It was October 2013, and I had just gotten my first job after graduating from my university. Despite it being one of the biggest achievements of my life, my sole excitement was based around the release of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag because, as an avid fan of the franchise, the thought of me owning my own pirate ship with the stellar mechanics and open world of an Assassin’s Creed game was blowing my mind. I spent over 100 hours in that game, and at times, I would just spend hours sailing around, listening to shanties and taking down every ship that came my way. When I got the press release from Ubisoft in my inbox announcing they are working on a remake of one of my favourite games in the franchise, you can only imagine my excitement. Despite being a father of two, I jumped like a baby. Fast-forward to today, and its launch is right around the corner. This is our review of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced on PC, in which we revisit this iconic classic, rebuilt for a new generation to find out whether Ubisoft has done justice to one of the greatest pirate adventures ever made.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced brings back the pirate hero Edward Kenway, who stumbles upon some luck and finds himself in the deep underground world of Templars and Assassins. While sticking clear of the mess, he figures out the real prize and sets his goal to achieve it on his own. During the early part of the game, Edward manages to secure a ship he names Jackdow for himself, and from that point onwards, the seas open up for him as he starts to write his own pirate legend.
To me, Edward Kenway is one of the strongest protagonists that Ubisoft has ever written. This is because you can actually feel his character development throughout the story of the game. At the start, Edward only cares about himself, and then he starts to worry about his crewmates and his ship. His dialogue revolves around the freedom of oceans and his liberty, but as the game progresses further, you notice that Edward starts to think logically, and certain events change his personality for the better. He begins to understand that freedom comes with a price, and it is something that needs to be cherished rather than taken for granted. His brashness is replaced by strategic thinking and logical behavior by the end of the game.
As the new owner of Jackdow, it now falls on his head to assemble a crew, build up the ship, and hunt down the prize. Similar to any other game of scope, you start at the bottom of the food chain with both Edward and Jackdow lacking the necessary tools and strength to take on most of the enemies, whether on land or at sea. Returning players will instantly recognize the familiar naval combat, but Ubisoft has refined nearly every mechanic with new ammunition types, improved effects, and smarter enemy behavior.
At the beginning, you start by picking up small naval ships and merchants to steal their cargo or by raiding smaller camps and military warehouses for loot. This allows you to build your own skillset as well as upgrade Jackdow to make it more powerful to tackle tougher enemies. As you build yourself up, you will soon find yourself challenging military convoys in the seas and taking them down without effort. All of this is possible with the help of gold and resources, which the game has plenty. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced offers tons of side content for you to complete and earn both gold and resources. You can find random crates of loot and stranded crew members in the sea, which refill your fallen crew members during shipboardings. Naval combat is a vital element of the game, so improving Jackdow is important for survival in the vast seas of the West Indies. After every upgrade, you instantly notice an increase in what you can do out in the sea. Upgrading the hull allows you to take additional punishment, while upgrading cannons allows you to sink ships easily, which were giving you a tough time earlier.
Your ship comes equipped with every possible tool that you can think of. For scoping targets and assessing the potential loot, you can use the onboard spyglass, which highlights ships and the type of loot they normally carry. For long-range combat, you can purchase and equip mortar cannons, and every side of your ship already comes equipped with plenty of cannons. Every weapon also has a secondary firing mode, unique to the remake. For example, the side cannons can fire normal hard shells, which have greater range but low damage. If you need more damage, you can switch to heated shells, which lower the range but add fire damage and a continuous barrage. Every battle requires a different strategy because even if you are powerful enough, multiple smaller enemy ships will tear you apart if you just sail into them and start attacking blindly. Positioning and prioritizing play an important role in combat, especially when you are dealing with multiple ships.
Each side of the ship has its own set of cannons, while the rear has explosive barrels that you throw in the water, and they act as mines. While everything sounds complicated, naval combat is very easy and accessible in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Pressing LT engages the cannons of the side you are currently facing, so if you want to choose left-side cannons, you just have to look left and press LT. This will enter the targeting mode, and after that, you can just adjust the angle and shoot. This works for all directions, and the additional cannons, like mortar, come with their own hotkeys, which can be engaged while aiming through any side of the ship. The mortar has some changes in the remake, such as it now fires after a small delay and shows you an exact trajectory where it will land. It turns red if it falls on a ship directly, making aiming easier.
After you have damaged a ship enough, you can board the ship with your crew, where a traditional fight with swords and guns begins. Once you lower the morale of the opposing ship, you can choose one option from multiple for a specific bonus. You can destroy the ship for loot and repair your own ship. Or you can hire the ship and make it a part of your own crew. If your wanted level is too high, you can release the captives in exchange for a lowered wanted level as well. All of this pirating and pillaging comes with a price, and as you attack and destroy ships in the open seas, your wanted level will continue to increase. Cause too much mayhem, and special pirate hunters will be dispatched to your location, and you will have additional trouble to look out for. You can reduce your wanted level by bribing corrupt officers found all over the map.
When you are not out on the sea attacking ships or just exploring, you can land on multiple islands scattered around the Caribbean. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced features a giant map based on the West Indies, and you will find many notable cities and locations in the game, like Florida, Havana, and Nassau. While there are tons of smaller islands which are excellent for finding treasures using maps, hunting animals for their skin, and finding other loot, the main cities serve as the main hub of all commercial and political activities. Instead of large cities, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced offers smaller pieces of civilization but in greater numbers. Major hubs like Havana offer a much more bustling traditional city experience, but other locations like Nassau are more like smaller islands with makeshift structures and more underground activity than regulated.
On land, you can hunt down song sheets, play dice games, and complete many story missions while exploring important bureaucratic buildings like ministries and offices. There is no lack of activities to complete in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, and making gold and collecting resources is much easier as well. Naturally, there is some grinding, but the beautiful and lively world makes it interesting to explore and do these things. At no point in the game would you feel bored. The world feels alive, and even the most isolated islands in the far corners of the ocean have some sort of activity or life on them. Random world events happen now and then on both land and sea, offering you a quick buck. There are tons of side quests to complete, along with your hideout to upgrade and manage your fleet. The franchise’s signature viewpoints are here for you to find and synchronize the world around you to reveal its secrets. You can visit the local taverns and engage in melee fist fights with drunk people.
The biggest surprise came to me in the form of combat because after playing the past few Assassin’s Creed titles, I was so accustomed to its RPG-style combat where player level matters and enemies need to be battered with attacks before they finally die. I had forgotten that this game came before Ubisoft transitioned to RPG-style combat, and I was instantly reminded how fluid the combat used to be in the game. Slaying one enemy, and then quickly jumping onto the next to take him down, without another attack needed. Every kill felt satisfying, and this is also the first Assassin’s Creed game in a long time where I wanted to fight whole armies to clear a level instead of sneaking around. I missed many stealth windows just so I could engage in combat and experience the fluidity as Edward danced with his twin swords, taking out enemy after enemy. What makes it even better is that Edward is a pirate, not a truly trained assassin, so he has no rules. He plays dirty, and this is what makes combat so much better than any modern Assassin’s Creed title.
Everything Edward has comes in duals. He has dual swords, dual pistols, and dual hidden blades. While the hidden blades cannot be equipped like regular weapons, as in the earlier titles, they still serve their purpose here. Using the iconic parry, Edward can just take out a whole army single-handedly. There were times when I would just wait for an incoming attack, parry, and then take down the enemy while repeating this process for the entire enemy force. It is highly satisfying and gives you a sense of power. Despite the hidden blade reserved only for stealth kills, it offers multiple ways to do it. You can sprint into enemies, jump from a high spot, assassinate around corners, and even kill from hiding spots. Dual blades mean that dual assassinations are on the table as well for a pair of unsuspecting enemies.
To complement his main attacks, Edward can throw additional moves in the mix as well. For example, if an enemy is being stubborn and continuously blocking, Edward can kick them in the legs and make them fall down, opening them up for a kill. Similarly, on ships or close to ledges, Edward can simply kick an enemy Spartan-style and lead them to a flying death. If you want, you can also quickly fire a shot from your pistols between sword attacks to control the crowd or kill the same enemy in one hit. Since there are RPG mechanics in place, this means that every enemy can be killed in a single attack as well. Heavy infantry units can be a pain, but you can sneak up behind them to take them out instantly. I remember that in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, performing a stealth attack with hidden blades only removed a chunk of their health or armor, but not here. Every stealth attack is a confirmed kill.
I would also like to add here that just because I prefer fighting does not mean that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced lacks when it comes to stealth. You have all of the bells and whistles of a good stealth game here. While Edward can be loud and brash, when it comes to stealth, there is nothing better than him. Crouch and Edward can easily get lost in the elements. Nearly every space offers a lot of opportunities for players who prefer stealth over combat. High perches, tall grass, hiding spots, and other elements offer Edward plenty of options to take the sneaky route. Unless scripted, every mission can be completed in stealth or a head-on approach. Pressing R3 allows you to enter the eagle vision, which shows enemies behind walls and allows you to mark them in order to track their movements and places to craft the perfect stealth approach.
The difficulty of both stealth and combat depends on your chosen difficulty for each of these aspects. Instead of offering unified difficulty settings, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced offers a different difficulty setting for stealth, combat, and naval battles so you can adjust the difficulty based on your skill level in each of these aspects. On lower difficulties, enemies are more forgiving; they will take longer to notice you, and their sense of attention is also reduced a lot. Similarly, for combat, lower difficulty means that you will deal more damage and take less damage. You will also find increased health and ammo pickups in the world. Increased difficulty results in increased alertness by enemies; they will hit harder, and it will be difficult for you to sneak around as enemies will quickly detect you if you come into their sight.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a visually gorgeous game. The original game looked excellent for its time as well, but in 2026, the remake stands out from the recent releases thanks to its insanely detailed water and land. You will instantly notice how well the water is designed in the game. The waves, their depth, and how it reacts to your character and the massive ships moving through them. You will instantly notice the small details about how the water splashes at any object running through it. Since you spend a lot of time in the seas, it makes sense that Ubisoft has put so much effort into making the water so highly detailed.
The reflections on the water look amazing, especially during sunsets. During tornadoes and extreme weather conditions, the water becomes heavy, and the ship will start to struggle to steer around. The water not only looks good, but it feels heavy and daunting as well. The water is not just a visual eye candy in the game. You have to respect its flow and go along with it, because otherwise, you will end up damaging your ship by hitting waves at odd angles. If you think the water’s surface looks beautiful, just wait until you dive into the water because it looks like something straight from a National Geographic documentary on the oceans. Vast coral formations, bustling sea life, and ecosystems greet you underwater as you dive deep looking for shipwrecks and lost chests. What makes it even better is that you can dive anywhere on the whole map. Simply stop your ship, jump off it, and dive underneath to start exploring the depths of the ocean.
Coming to the land, the game is equally beautiful. The jungles are lush, and the dense foliage reacts to your every moment through it. On the islands, you will find tall palm trees with long elephant ears below them, rustling with tall grass and other pretty plants. Ubisoft has done an amazing job in choosing and placing down plants and trees that are natural to islands and Caribbean areas in real-life. This dense foliage also expands to other areas such as plantations, smaller towns, and settlements. Move to main cities like Havana, and you will get that traditional Assassin’s Creed feeling as you jump from one roof to another connected with platforms, brick walls, and cobblestone streets. The lighting and reflections play a vital role in creating such visually striking locations.
Despite all of this, the real beauty of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced lies in its smaller details and how the world feels like it moves on its own. During a quiet night in the game, I was trying to find a treasure chest on a small, isolated island when I heard explosions in the distance. I looked over to the sea and saw that two Spanish brigs had engaged a pirate ship. This battle engrossed me so much that I just stood there watching as the three ships battled in the distance, water sloshing around them, causing the waves to come to the shore, the reflection of fire in the water, along with shells launching and attacking the ships. That quiet moment was suddenly filled with so much action that I had not anticipated at all, and when the battle ended, I was smiling cheek to cheek. That little treasure hunt turned into a full cinematic experience of visual beauty and game design of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.
There is no online in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, but it does come with visual microtransactions. You can purchase and equip visuals for your clothes, weapons, Jackdow, and even your pet. Apart from that, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is also a part of Ubisoft’s Animus system, where you can collect its symbols in the game to unlock exclusive content in the Animus Hub. The game also presents the Animus menu at the start, from where you can choose which Assassin’s Creed game you want to play. These were not present in the original title, but since Ubisoft is now implementing a timeline sequence for all titles, it makes sense that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is now part of the Animus Hub as well. This is worth exploring because it features Rifts, exclusive missions that offer not only narrative context to the main game but also some ‘What-If’ scenarios.
Coming to the technical aspect of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the game runs like butter. Despite my playing it entirely on a laptop, although a fairly powerful one, the game has excellent optimization and performs optimally. I do not remember a single time when the game dropped its frames due to ongoing activity on the screen. Even during massive naval battles when I was fighting to destroy multiple Spanish ships during a nighttime raid, the game ran smoothly. The same goes for its audio. However, I did encounter a single crash during my 60-hour playthrough for this review.
I felt the same way playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced as I felt back in 2013 when I played the original Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I remember falling in love with its ship combat, its combat mechanics, the open world, and how the game actually made us feel like actual pirates. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced brings all of that back while making things even better this time around. The new additions do not pile up and make any of the original mechanics feel bloated, and nothing feels out of place. Everything fits in naturally to the point that you would feel like it was already in the original game to begin with.
What impressed me most, even after all these years, was just how much freedom Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced gives the player. At almost any point, I could ignore the main story, set sail in a random direction, attack merchant convoys, hunt legendary ships, dive for treasure, search for forgotten islands, or simply let the sea carry me while the crew sang another shanty. Very few open-world games create such a convincing sense of adventure. Even fewer remakes manage to preserve everything that made the original special while improving it in meaningful ways. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is one of them.
Related News:
- Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Confirmed Steam Deck Verified Ahead of Next Week’s Launch
- Ubisoft Partners with The Longest Johns to Turn Black Flag Player Reviews into a Sea Shanty
- Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Announces Treasure Hunt with a Massive $500,000 Reward
Final Verdict:
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a remake done right, and I will praise Ubisoft for handling it this way. It is not just a visual treat but adds new mechanics in nearly every aspect of the game to expand it properly and immerse the player even more in the world of piracy. I can easily say that there is no other game ever made that captures the true essence of being a pirate. Even Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones does not come close to it, and that was a proper game made for pirates. Whether you are a long-term Assassin’s Creed fan, an old Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag player, or a new player just experiencing this brilliant franchise, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a gorgeous remake that will keep you occupied for hours. This is Ubisoft gold.
Final Score: 9.5/10
Disclaimer: A PC Ubisoft Connect review code for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced was provided by Ubisoft for this review. For a detailed breakdown of our scoring and review process, please refer to our Review Policy.
