Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Review – A Classic, Improved

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Review

For me, the highest compliment I can pay to an action adventure or RPG is that I want to live in the game’s world. It was — and still is — true for Red Dead Redemption 2 and it’s maybe doubly true for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. I’ll admit, I’m a bit prejudiced. In addition to playing the original, I’m a big fan of pirate history. In my non-gaming life, I even wrote a musical about Mary Read and Anne Bonny. So I came to Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced ready to be immersed again. And shiver me timbers, I was not disappointed.

Still the One

2013’s Assassin’s Creed Black Flag was the fourth game in the franchise, and it’s still widely regarded as one of the best AC games. In large part, this is due to the strength of its leading character, Edward Kenway — played by Matt Ryan — and an extremely well-written narrative. As in the best fiction, it’s a story of a character’s rise, fall, and redemption. The 18th-century pirate setting is much more than set dressing. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced takes time to explore a lot of social, political, and moral conflicts of the day.

Without spoiling any of the details, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced tells the story of Kenway, an 18th century privateer whose greed and ambition bring him into the Caribbean pirate fold. Inadvertently stumbling into the war between the Templars and Assassins, Kenway joins forces with the latter. Kenway’s character arc takes him through a life of growing power and moral conflict to eventual resolution. Not necessarily a perfectly happy ending, but a narratively coherent and satisfying one. Along the way, Kenway rubs shoulders with a who’s who of pirate superstars, largely true to their historical selves.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced lies somewhere between a very elaborate remaster and a complete remake. Graphically, the game has been almost entirely rebuilt in the latest version of the Anvil engine. But a great deal of the dialogue and voice acting is the audio-enhanced original. Matt Ryan has returned to record new dialogue, too, because while the lion’s share of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced story is the same, there are new characters and scenes, including an entirely new chapter at the end. There are three new recruitable naval officers, each with very engaging side-mission arcs.

New and Better

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag already had an excellent narrative and characters, so primary developer Ubisoft Singapore has focused on improving the game’s action, melee, and naval combat and offering modern-feeling open-world exploration. In nearly every case, they solidly succeeded. I have a few minor quibbles but on the whole, playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a much better overall experience than in 2013.

Melee combat has been utterly transformed and feels like a contemporary action game. Light and heavy attacks, dodge rolls, blocks, and perfect parries are standard elements and they’re introduced early. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is not an RPG, so Edward doesn’t expand his vocabulary via an endless skill tree. There are upgrades to better weapons and equipment, but by and large Edward gets better as the player grows more skilled.

The game’s AI is solid, and enemies will frequently counter or predict Edward’s attacks. The perfect parry window is extremely tight but equally satisfying to pull off. Hand-in-hand with combat and action is the game’s fluid movement and parkour, borrowed from the most recent games in the series. Options for crouching and hiding, an updated visibility meter, and other improvements are all positive updates. Some fans may quibble that Edward’s assassin blade is only usable in takedowns. Sometimes the camera struggles to make sense of the action in multi-enemy encounters.

Ahoy!

Naval combat in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag was already some of the best in gaming. In Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, it’s even better. In part this is due to the incredibly dynamic ocean and environments, which look fantastic. Wind direction, waves, and storms all impact handling and naval battles. These fights aren’t just throwaway minigames but intense naval battle simulations, albeit on the arcade-y side of realism. My occasional frustration with the game’s camera and controls applies to the naval battles as well.

Repairing, outfitting, and upgrading Edward’s ship, the Jackdaw, are important tasks in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Doing so is never busy work, though, because gathering materials or new crew members are tied to missions or free-roam exploration.

This brings us to the incredibly wide range of activities available to the player. In addition to main story missions, there are naval contracts, assassin’s contracts, Templar hunts, and Animus Rift quests. Hunting the native wildlife has received an overhaul. The back-and-forth with modern-day scenes in the original has been replaced with alternative timeline Rifts, where Edward can explore “what-if” scenarios based on his choices in the game. And if all that isn’t enough, exploring the open world — both under the water and on land — is endlessly entertaining. There is treasure to be found everywhere.

Mostly Stunning to Look At

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced looks incredible, especially the natural environments, weather, ships, and water. The game’s lighting is a beautiful thing to behold, though there can be some weirdness in the day/night transitions. On the vanilla PS5, the graphical options are a little limited. There’s a 60 fps performance mode that sacrifices some of the ray-traced splendor, and a 30fps fidelity mode with the bells and whistles intact. PS5 Pro owners will also have a 40fps Balanced mode as well.

Character models and cutscenes are a more qualified success. While most have been rebuilt in the Anvil engine, the combination of motion capture and by-hand animation doesn’t always mesh, and there are more than a few stilted, choppy moments. There are the occasional soft-focus cutscenes that look like they were lifted from the original with minimal upscaling. The acting is exceptionally good throughout, however.

In the audio department, those rousing sea chanties return intact, but I was surprised how minimal and unobtrusive the musical score is. This is not a criticism. I appreciated that so much of the time, the game let me enjoy the sounds of the sea or nature without the added drama of music.

Set Sail

No matter how much I like an old game, I’m happy to embrace a newer version if it provides a better experience. Some players will complain about the lack of multiplayer or the subtle changes in Edward Kenway’s personality and motivations. I, however, am fully on board with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. It’s impossible not to acknowledge and appreciate the improvements, despite some minor frustrations with controls, camera and a few underwhelming character animations.

In almost every way, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a better-looking and better-playing experience than the original. Melee and naval combat have received outstanding updates, and the newly minted open world is a joy to explore. Both the main and side missions provide excellent opportunities for exploration. The original game’s story and characters are among the best in the series and remain a solid foundation on which to build the world. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced strikes a near-perfect balance between preservation and improvement.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher for review***