{"id":2043956,"date":"2026-07-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2043956"},"modified":"2026-07-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:00:00","slug":"assassins-creed-black-flag-resynced-review-the-series-best-made-a-bit-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2043956","title":{"rendered":"Assassin\u2019s Creed Black Flag Resynced review: the series\u2019 best, made a bit better"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At a certain point during the 2010s, Ubisoft realised why people actually liked the\u00a0Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/em> games. It was much simpler than the multi-layered storyline involving people in the present day reliving memories in a dream machine and all the blending in with the crowd stuff. They were just great historical action-RPGs. The ancient war between assassins and templars, the Abstergo subplot \u2013 all these things were secondary to just being a powerful warrior in a well-realised period setting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To commemorate this realisation, Ubisoft made\u00a0Assassin\u2019s Creed IV: Black Flag<\/em> in 2012, and it\u2019s long been held on high as the best game in the series. The tedious modern-day diversions and long-winded stealthy bits were still present, but they\u2019d been pushed to the sidelines by a great core fantasy about a chancer named Edward Kenway who\u2019d stumbled into this whole assassins versus templars lark and really just fancied making some coin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And then in 2026, Ubisoft remade it, because those are the rules now. Liked that game from your youth, did you? Well, buy it again. We\u2019ve changed it a bit, promise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ubisoft Singapore has changed it a bit, actually. It\u2019s clear that the guiding principle to\u00a0Assassin\u2019s Creed Black Flag Resynced<\/em> was \u2018keep the bits people liked, delete the rest\u2019. It really does feel that simple at times.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Case in point: those aforementioned Abstergo sections. In the original release, your sunkissed pirate fantasy was regularly interrupted by interludes that reminded you that this is all a memory, and you\u2019re really a guy called Desmond in a sinister corporation\u2019s offices dreaming of being a pirate. Much traipsing around a corporate facility with an iPad ensued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Resynced<\/em>\u2019s solution to the effect these interludes had on the pacing of the game is to get rid of them. They\u2019re gone. The Abstergo story exists instead as data entries that you pick up as icons in the world and then read in a menu. And, weirdly, as a set of limited-time missions which reward you with in-game currency that you can use to buy outfits and sails for your ship and suchlike. Way to nail the whole corporate greed angle,\u00a0Resynced<\/em>. Very meta.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The same goes for the infamous tailing missions that had you tracking your target at a distance for ages before swooping down to assassinate them. It wasn\u2019t the concept of these missions that was flawed before, but the execution. The stealth mechanics felt inconsistent and didn\u2019t allow you much experimentation, and that meant you felt like you were actually just playing a scripted sequence very slowly with no agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019re gone too in this remake, replaced by\u2026 well, nothing actually. Nobody\u2019s out with the candles giving a teary vigil for these missions, but it might have been more interesting to see them revisited with updated mechanics \u2013 remade, if you will \u2013 rather than simply sent to the recycling bin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, as route one as such creative decisions are, they do pay off rather well. Because the bits this remake has trimmed away give you much more space to do all the fun bits about being a pirate. And that was the point all along.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Setting sail in your trusty ship the Jackdaw and navigating the sizeable open world puts a feeling of freedom and adventure right in your heart, not just because the seas look that bit more dramatic, or the ship looks more detailed. It\u2019s also the veritable jukebox of sea shanties that your crew sings on your command. These journeys between missions give you much needed downtime to soak in the Caribbean atmosphere and ponder your piratical existence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The missions, too, have a swashbuckling feeling of player agency. You\u2019ve got quite a few attack types in your arsenal in this reworked combat system, and whichever one you deploy, you feel a bit like Errol Flynn in a Hollywood classic, dancing your way around Spanish soldiers while preposterously outnumbered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great degree of variety to them. Some take on an\u00a0Uncharted<\/em> dimension and have you clambering around ancient ruins and solving puzzles. More often you\u2019re turning up somewhere to \u2018liberate\u2019 treasure or resources, marking enemies in the area and then going into the fight in the manner of your choosing. The narrative ticks along with an impressive number of levels \u2013 there\u2019s Edward\u2019s love back home, the templar plot he\u2019s stumbled upon and is now trying to foil, the lives of his crewmates (expanded in\u00a0Resynced<\/em> via new missions that tell their origin stories) and the expansion of his own pirate empire, including a private island and a fleet of vessels he can send on missions without him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of piracy, then. It may not be the most thoughtful way to update the game for 2026, but in the end it\u2019s still a great success, and it\u2019s testament to what a great game this was in the first place. Just don\u2019t get ideas about remaking the whole franchise like this, Ubisoft \u2013\u00a0Assassin’s Creed III<\/em> does not warrant such attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a certain point during the 2010s, Ubisoft realised why people actually liked the\u00a0Assassin\u2019s Creed games. It was much simpler than the multi-layered storyline involving people in the present day reliving memories in a dream machine and all the blending in with the crowd stuff. They were just great historical action-RPGs. The ancient war between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2043956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2043956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2043956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2043956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2043956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}