Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Review

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Fast Facts

Ubisoft picking Assassin’s Creed Black Flag as their first major remake is a clever move. It is wildly considered one of the best in the series, and was one of the launch titles for the eighth-generation of consoles. It had the most varied gameplay to date, looked incredible on the new consoles, and was quite the change of pace when compared to the previous iterations of the series.

A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME!

Black Flag introduced us to Edward Kenway, a privateer turned pirate. Someone that wasn’t sworn in by a secret ancient assassin order, Edward Kenway simply found himself caught up in the Templar-Assassin conflict and saw an opportunity to come into a vast amount of treasure and glory. A far cry from Altair and Connor, Edward is seen as a bit of a bad boy. Which makes sense given his plundering background.

The main pull for Black Flag is the navel combat and exploration of the open seas. After commandeering a vessel and making it your own, you have the chance to sail around the Caribbean and surrounding locales at your leisure. Your Ship the ‘Jackdaw’ is fully upgradable from cosmetics to weaponry. In resynced small tweaks have been made to navel combat, which means it takes a little more then simply spamming ‘fire’ at the enemy. The weather becomes much more of a danger this time around, thanks to the inclusion of more dynamic weather systems, expect water spouts and more storms to help shake up your sailing.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

Resynced is Ubisofts attempt to reintroduce a classic Assassin’s Creed adventure, but also make some much needed changes, made from the ground up on the a fresh engine. It isn’t just prettier graphics and a higher frame rate. Ubisoft have tinkered with the story as well as made some gameplay alterations that are, for the most part, all positive.

Combat has been tightened, no longer can you simply counter your way to victory. You can pull off some swift combos that result in some impressively brutal take downs. We found it fits somewhere between the old and new titles, no level gated enemies and assassinations were a one hit kill. Performing a perfect parry does allow an instant kill takedown during combat, pull this off and depending on the weapon in Edward’s hand and the distance between enemies you can chain takedown multiple foes.

A dedicated crouch has been implemented giving you more choices on how to tackle missions, thanks to the conveniently placed bushes and boxes it makes sneaking around to bypass guards or take them out much more immersive and satisfying. A hood toggle also adds to this, although we think this is just an aesthetic choice rather than it factoring into how stealthy you are. Still a very cool addition either way.

Story Changes

Eavesdropping and Tailing missions have been reworked, originally been caught would cause instant mission failure. Resynced now opens these up so you are able to complete them in other ways and still reach the mission end. We rejoiced at this change, not just in Assassins Creed but in other games instant fails are always a bit of pain and can slow down the pace of the game.

We were slightly disappointed by the lack of ‘modern day’ missions, these sections may not have been a fan favourite but did add to the overarching narrative across the games regarding Absertgo and the reason for revisiting ancestral memories. Like with other story changes these have been removed to improve the flow of the main narrative.

They’re some narrative additions that bring new quests and storylines that have not been experienced before. Including one endgame chapter which focuses on Blackbeard. These fit in nicely with the rest of the game and have had new scenes recorded with Matt Ryan, Edward’s original actor. One disappointment is the omission of the original game’s Freedom Cry DLC. Whether Ubisoft plans to remake the standalone expansion remains to be seen.

PS5 Pro performance

(Commentary provided by Cartergaz)

Players exploring the seas on PlayStation 5 Pro will be treated to one of the most visually striking games available today.  Regardless of the visual quality chosen, every single player will enjoy the benefits of what Ubisoft is calling “extended usage” of ray tracing. This gives “full support of ray tracing to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting and reflective surfaces throughout the game world”.  In layman’s terms it means that the lighting in every visual mode is incredible.

What surprised us most is that every game mode uses the same 2160p image enhanced with PSSR upscaling. The only thing that changes is the frame rate cap. As expected, performance has a target of 60 frames per second, quality is at 30 and balanced is at 40 (this does require a display capable of 120/240 hz).  Purists may twitch at the thought of playing a game at lower than 60 fps, but honestly the difference between 40 and 60 fps is much less jarring that the difference between 30 and 60 fps.

As nice as it is to play the game in 60 fps, here at Rapid Reviews we were able to enjoy the game in balanced mode at a solid and stable 40 fps, due to the LG OLED TV we were playing on.  We felt that this mode provided the perfect balance (unironically) between frame rate and visuals, and have had zero complaints about the way this game performs. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is nothing short of gorgeous. The underwater environments, the towns, the naval combat, all of it looks beautiful.

Final Thoughts

It’d be too long a review if we listed every single change in this remake, but playing through Black Flag felt fresher than the sea air and we mainly forgot we were playing a decade plus old game. Resynced is still the same great game from years ago. Ubisoft have approached this remake the right way, trimming the weaker parts and introducing changes that make for a much better overall experience. It harks back to the prebloat of more recent Assassins Creed games, a more streamlined game.

Rapid Reviews Rating

4.5 out of 5

4.5

You can buy this game for £49.99 at the XBOX store