Assassin’s Creed® IV Black Flag™

I loved the ship battle mechanics and the story, this is by far my favorite AC game of the series. Not a big fan of the way they took the new ones and the new mechanics.

An absolute blast to play! I thought the ship sailing might be difficult but once I got used to it, I found myself sailing around with my crew singing shanties just to find ships to sink. I couldn't get Kenway's Fleet to work. However I didn't find I was missing out on anything in the game. A good mix of weapons and loved to play stealth as much as possible.

Great game to kick back and relax while doing typical pirate assassin things like petting cats and sinking enough ships to make woodcutters rich. Nothing captivating about the story and leaves a lot be desired in that department. A lot of emotional beats are missed because they were never truly developed in the first place. The story is still passable minus the missions outside the animus. But they really did nail the game play outside of numerous boring tailing missions. Ship combat doesn't get old imo and sailing while listening to shanties is always a good time. You can tell towards the butt end of the game that they really wanted you to buy the time savers with how much of a grind elite upgrades are, but realistically they are unnecessary. Overall its a 7/10 (very good) more than worth $5 or so on sale.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is an incredibly fun and action-packed entry in the franchise, despite its mid-tier story. The combat, both on land and at sea, is some of the best in the series. The Kenway’s Fleet mechanic is undeniably terrible, feeling more like a tedious mobile game and having 3 chests locked behind it for 100% completion is dodo. Even with its flaws, Black Flag delivers an unforgettable pirate adventure making it a must-play for fans of the series. I'll give a score of 8/10

i like the story line and the free world sailing and pirating, it has a little bit of a lag with their voices going before their mouth moves, but that could just be my laptops problem, over all its a good game

Pretty fun pirate game to play, but it was kind of hard to stay hooked in as an Assassin's Creed game. The story and combat were quite fun, but certain things and more involvement with the brotherhood finally got reached at the end of the game. It was quite a wait for things like rope darts when you can see it in crafting but not use it yet.

I never got to try the multiplayer yet, but they could still be up.

The best Assassin's Creed game. The original formula, perfected.
The new formula, of just packing in as much garbage boring filler fluffy trash as humanly possible, sucks.
The old formula, with the exception of AC2 and Brotherhood, worked, but was a bit flat.
This means I don't even like the majority of Assassin's Creed games.
But this is that perfect middle point where everything was working together in perfect harmony.

• great writing / characters
• great voice acting
• great story (for a video game)
• great pacing (between land and sea)
• great sense of progression
• great moment-to-moment gameplay

Literally the only thing wrong with it is slightly clunky parkour and too many frigging collectables.
The series' second best, AC2 is an 8/10. And the series average is a 6/10.
This game may well be a legit 10/10. It's genuinely that good.

~80 hours for 100% completion of AC4 and Freedom Cry. Probably ~6 of those hours were for Freedom Cry.

AC4:

Great game overall; bugs were minimal. After playing the newer games like Odyssey and Valhalla, it was very nice being able to complete the game in less than 3 billion hours. Freerunning can be annoying, especially in tight spaces like running around on ships. The biggest reason for this is the consolidation of run/climb into a single button that started in AC3 and has been carried through to every AC game since. I really hate it. I find few things as annoying as a video game character not doing the thing you want them to do. But yeah, good game in general.

Freedom Cry:

This one really frrustrates me. Adéwalé and Bastienne are both such cool characters, and their fight for the slaves (and their very different approaches to it) is very inspiring. However, the story as a whole is pretty forgettable aside from a few conversations between these two characters. What really ruined this DLC for me, though, were the bugs. The freerunning somehow got 10x worse, parrying often just didn't work, and the battle music would sometimes randomly cut out.

can't use mods game crashes remaster the game with no fucking logging retarded devs

I just gave up.

This was one of the greatest games Ubisoft ever created, with its story, characters and music (as long as you play in the Animus). But it is literally unplayable now with modern systems. The menu freezes into 0.2 FPS (not kidding) the only way to kinda solve this is to disable 28 out of 32 CPU cores, yaddi yadda, and at that point you can start playing with massive frame drops only occuring every 13 seconds, but if you disable this and that, then only every 18 seconds. I just realized that since I reinstalled it, I played the game for 30 minutes and have been trying to make it decently run for 4 hours. At this point it just simply does not worth it. This was one of the greatest games, and I wanted nostalgia, but no, if you were not one of the lucky people who played it back then, you will not get enjoyment out of it anymore.

One of my favorite Assassin's Creed games, even though it is older with lower graphics. The story is good and combat works well. I especially like the ship combat aspect of the game, which is well done and fun to play. Worth getting, even now in 2025, and worth the play through.

Probably if not the best Assassins Creed game. Get this instead of any of the modern games. Please.

It's a good game, but be warned: this game will really test your patience. You will feel the fury of a thousand storms every time you open this game, and it's all thanks to one mechanic: FUCKING UBISOFT CONNECT. Every time you open the game, EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME, IT NEEDS YOU TO SIGN IN AGAIN.

Words cannot describe the amount of pain I would put Yves Guillemot and his brothers through for all the bullshit they've done with Ubisoft over the years. Most say they wouldn't wish something on their worst enemy, but for Yves Guillemot and all the other executives ruining gaming, I wish the absolute worst for them all.

Cannot play this game due to Ubisoft account link, Why the H#ll does Ubisoft need an account to play a single player game?

To hell with you retarded gave dev companies.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag is best pirate game that I’ve ever played (I didn’t play any pirate theme game apart from “Sid Meier’s Pirates!”). To me, this game is the best Assassin’s Creed game in Assassin’s Creed Franchise. However, with all of these positive sides this game didn’t give me the feeling of being assassin when I compare to other games in series. That’s why I don’t consider this game as an Assassin’s Creed game. It looks that Ubisoft thought like us that they tried to make an independent pirate game called Skull&Bones but they sucked whatever. Being a pirate in earlier 18th centuries was a great experience with so many activities, collectibles, contracts, raids that we did for upgrading our ship, creating your own fleet (You need to download a patch for activating this option unfortunately) and also the feeling of exploring the vast Caribbean with your crew. As good as these features are, the story and mission designs are just as bad. Usually the game wants you to follow one NPC and kill them at the end of mission. As a result, every gamer should play this game but not seeing as an Assassin’s Creed game. If you enter the game with these expectations, I believe that this game is going to be one of the best you've ever played.

Everything haters hate about AC games is also present in Black Flag

But it works out of general simplicity with mostly grounded characters

The game doesnt really support modern systems, it constantly tabs out, crashes, and never gets more than 20 fps no matter what you do. Do not buy unless they update it to run better for newer systems.

Otherwise this would be an easy recommend.

requires a ubisoft account. the process of creating an account required me to delete my cookies, create a new email address, and turn on my vpn to get it to work.

Ubisoft has utterly handicapped this game. I've been trying to get this game to play on my steam deck for over 4 hours now at this point. normally you have to sign in every time you launch the game which is a pain but at least i still got to play my game. I think there was a recent update or something but now i get to the login page and enter my info, as soon as the launcher says syncing achievements the game shits the bed and goes back to my library. I've tried every hack and tip out there on the internet and nothing works. I really just want to play MY GAME the way i want to play it. Kudos to Ubisoft for being the shitiest company in gaming.

I played this game upon release back in the day on Playstation.
Now years later wanted to scratch the assassins creed itch in 2025.
This game is even better than I remember. I did not beat it originally. Now I plan to finish and enjoy playing just for the sake of exploring and pirating. As a much older gamer I find pleasure in slowing down and not just rushing to finish a title. A lot of exploring and things to do in this one. And it looks great and runs very well on steam.

One of my favorite in the series, Best story and gameplay experience ever made, this is a real AC game with no RPG elements which is better than recent AC games

Why do I have to jump through so many hoops just to launch a game? Why do I have to verify it's me? If you want to play my game, I don't give a fuck. Play it. Hell, win it. I honestly don't care. I'm just really tired of these dipshit companies making it so complicated just to launch a game I have already paid for.

So Ubisoft ruined the game with "Game linked to a different account" check both accounts and it still says the same thing. Even unlinking and linking my steam account didn't work. Tbh it's just gone downhill another good game ruined by a greedy and lazy company

I once enjoyed this game, but the last time I tried to play it was forcing me to login at every single launch. Running the game in offline mode resolves this issue, and disables the game's online features (including single player fleet management). I consider this entirely unacceptable. Cloud saves are also not available. Steam support declined my refund request.

Hey UbiSlop, can you please shift delete your ubislop launcher and let steam open the game, this will finally allow me to open the game without trying to keep re-entering the password again and again like a spastic forgetful idiot. Oh wait that's your launcher not me

The game is amazing, I played it on my Xbox 360 a decade ago, but Ubisoft became such an awful company, that this 10 years old game won't launch at all, has no support to anything above 60 fps and somehow runs worse than modern games. Truly an amazing port by Ubiflop

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Gold Edition

...is a parkour beat'em up adventure game. Edward Kenway, a lowly privateer, dons the hood of a dead assassin, attracting the attention of the Assassin Brotherhood, the Templar Order and the Pirate Federation, all while carving his own piece of the Caribbean.

⚙ Game Description & Mechanics ⚙

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the metaplot based in the near-future uses a technology called the Animus that allows one to visit their ancestors' memories, passed down by genetics. Now that the technology no longer relies on live subjects, others can use advanced VR to relive other people's genetic memories, uncovering the hidden truth forgotten by time or kept hidden by biased historians. You're a new researcher for a mysterious new branch of Ubisoft called Abstergo Entertainment, looking into the history of Subject 17's ancestor, a notorious pirate called Edward Kenway. Unbeknownst to you, Abtergo is a front for the Templar Order, and the Animus technology is derived from extremely advanced technology of a long-lost people known as the Precursors, which left behind many technological artifacts for which Templars and Assassins have spent history competing over.

You get to explore the Caribbean of the 18th Century, including multiple cities or small settlements, dozens of islands, along with a few jungle environments, ruins and underwater segments. You traverse the world by climbing anything: rocks, trees, buildings, even the highest towers. Forget about looking for yellow paint, as any nook and cranny will do, be it doors and windows, wood beams, loose bricks, roof carving, is it's big enough for your hand to grab onto, you can use it to climb. You can also hide from enemies by blending into crowds, diving in haystacks or crouching in foliage, to name a few. When you aren't sneaking, you can sword-fight your way with a block and counter system, allowing you to face multiple enemies at once.

I cannot talk about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag without bringing up its main attraction: ship exploration and battles. The mechanics first introduced in Assassin's Creed III, you now have a wide variety of weapons at your disposal when at sea: side batteries, forward chain-ball launchers, mortar cannons, explosive barrels. You can blow your enemies to smithereens and sink them, or disable their vessels and board them for on-ship fights, from dueling with the captain on the rear deck to throwing snipers off the highest mast. You explore the open sea, battle enemy forts, dock in small settlements or stop by small islands to jump off your ship and look for forgotten treasure or drifted cargo.

☺ What I enjoyed ☺

Ubisoft have once again done a magnificent job at capturing historical locations and their look and feel, keeping them as authentic as real-life historical records allowed them. Havana, Nassau, Kingston, they all feel extremely distinct, accurately recreated and filled with their known landmarks. As you discover or visit those locations, their information is added to your database, enticing you to read up on the subject. Doing so is optional, but the option is there for those whose interest in the game spark a willingness to learn more on those locations.

Gameplay is an experience that will vary widely depending on the environment. In cities, you jump from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding gunmen and tailing your enemies. In jungles, scoot along tree branches to hunt down human and animal preys alike. In lieu of managing assassin contracts, you get a trading game where, after building a fleet from captured ships, you send them out across the Atlantic Ocean for additional revenue, finding collectibles and unlocking additional trading locations.

Along with hunting, a harpooning minigame opens additional crafting material by having you fish a variety of sharks and whales found in the area, including the elusive white whale. This allows you to improve your armor, increase ammunition storage capacity, or unlock new costumes. Your ship can also be improved with better cannons, increased storage and a reinforced hull, but the crafting materials such as iron, wood and cloth can only be found by capturing other ships. Finally, you eventually get your personal homestead, Great Inagua, where you can improve the village to provide you with shops and free services, as well as your house where you store your collectibles.

☹ What bothered me ☹

The game seems to have lost interest in the story. How is it that Edward, who has never got any Assassin training whatsoever, is capable of all the stealth techniques and combat tricks specific to the teachings of The Creed, and good enough to impress Templars into believing him to be a real Assassin? No one in their right mind would attempt a Leap of Fate, not without years of training, but here he goes, jumping from the highest tower into an insignificant haystack, including the backflip and open-armed back fall. I was also disappointed that the metaplot took such a back seat. With the Desmond story coming to an end, we got a small taste of its absence when playing Assassin's Creed: Liberation (for those that played it), but I only really felt it now, as the modern story element almost felt shoehorned, almost an excuse to add a few familiar faces.

Combat mechanics are very, very basic. Sure, you have pistols, smoke bomb and blow darts, but this pales in comparison to the dozens of combo moves and variety of gadgets you had in the similar but superior combat mechanics of Batman: Arkham City released at least two years prior. While the animation makes a nice show of the swordplay, you're really doing little more than blocking and countering, breaking your streak as soon as you attempt to use a different move. Because of how easy it is, you have little incentives to use the stealth mechanics unless made mandatory by the mission criteria. You also have a total lack of incentive to get a perfect animus synchronization by filling optional objectives, except for assassin missions where the bonus objectives result in a higher payout.

Verdict: ★★★★★ - "Play this. Now."

Despite my criticism, the fact that this game isn't absolutely flawless doesn't take away from being the most fun game in the entire franchise, a game no one should miss out on, regardless of your prior experience with the series. It's a great Assassin's Creed game, and an excellent pirate game! With Skull and Bones's lackluster features, it's a great time to revisit Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag!

[quote]P.S.: The game's Season Pass, part of the Gold Edition, clearly states that Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry is included as a DLC. However, Ubisoft actually removed it years ago to replace it with a small unrelated mission featuring Aveline from Assassin's Creed: Liberation. If you want Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, you must purchase it separately. Shame on Ubisoft for not updating their store fronts properly![/quote]

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

I loved this game growing up, playing back on the xbox 360. Now the since the game has updated to include Achievements, the game no longer works and only thing that happens is the splash screen for ubisoft then the game crashes. Until this issue is resolved i can not recommend this game to anyone.

Kenways Fleet doesn't work or function in any way. It's essentially deprecated content. Insanely stupid that this game requires an online connection, and yet the Server is literally offline.

I put hundreds of hours into this game on Xbox and bought this on steam to live through the nostalgia on a much better machine. Completely disappointed.

I have always enjoyed playing Black Flag. I've purchased it and played through the story mode on Steam, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. I was disappointed in Steam's version for the longest, due to no achievements and no cloud saves. After all this time, Ubisoft finally updated BF with achievements but so far, no luck on saving data on the cloud.

Black Flag is one of my favorite Assassin's Creed games because of it revolving around pirates. You get to explore on land and by ship, with a few diving areas you swim through and caves to explore. There's 4 legendary ships to fight against, each different in their own way. The story line is roughly around 30-35 hours long, and will keep you entertained all the way through the story.

Although Black Flag is amazing, there are a few downsides. My biggest complaint has always been the movements. When turning Edward either right or left, he tends to want to do his own thing and stop or move when he wants. There's a small delay in the movements and nothing like the newer AC games. I'm hoping Ubisoft fixes this issue with a remastered version.

If you're thinking about picking up BF, I'd recommend waiting for it to go on sale. It's a great game, and you'll have lots of fun playing it. Don't let the small issues scare you from trying it out. It's one of the best pirate games I've played to date.

Fantastic game, a great progression from AC III - which is also another great game - every now and then the AC series makes a quality jump, this is one of them

I hope everyone at Ubisoft who came up with this launcher is forced live in a prison cell and eat crunchy DOG ♥♥♥♥ for the rest of their lives.

Shanties,, open sea , lot of rum and one beautiful story. ARRRRR
1

Best Assassins creed since the Ezio Trilogy. Still the best open water pirate ship fight you can have in gaming.

Impossible to actually play because of Ubisoft's useless account BS not working.

STAY FAR AWAY FORM ANY GAME THAT REQUIRES ANYTHING OTHER THAN STEAM. AND STAY EVEN FURTHER AWAY FROM ANYHING Ubisoft related.

Underwater dives terrified me more than naval battles, especially because of those cursed eels that still haunt my nightmares. AC Black Flag is everything Skull & Bones tried to replicate but could never achieve. It’s undoubtedly one of the best pirate games. And the game’s soundtrack? It’s amazing, each track gives me chills. No surprise coming from a great composer like Brian Tyler, thanks to him.

Game itself is good, but this pc version is riddled with bugs. Entire features of the game are locked out for me like Kenway's Fleet due to glitches I have experienced. It also crashes randomly and without warning and I have a 3060Ti.

If you want to play this game, I recommend getting it on console instead as that seems to be way more stable.

played this years ago on consoles and it was a lot a lot of fun i decided to replay it again this time on pc and considering i saw they added achievements i decided to buy it on a sale and go for 100 completion this time and all i can say that it was as fun as it was playing it years ago one of the best pirate games out there highly recommend it

The game itself? One of my favorite games it's amazing. The steam version? because of ubisofts updates? Literally unplayable unless you're willing to download the mod to undo an update to get the fleet working, otherwise you're hard blocked at a story mission about 6 hours in. Not to mention issues with hz, tearing, vsync, clouds, ect. that took about an hour of searching online to fix.

You don't need me to jump through multiple hoops to login before i'm able to play a 12 year old game. Ubisoft is a useless bloated disgrace compared to what it was when this game was developed.

I bought the game on sale with season pass as a bundle with all add ons and DLC months ago got 120hrs and suddenly i don't have a license for the game now, it's stupid and now it's saying i'd have to purchase the game all over again i wouldn't buy this game in my opinion unless you wanna risk the same thing.

this game is unplayable on ultrawide monitors and it desperately needs a remaster for modern PCs.

AC Black Flag is the second-best game after the Ezio's trilogy; the story and character development of Edward Kenway is good. It also gives you the experience of what it is like to be a pirate. One Piece fans should love this game. However, I noticed a glitch in the game: the Kenway's Fleet doesn't function properly, resulting in an infinite loading screen. For others, this issue might present a different challenge, but it's important not to become overwhelmed by it. Check in Steam discussions or YouTube about the Nexus mod and download the necessary files for Kenway's Fleet. Other than this one problem, the game was goated, and I loved it. Steam has also recently added achievements for AC Black Flag and almost all of the AC games.  The addition of these Steam achievements not only motivates individuals to play the game but also enhances its fun factor. This game was awesome.

100% Achievements
Sean Dagher carried
Beautiful water and Music
Bittersweet ending
I waited so long for achievements to be added for this game on steam.
My personal favorite Assassins Creed

Top 5 best AC games ever made. Super happy they brought Steam achievements AND slapped a less than $15 tag on it (like $12 and some change at my time of purchase), you just cant pass it up.

Pirate setting is so cool, controls are better and keybinds make more sense than 2, the other AC game I played. I like the customization options and gameplay when fighting on the ships. I wouldn't say to get this game first because you would then expect the other games to have a pirate theme, but this is still a must-play game.

Although a great game Ubisoft has stopped maintaining servers while still claiming they do. things like Kenways fleet which functionally makes upgrading your ship much easier and is how you unlock many cosmetics as well as multiplayer which I haven't seen work in 2 years. If you contact support about this issue they will tell you to uninstall and reinstall/check your connection etc which doesn't work and a 5-minute search online shows it worked for no one. A great singleplayer game though that I loved playing as a kid. any online modding or fixes that people have found would be greatly appreciated in the comments

the servers are down and cant access to Kenway´s fleet, therefore, cant continue the fucking game.

Incredibly poorly optimized, I couldn't even launch the game without it crashing. I eventually got it to play by switching compatibility to WINDOWS 95!, and then the audio and lag was so horrible it was unplayable. I spent literal hours trying every fix in the book and nothing helped. My pc can run cyberpunk on full but can't play an over 10 year old game since it's made by ubisoft. Absolutely ridiculous, definitely getting my money back.

this is a Fun Game

much unlike the story of every game that came after it, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag's story is good. Edward Kenway actually develops and has a character arc, which is more than what can be said for like. Odyssey or Valhalla. the supporting cast is great too.

ship combat is fun. AC4 has the same combat as AC3, and by that I mean it's still as mind numbing as always. counters have the most forgiving timing and half of all enemy types can be insta-killed by a counter. the takedowns look good though, so it still feels good to play.

overall good game. one of the best ones (not really, AC2 - Brotherhood - Revelations trifecta is still unbeaten)