Jackdaw. Sail the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy in this faithfully enhanced remake featuring stunning visuals, upgraded gameplay, and tons of brand new content!
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced has been rebuilt from the ground up, and it still feels a lot like that assassin-pirate game we all fell in love with. But it’s not perfect, and there are issues. Still, there’s a lot to love.
At launch, there were some complaints from gamers due to the addition of cosmetic DLC and other in-app purchases, and player reviews suffered immensely from this. However, those who played the original remember that these were also in the original title. Since then, Resynced has been steadily gaining an overwhelmingly positive number of reviews.
The story has had some minor changes with some new cutscenes to enjoy, some extra characters and new side missions too. For the most part, these are welcome additions, with four new recruitable characters for the Jackdaw (the ship) who all have their own short questline to explore. Some of the new quests fit perfectly within the world, some are just okay, and others fall flat. They are still nice additions to the game overall.
While Edward Kenway’s story is still as fantastic as ever, there has been a different change. The present-day interludes where the player would walk about the Abstergo offices have been completely removed from the game. Instead, glyphs have been scattered across the map which now contribute to various meta progression systems for the new Animus Hub project; the same system introduced in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. For Resynced, the glyphs now take players to Rifts that host unique platforming puzzles where a voice introduces us to a new concept where the Animus is trying to trap the player inside forever. There’s no conclusion to this story, but it’s clear that Ubisoft intends to use it with future games too.
Pros
Feels Modernised
Added crouch button
Improved combat and stealth
Expanded diving
Awesome dynamic weather system
New sea shanties
Cons
Abstergo storyline gone
Some side missions are meh
Unarmed combat removed
Weird amount of DLCs at launch
Must connect to Ubisoft servers
AC Black Flag Resynced is almost everything we remember and loved from the original. However, there have been quite a few new additions to the game that bring it up to modern gaming standards. The biggest has been the combat and stealth overhauls.
Resynced adds a dedicated crouch button, which makes it a lot easier to remain undetected and gives players a lot more freedom while playing the game. It’s easy to forget this feature was only introduced in AC Unity, following the release of Black Flag. The visibility meter is alo affected by time of day and weather to add more realism to the game and offer more creative freedom for stealth sequences and assassin’s. The expanded map, dynamic weather system and addition of expanded underwater exploration that allows players to dive under the surface anywhere also makes the game more varied.
Combat has also been updated with enemies having a posture bar to wear down in addition to health, which adds new difficulty. Players now need to combo attack types of quickly empty the bars and make enemies vulnerable to an instant, one-button takedown which can be chained into other nearby enemies. There’s also a new parry to replace the counter button which breaks posture, opens them to attack and keeps Edward Kenway safe. The addition of the new Blunderbuss Bomber enemy is a nice touch, and the Odyssey ‘spartan kick’ is a great addition for Kenway to use in combat.
The Jackdaw can also get some pets! Players can get different pets to live on the pirate ship and bring them around on adventures. The ship has also had a few updates with a new secondary fire mode for each weapon and cannon. Also, a fun new addition are the new sea shanties, which include some created in partnership with Woodkid, the musician whose music had previously been used for official Assassin’s Creed trailers.
Overall I loved my time playing AC Black Flag Resynced. It was my first run on the game so I didn’t noticed the missing features until after I completed my run so not entirely sure why they were removed however it didn’t impact my play through and the graphics were incredible. Highly recommend for any Assassin’s Creed franchise fan and Black Flag Resynced has became my number 1 AC game!
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