Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review: "Far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original"

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is an extremely faithful remake of Ubisoft's original 2013 open-world piracy adventure – except for the many ways in which it isn't. Returning to one of the best Assassin Creed games, and one of my all-timers, has been a treat – but it's also left me wrangling with where a full remake should start and stop. Like the sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy ocean on which protagonist Edward Kenway sails, what seems like a one-to-one remake has a lot more going on beneath the surface.

With no knowledge of the secret Assassin and Templar conflict running through the ages, Edward will take any opportunity for a leg up throughout Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. A shipwreck after the battle that hurls us right into the action? A way to get into the Templars' good grace for coin. Meeting the shadowy Assassins? Side-mission contracts allow him to earn money even as an outsider. Imprisoned on a treasure ship? A chance to fight back, and steal a captainage for himself, putting him on a level field with Nassau's pirate greats – from Blackbeard to Hornigold.

Live, laugh, Libertalia

Caribbean pirate sanctuary Nassau – able to flourish as the Spanish and English empires battle one another as they seize land from its native population – are about "liberty" to Edward, he explains. Meant to have set to sea from Bristol for "two at the most" years away from his wife Caroline in order to bring home enough success to elevate his station, he keeps extending that time away. Likewise, he struggles to understand the Assassin creed of "nothing is true, everything is permitted" as anything more than a self-centered permission slip. He's a man struggling to tread water, weighed down by his own selfishness, clawing for any sense of purpose or validation – caught in a whirlpool of conspiracy, his capacity for growth will be tested, a rogue element able to scuttle either the Assassin or Templar plans on a whim.

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But, where Edward Kenway struggles with his own sense of purpose, the original Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was confident in its own from the get-go. The fourth numbered game in the series, it took the best ideas of the divisive Assassin's Creed 3, and reimagined it as a large, open-world adventure merging parkour assassinations across numerous islands with tight naval combat and a sense of discovery. Innovative and bold, it's no exaggeration to say that for many – me included – this was a salve that got us reinvested in Assassin's Creed again, and proved that the Ezio trilogy that began in Assassin's Creed 2 was no fluke. But, in changing tides, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced lacks that same clear purpose.

Solid foundations buoy this remake, but it can feel aimless and adrift, at times too beholden to the original to excite, at others using modern series mechanics to not-quite replicate the original; and laden with annoying bugs, glitches, and jank. It's far from the first time an Assassin's Creed launch has been rough, but when it's a remake which, by its nature, implies a definitive quality, it can be extra grating. I've seen Edward lock-up after skinning an animal, float across the ground like a ghost, had quest markers disappear off the edge of the map, and enemies suddenly revive after a thorough stabbing – sometimes requiring loading past saves to fix.

While Black Flag Resynced is incredibly pretty – whether that's sun and glistening sea, cannon fire lighting up dense fog, or the terror of gigantic waves through a storm – the geometry of most areas is very similar to the original if not one-to-one. It's neat to feel the muscle memory return, but it does create a discordance between the stunning high-fidelity graphics that feel like a wrapper over the strict environments of the original.

It's a nice touch to be able to have an 'advanced parkour' toggle, though, again, like in the source material, all these islands' maps are quite small in terms of both square footage and height, so there's not many opportunities to really get into it. That even goes for the handful of built out cities, like Havana and Kingston, which felt small in the original and still do here. At the time, the tighter, island-centric approach was a smart reaction to AC3's overly large, empty cities and its massive frontier. Now, removed from that context, they just feel basic.

Some of the rethought and additional areas work well. Making Sacrifice Island part of the main map is wonderful, as is allowing you to exit one of Havana's gates where you can rob a new shore-side plantation and sneak through a fort only previously glimpsed from afar. Other islands have segments smartly rearranged to make traversal feel more natural. Nassau, for instance, is now hillier and denser, making it feel like more of a hive of scum and villainy while otherwise keeping the construction the same.

The ability to properly dive underwater at almost any location to explore is great (previously, you could 'stealth swim', a binary ability that simply plopped Edward out of sight below the waves), especially in how it seamlessly connects some diving sequences and Smuggler's Coves. These were present in the original, but felt delineated – this is a real spot in which Resynced uses new technology to better execute on the original's ideas.

Some island treasures have been shuffled around so you now dive for them just off the coast too, which is welcome variety. There's fewer treasure and collectible icons littering the map, but they're still present – now acting more as optional bonuses for going out of your way to investigate smoke or circling birds ashore. However, these rewards are often drab – insubstantial amounts of money, or the Animus currency used for the online 'exchange' store. Even if Edward comments on some environmental storytelling that's unfolded on an island, you can never interact with anything in a meaningful way – even if NPCs are still present.

Sequences across the swamps of Charles-Towne and the sweltering African island of Principe are, like before, their own small areas off the world map designed for specific missions, which feel like missed opportunities for further expansion.

It's disappointing as even its immediate sequel, the underrated Assassin's Creed Rogue, iterated upon some of Black Flag's ideas in neat ways – such as connecting various in-land maps with denser areas connected through multiple ports, which it felt like Havana was teasing before I realized the new zone is just one small addition. I constantly find myself wishing Resynced would play it less safe.

Sword and rope-cery

There are big changes, though. Black Flag Resynced's combat is very different. But, like Assassin's Creed Mirage, I can't help but feel like it's trying to retrofit some of the series' classic elements into a system not really designed to support it. The original's fights were simple, but snappy and satisfying as you chained together brutal executions, assassinations, and pistol shots. Here, with the addition of stun meters, clashes feel looser, more flaily.

Like in the original, counters open up a window for an instant takedown, but I've had constant moments where the inputs seem to drop, whether that's when chaining takedowns, or being next to a tripped enemy. Alongside shifting the one-button quickfire pistol to an ability wheel, combat feels a bit overcomplicated for as imprecise at it feels, and I ended up getting a bit sick of the constant fights which – when you're boarding enemy ships so frequently – is a big part of the game. Revisiting the original Black Flag while playing Resynced, I simply prefer the source material's combat, which is more dynamic and cinematic across multi-countering groups or the way the camera spins to frame each pistol shot Edward fires off.

Many of Resynced's headlining updates ended up mattering little to me in play. The visuals are pretty, but once I get refamiliarized with the maps I stop gawking at them, instead noticing the higher fidelity and intense shadows can lead to a lack of clarity with interaction points. New story quests across recruitable officers and beyond, don't feel particularly additive – in fact, their constant reiteration around Edward being a bit of a deadbeat for leaving his wife just over-salts it thematically.

Being able to crouch anywhere in stealth feels minor considering Edward would auto-crouch in the original in 'stalking zones' anyway, and though I'm told day/night, and weather affects enemy perception, the enemy AI is still very stupid on normal difficulty no matter what so it hardly matters (kill one in tall grass, and watch them keep coming into your killbox on yellow alert).

The four new 'modern' missions are disappointing as well, essentially being vision quests you wander through within the Animus Ego while fighting waves of enemies while being monologued at. It's a shame as the initial mission makes a good first impression, questioning Edward's inability to return home as you platform through impossible digitized spaces while doing an escort mission with his precious chest of loot. Additional modern day storytelling being relegated to lore notes, some of which are connected to a bizarre battle-pass-like currency track, are as horrible to engage with here as they were in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

It's disappointing, as Resynced isn't purely about adding things on or updating mechanics. There are cuts as well – and I don't just mean how Edward no longer does the delightful splish-splash 'knees-up' jog as he runs through shallow water. The original game's first-person modern storyline that cast you as a game developer working for evil Templar-front Abstergo has been excised entirely. The modern day storyline might not be for everyone and, admittedly, the plot threads set up in the original never had a satisfactory pay-off – but, then, wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity to redress that?

Black Flag's modern day storytelling was some of the series' best. Not only that, but it's one of the only games in the series where the narrative directly connects between past and present, meaning that Black Flag Resynced simply doesn't close the loop on a major character's arc at all within the game's main story. In turn, it makes the narrative feel oddly paced, and its ending feels particularly sudden and unsatisfying.

The idea of optional objectives in main missions to accomplish 'full synchronization' has also been dropped. Beyond providing replay value (you can no longer replay missions from a menu), these additional challenges added narrative context for how Edward Kenway canonically approached each mission – one of classic Assassin's Creed's many unique modes of storytelling that the Animus wrapper provides.

This leads to at least one change where, previously, full synchronization with Edward required you to sneak through an Assassin encampment non-lethally. Now, without that encouragement, that portion of the mission simply replaces those Assassins with generic enemy guards. Not only does Resynced remove the joy of replaying a mission to tackle the friction of additional challenge, but it has the side effect of flattening Edward's characterization.

There's conflict within Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in terms of how faithful it wants to be. Even a change as small as removing the mini-map, which makes sense given how you can now scan and tag foes like in the modern games, nevertheless affects how you interact with many missions compared to the original – especially in the returning Templar Hunt sidequests and in naval combat.

Other changes fare better. De-emphasizing tailing missions so you can find alternative ways to a target if you mess up removes a lot of the original's frustration. But, there are still a couple of missions in which you're still forced to play them in specific ways or you instantly 'desynchronize', or another that slapped me on the wrist for sneaking through to the mission objective in a different way than intended, and turned me around to have a ship battle instead.

It makes Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original. Resynced both changes too much and not enough. Decent improvements are here that I'd still recommend it to a lot of players interested in a pirate adventure, but I also think moment-to-moment the original game remains enjoyable and has better combat and more interesting challenges (especially if you can play it on PC with a stable higher framerate) – leaving me in that tricky position of having no firm favorite. Black Flag Resynced is a decent remake of a great game, but can feel a bit rudderless – an unenviable position for any remake with so much to live up to.

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