The year is 2014. A random weekend in February. I finally get to fire up the latest Assassin’s Creed game... months after its release. It is being trashed in gaming forums. But how bad can it be? The game loads... and I am NOT an Assassin? Who is this Welsh chap I’m playing as? Wait, did I just rob an actual Assassin of their cloak? What is happening?
All of this came as a shock to me. But it soon turned to admiration. Till then, all I had were years of Need for Speed car games to experience some sort of adrenaline in the games. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. opened our world to something new—a full-fledged pirate game, with ship chases and the like. This game was like the Fight Club of videogames—doomed to get bashed at release, only to find an ardent following in the years to come...
Now, twelve years later, after Ubisoft’s RPG shift more-or-less converted the beloved Assassin’s Creed franchise into any run-of-the-mill single-player game, the studio is back to its roots, with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, a complete technical, mechanical remake of the 2013 classic. I have now logged more than 22 hours on it on the PlayStation 5, and here is my review...
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced does not stop to apologise; it pushes you directly into the game. There is little premise, and more action. The first half an hour is a quick tutorial into the game mechanics and fighting, and if you recently replayed the older Ezio collection, it would fit right in.
Privateer-turned-pirate-turned-assassin Edward Kenway is back, voiced by the excellent Matt Ryan, who also lends his likeness in motion capture. And of course, the stellar characters derived from historic records: Edward "Blackbeard" Thatch, Benjamin Hornigold, Mary Read, Stede Bonnet, Anne Bonny, John Rackham, and Charles Vane.
Being a fan of the original game, I was sceptical to say the least. But Black Flag Resynced impressed me the second Kenway took the wheel of his ship, the Jackdaw.
The fight mechanics reminded me of classic AC games, and it gelled with my playing style. The game may have overcorrected, though. There were many instances where I thought I could use more of the environment to play, but the linearity of the progress restricted that. One instance is where I, as Kenway, chase an English officer through a swamp. The game, to emulate its 2013 original, restricts your movement, sometimes even to rooftops, where my assassin excels. But those are all things that are relative to each gamer.
Black Flag Resynced is enjoyable, and the additional content seems to integrate itself nicely into the story. It was tough, and you can see some clash between the remade scenes and the new scenes, but we all knew these were new, anyway. Yes, the game needs polish, but it did achieve something else...
The core team's involvement in the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood title shows, as its linearity brings back the magic that made the Ezio games stand out.
The Anvil Engine, on which Ubisoft developed Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, does the job. But what impressed me most was how clean and optimised the game was. I took a swing at the PC version, and it ran almost clean on a GeForce GTX 1660 card on a 3600 Ryzen 5 CPU machine with 8GB RAM, the one he bought right before Covid.
But it is on my PlayStation 5 that the game becomes a beast. I did try the Performance mode at 60FPS, and the Balanced 40FPS mode with Extended Ray Tracing. But I wanted Black Flag Resynced to be as cinematic as it can be, and Fidelity mode it was—30FPS, but on as much Ray Tracing as the base PS5 could muster, giving me some glorious 4K HDR. There are some physics bugs that Ubisoft needs to iron out—some weapons going through cloth, small breeze rattling dresses violently, vegetation suspended in air, NPC animations glitching, but I am guessing more of it will be patched in the weeks to come. They are mostly not part of the main storyline.
The thing about Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced is that it gives you a fully rebuilt version of the best pirate videogame ever produced—the 2013 superhit, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.
From the Prince of Persia games to the Assassin’s Creed titles till Syndicate and Origins, I had fun. I liked the linearity of the original four, the revamped RPG style of Origins, and the stealth of Syndicate, but they dropped the ball with Odyssey. To date, it is the only Ubisoft game that made me want to throw my controller out of the window out of pure frustration. I had to get a remastered PS4 Ezio Collection and play through all of them to get back the AC magic I lost as a gamer.
But now, it is back. Black Flag Resynced gave me a part of that lost ethos. Of course, there are microtransactions that are anti-gamer, but that is something Ubisoft needs to sort out. But it does not seep too much into the gameplay. When Paul Fu, Creative Director of Black Flag Resynced, said, "it was important for us to safeguard Black Flag’s spirit", the whole team seems to have aligned with that vision. And the heart shows. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced does not aspire to ride on any coattails, unlike how Valhalla did with God of War and Shadows did with Ghost of Tsushima.
Edward Kenway has one of the best story arcs in the Assassin’s Creed series, and it is a true Ubisoft original. The parry-first combat system might be new to many, but I had fun with it. And I am a stealth player. This brought back all the memories of Black Flag from over 12 years ago when my humble HP dv6 rumbled through it to get me the best ocean shaders.
This game, with its active side quests and crew missions, is decently long enough to be called a full-fledged AAA title in the PS5 era. The high seas are captivating, and the game mechanics are polished. And to think that the Ubisoft India team was an integral part of the development is, in itself, a feat to be proud of.
Black Flag Resynced is no game of the year, but it is a great step in the right direction. Is it worth playing? Yes. Is it rewarding? You bet. Will I do a round two on it? Of course. But it is not an urgent title. You can wait, if you have a current backlog. If you have ever experienced an Assassin’s Creed in the 2010s, this would bring back some fond memories. Black Flag Resynced is all heart. It is very much like what Edward Kenway believes in: Free, liberated, to win or lose, to fail or excel at. At the end of the day, it gives gamers the freedom to relive the golden age of piracy. That too, in glorious 4K HDR.
Looking back, Ubisoft might have grasped at straws to get us a great Assassin’s Creed game to bring itself back into gaming royalty, but it did pick the right straw.
Game: Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced
Developer: Ubisoft
Platform: PlayStation 5 (Also on Xbox Series X/S, Ubisoft+, and PC)
Rating: 4 out of 5 | ★★★★☆
