Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Critic Reviews

While Black Flag feels very much like an Assassin's Creed game, its gameplay reminds me more of Sid Meier's Pirates! wrought in glorious 3D. As in that classic game, you are free to sail wherever your heart desires, and be as dastardly or as benign as you like. Embodying Edward Kenway and living through his adventures on the seas, while also experiencing his struggle with Assassins and Templars alike, is pure escapist delight.

Probably the biggest compliment I can give to the developers of Black Flag is that they did a fantastic job of refining the things that needed to be refined and leaving alone what didn’t.

Black Flag is an amazing videogame, full of exploration and an immersive experience. With an absorbing single-player campaign and nice multiplayer modes it's a lengthy and fun pirate journey.

Hereditary sins aside, the core experience of Assassin's Creed IV is one hell of a thirty-cannon salute that has so many tantalising distractions that we honestly can't wait to sail back into its world again.

The greatest compliment I can afford Black Flag, though, is that I wanted more at the end of my time with it. With such an expansive map to explore and so many alluring distractions on offer, this is the kind of game a player could easily lose scores of hours exploring.

It’s one of those games that draw you in with its unparalleled atmosphere and style.

The developers have worked around the series' foibles brilliantly.

It’s yet another example of what the 360 and PS3 are capable of – a genuinely stunning creation that packs 40 to 50 hours of content into a beautiful, compelling world that begs to be explored.

Though the cracks with stealth and freerunning are starting to show with time, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag does the one thing it means to do surprisingly well: pirates. Sailing the high seas, finding hidden treasure chests among gorgeous tropical archipelagos, letting the waves of turquoise water crash into the Jackdaw, plundering enemy ships without remorse, and hearing your crew sing authentic sea shanties has never felt better.

The game is stunning, and the Caribbean makes for a gorgeous setting.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is the best Assassin's Creed experience in terms of scale, freedom and gameplay. Between land and sea, the journey of Edward Kenway is really captivating.

While some franchises are merely pumping out the same stuff every year with simply a new coat of paint, Black Flag is a welcome and well-done reinvention that adds new large-scale elements to an already solid base.

Black Flag is quite possibly the closest to a real sandbox we have seen in this saga by Ubisoft. Even though its main innovations revolve around the sea navigation and naval combat, this new installment still possesses enough good qualities as to give this saga our vote one more year.

Without the slightest doubt the best action game of the pirate and sailor genre ever. Black Flag is smart enough to keep down the Assassin's Creed mythology, and it puts forward its pirates, and colourful and also deadly Caribbean. Instead of a mere expansion of the traditional formula, a charismatic hero along with his Jackdaw ship creates a great tandem bringing something truly new to the series.

It has taken the gameplay of the previous games, refined it, and combined it with a huge open world that is packed with enough content to literally last for days. If you have ever wanted a proper pirate game, this is as good as it gets.

Black Flag is an evolution for the series, not a revolution. It's a gorgeous game that learns from the disappointing Assassin's Creed III and the addition of the naval open world is a triumph. If you're tired of the formula, there might be enough here to bring you back into the Order.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is the very definition of escapism, offering a mindbogglingly large amount of content. One could spend upwards of fifty hours exploring the world without completing more than a few introductory missions in the main story — which itself can offer over twenty hours of gameplay.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is the pirate-themed open-world action adventure that I’ve always wanted. While the meta-story is little more than filler and Captain Kenway’s story could have been better focused, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with these pirates, privateers and buccaneers.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag reinvigorates the series after its patchy performance over the last few years, making it the best game since Brotherhood.

Black Flag is a remarkably new take on the series, and I would go as far to say it’s the finest entry we’ve seen to date.