Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 10 Years Later (but not quite) 

This game might be the truly last time I was totally in love with this series. Every release after had *something* that slowly wore away at my fandom.

This game gave me one of the best "boss fight" experiences I've ever had. I'll never forget wandering too far south on the map and stumbling into the HMS Prince's territory. Fog rolled in out of nowhere, I couldn't see anything, then this massive man-o-war emerged from the mist and my crew said "It's a ghost ship, come from the underworld to sink us!" I was sufficiently intimidated, and got my butt kicked.

I remember getting this for Christmas. I was so excited, in fact my dad and uncle bought me it, so I had two copies, lol… I’m grateful to my family filling my childhood with happy memories and amazing games like this

Released on my birthday, turned 12 and it was my first assassins creed, fell in love lol

The last truly amazing Assassin's Creed game. I miss the days when this game was my life.

Literally playing AC4 right now

First Assassin's Creed I ever played. I cherished every moment of it.

I think of black flag like origins. I like most of the game play elements, but the story is the real driver. The first time I ever finished black flag I was literally tearing up as Anne Bonnie was singing The Parting Glass at the end. As much as I would love to be an assassin from the get go, Edwards struggle to understand what it means to be an assassin takes sacrifice and lots of time. It’s very satisfying when everything comes together

My intro to the series. My dad used to let me and my brother do the harpooning activities and watch him play the game. I was shaking with excitement when one day he said "why dont you give it a shot". Loved the series every since. 🤭 and finally getting my blades today! Ill always love the earlier games with all my heart. Now ill get to show the support for the creed😂

First assassins creed game I played and made me fall in love with the series I will always cherish this game. 9 year old me even cried at the ending

This genuinely is their best plot and set of characters to date. The game has many issues, specifically in gameplay, but I’m not gonna lie, Edward was way more interesting and compelling than previous protagonists (no need to say later protagonists as well). Like you said, the story wasn’t just a retelling of historical events, and unlike the other modern games it’s not painfully linear. Events happen sporadically with time as the world moves, it’s not checking off a hit list like todays AC, it’s lots of different clashing groups and individuals over a large space and long time. Edwards situation of being pulled in not 1 but 3 directions is crazy and well played out. His conflict between being a pirate, aligning with the assassins, and seeing much of his world being taken as his kind are offered pardons, it’s just crazy. He’s not perfect and he’s very flawed but nuanced and his growth is believable. I miss that. Tired of boring ass character driven by 1 simple emotion or singular goal. Edward was massively challenged by the world and become stronger and wiser. I love this game man.

I started my 8th playthrough of this game last week. Still one of my favorites.

Dude releasing amazing videos time and time again.

Keep up the good work Fizhy! Really been enjoying (and binging your vids)

Got the platinum trophy the other day. Definitely top 3 assassins creed game in my opinion

I’m close to replaying this as I’m going through ac 3 right now!

Good video, dude. The game is flawed but I still love it. I like the locations. I like the characters. This is one of the only games in the series that actually feels mature. Like, the characters are believable in their situation. In other AC games like Syndicate and Odyssey everyone feels like a cartoon character.

Just found your channel through a random recommendation and i rly hope you get more attention

Recently replaced it and it still is absolutely golden.

If Black Flag didn’t have an amazing story and protagonist on the one hand, and the best pirate mechanics on the other, it would probably be amid 3 and Syndicate as one of the subpar AC games that doesn’t hold up to the legacy. The base gameplay is nothing to write home about, the modern day is forgettable at best, the combat is often frustrating in choosing flashiness over competency and the mission design is often abysmal - how many tail and escort missions can you do in one game without going insane? But we are in luck that Black Flag had some of the best writing in the series. Edward is arguably the best and most well written protagonist in all of AC, his character arc, side characters and story are phenomenal to witness and analyse even today and the way it blends the pirate life with his new Assassin’s Creed is sublimely performed. Likewise, the ship mechanics and mini games are some of the most fun you will ever have in a video game. Sailing, fighting ships, boarding, building your fleet, no pirate game on its own has ever accomplished the feeling that Black Flag did. So it’s not a perfect game by any means but when this game wants to be phenomenal? It’s absolutely capable of exceeding that standards with some of the best writing and atmosphere we’ve ever seen from any game, let alone any AC or Ubisoft game. It is a must have and I look forward to it every time I get to replay it.

Hey perfect video to watch for my 16th birthday, thanks Fisz, gonna play AC4 later

Amazing video

Bouta cop this one, look forward to playing it

Literally started a new game yesterday :D It's one of those games I replay every year

Replayed it not long ago. It's still incredible.

I finished this game not to long ago and it’s such a fantastic game. The story is super emotional and it is able to be a pirate and assassin story. Edward is one of the best protagonists in Assassins Creed and is my personal favourite. Edwards story of redemption and becoming a better man is very compelling. The open world is vast and it gives you a free feeling. You can hop on your ship and explore anywhere you want. The side activities are really fun.

this one was an excellent game, i'm cuban and when i see the cathedral and the habana environment blow my mind, great job. i really enjoyed it, of course now days we have more elaborate games but this one was good. I enjoyed the diferents environments in this game: underwater, castles, ships battles.

Unpopular opinion: I like tailing missions. I think the idea of tailing a target for additional information or to track their whereabouts seems like one of the most assassin-like things you could do.

I'm still replaying it to this day. It's just the best AC game and they've been chasing that high ever since

Actually just replayed this a few weeks ago myself and it's still goated imho

Ac4 was my first exposure to the great story a game can tell and for that i fell in love with it, i can still remember the moment i tracked down the last fragment collectable on some tiny island only to receive no hidden trophy for 100% lol

Fucking love Black Flag. Always said it was a great pirate game with AC roots. Edward was a great and fun protagonist too. Loved the ship system. Coulda been longer though, it's a very short game.

Great video and I agree with nearly everything here. Especially with the Modern Day story. It's like they didnt exactly know where to go after Desmond and backed themsevles into corners. I would have liked to go jnto the animus as William Miles for a game to honor his son's legacy. But they wanted to introduce new ideas and didnt know how to do it. I didn't hate the modern day, but seeing where it went from there is so frustrating. I'm playing Revelations right now for fun and it's interesting to see the decisions they were making then that they fleshed our or dropped by AC4. And yeah, tailing in this game was ridiculous.

100% it 4X since 2020 and taken several trips to the Caribbean because of it. It is truly a masterpiece (imo)

I remember playing this game when I was at the tail end of secondary school. Love the Caribbean setting and Edward Kenway was a fantastically written protagonist, with Mark Ryan doing a phenomenal voice performance for Edward. I honestly wish Assassin's Creed 3 wasn't a thing and that (narratively) this game was a sequel to AC Revelations instead

the ending song parting glass was great for the game in my opinion

This was the first AC game I played. I love it

I was late to the AC hype and was always doing catch-up when playing these game, but each one of them takes a while to 100% and I always had moments where the story was just too much to follow in detail, so I always had phases where I didn't bother with the series for some months/years. I now played through all (main) AC's *besides* Unity (played maybe 10% of it), Syndicate, Odyssey and Valhalla and now seeing Black Flag footage, I know I played through the whole game, but I still get the feeling that I forgot 90% about it and could play through it again and it would feel like I have never played it before lmao...There's just so much content in all these AC games, I keep forgetting things.

Black flag literally pulled me back into AC after kinda getting bored with them. Imo it's by far the best AC game ever But just to clarify I never really cared much about the modern day bits in the AC games. Black flag was just the most fun AC game I can remember playing

Assassins creed 4 is still a phenomenal game I love it

Black Flag is so old that it released back when games would have different release dates in different regions if you remember that being a thing. I remember some games taking up to 1 week to release in the UK after the US.

This was my favorite ac don’t crucify me for saying that, I spent countless hours at sea cuz I didn’t want the story to end, 3 felt like a social studies class but this was a damn adventure the whole time the islands changed the feel of it which is probably one of my favorite things about the game, the scenery the massiveness of the world damn it was great, when Blackbeard died I’m playing and screaming Blackbeard nooooooooo!!! 😢

Black flag was my first AC game

I got this free with Xbox Live Gold a year or two after its initial release and made me fall in love with the series

The first Assassin's Creed game I ever played. I have played every other game in the series since than.

It just felt great being a pirate in a videogame

What might've helped Black Flag's modern day is to make the first person character an actually character in the next game. They could've done that by, for example, starting out in first person perspective but then zoom out in third person due to some circumstance of the character, revealing the character to the player and building her up from then on through an intriguing modern day storyline. And there, stealth and hacking would be the core of the modern day gameplay in many sequences as she can't fight (yet) or do parkour, culminating in a gripping escape or fleeing sequence at the end which leads to her being rescued by the Assassins.

The way you can publish long and well thought out videos in such a quick manner is quite impressive. What is your opinion on assassins creed unity? It was in an xbox one bundle, so I knew nothing of it. It was the first one I played, although I saw a complete playthrough of black flag some time before. Despite playing half the game waiting for the boat stuff to appear only to realize it was not going to happen, I enjoyed the story and the French atmosphere. My only complaint that I can remember is that the death of female interest was predictable beyond belief. The moment they set foot on that hot air balloon I new she was going to run of to do something really stupid and get herself killed. That pissed me of a lot. Completely scripted. I dont believe she would do that, the writers forced her to do that so they could have their desired outcome. I remember liking the DLC too, although the only thing I remember is it having a massive axe or some other weapon. I also remember the protagonist mistaking some girl with the late female interest, which made me hopeful for half a second, before remembering how annoyed I was that she died for the plot, and that the writers wouldnt bring her back. Probably for personal reasons.

More on the modern day stuff in AC - I really thought that they would move the story from having to use the Animus to actually setting the game in "present day" ... which could have been achieved with Watch_Dogs but Ubisoft (as always) screwed that up. The idea of the Animus for Desmond was to help him gain experience to become a skilled-assassin himself, not just to find the pieces of Eden or the vault or whatever, yet his skills are never really used IRL. Imagine having Watch_Dogs with the modern-day assassins and the AC games used to find past info, that feeds into W_D ... the story writes itself ...

This dudes opinion DOES NOT MISS!!

My two favoutite AC games are black flag and AC2...😁

My favorite assassins creed tbh

🔥🔥🔥

Hey, what are your thoughts on the rumours that Black Flag is getting a Remake and Codename Red will be the last game that follows the Origins formula

I loved this game, just got frustrated with some aspects of it like tailings missions and some naval tailing too.. Other than that, it's a 10/10

a nostalgia pirate adventure once again!

Black Flag is by far my favorite AC game. It was just fun and the pirate/ship combat was great. I do find it funny that people at the time when the game came out were complaining about "new mechanics", and "the game has taken a bad turn". Now, it's hailed as one of the best AC games ever. It is. It's the one in my opinion. ALL the aspects of an AC game plus the ship combat was phenomenal. fight me.

My opinion I love black flag more than Rogue and 3 ❤

Edward really needed a second game

I just finished it yesterday. What are the chances?

I remember 2013 coz of GTA V Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag The Last Of Us

Black Flag he becomes the Assassin at the End.

Played it for the first time over march and June and once it was done I felt lost knowing Kenway's fate. Leaving the animus then heading back in and suddenly it was the last cutscene was a bit jarring though. I hated the diving parts, cant deal with getting attacked while trying to move in water

For me, the series died after AC Unity. People slept on this game when it released due to the bugs and performance issues, but holy hell the PC performance now makes ACU my favourite title to date, followed by the Ezio trilogy.

What do you think about the leaks of the remake?

Can you no longer 100% black flag? I have a PC version and the whole Kenway's Fleet thing doesn't work anymore and some content required for 100% is locked behind it. Any advice? I don't want to have wasted so much time on uncharted collectables

At the end of june it was announced they are either remastering or remaking assassin’s creed 4.

I liked this video, but I'm not sure what the point of 10 years in the title is. You reviewed the game as usual

I still remember fighting La Dama Negra, HMS Prince, HMS Fearless and Royal Sovereign and finally destroying that fucking El Impoluto

GTA San Andreas also came out on the 29th of October.

Best Game Ever

Still think it’s one of the funnest ac games.

I would give so much for a remaster of this game

Bruh i started my black flag playthrough 2 days ago

Still one of my favorite Assassin's creed games. The navel stuff while repetetive was something people really loved and have been crying for an actual pirate game that does the same and more ever since. Ubisoft in their infinitely negative wisdom decided we just liked pirates so anything will work and stripped most of what people loved about it to try sell us some trash where we can't get off our ship except for certain areas, can't board or sword fight, and grind resources by sitting by the shore holding a button while numbers go up. Then they couldn't even do that right, is anyone still even interested in that game if it ever comes out? Keen to see the "remake" of Black flag I've been hearing about. I seem to be one of the few who really liked Odyssey, including it's own navel stuff. Played it even more than Black Flag, though that was mostly because Odyssey had a lot of stuff to do on land as well. I would love to see a game with Black Flags piracy and sea exploration expanded while also having nice cities and lots of stuff to do and explore on land.

Gameplay = my favorite in the entire series -- mainly because of the open-world sailing. Protag = I was actually very meh on Edward for most of the game, as I found him not very interesting as a character... until near the end. If I remember correctly, there was a dream sequence in which Edward has a conversation with his wife. Ed seems to be aware that he was dreaming, but that didn't stop him from pleading his wife to let him see his Caribbean adventure through to the end. At one point he yelled something like, "I need to do this! Please! I need to know... I need to know what I'm made of. What kind of man I am." Edward indicated that he knew he was a screw-up, a pompous buffoon, with get-rich-quick schemes, flying by the seat of his pants, going through life without a plan, that made it exhauting for his friends and loved ones to put up with him. Yep, the tailing missions. All those tailing missions! Seriously, what were the devs thinking? XD Thank you for making this here vid. It was great to think about this game again. It's been TEN years already... I'm old. XD

thats why i changed his outfit to a pirate look until i became an assassin

I played this few weeks ago. Such a summer vibe isn't it. Hasn't aged a day. Except the combat which was always pretty crap.

"Smuggler", a funny word innit?

Lmao i just downloaded it yeaterday 😂

The 2nd best AC game only behind 2.

Oh your not boring if anything I disagree with your take on God of war 2018 I would love to talk to you about it with you

The gameplay and systems they made were fantastic and would’ve been fine but the problem is that between 2007-2015 they released 9 AC main platform games, 10 if we count Liberation. Way too much over saturation and it made the system feel repetitive and stale way sooner than if they had staggered those games out over 10-15 years-which would‘ve been 2022. I think the yearly releases took a toll on writing as well-first few games seemed like they had a plan and coherent vision, which showed in the story, characters, and cohesive narrative thrust but by 2013 I think trying to keep up year after year was too much and the story suffered greatly. They killed off Lucy and then Desmond and then Sean and Rebecca basically disappeared so you just killed off or flushed away your core cast of modern day characters everyone was growing to love and then lost track of your own plot trying to keep up, so now you have to insert these literal nameless first person NPCs as your modern day story player characters to try and buy time for other ideas, because your story department can’t keep up with quality story writing at this pace-shockingly, quality story isn’t as easy to just replicate relentlessly like textures or game assets (if Ubisoft hasn’t figured that out yet, they never will.) It’s really a shame, but it demonstrates how the profit motive can ruin creativity and quality in creative media rather than enhance it. Of course, dipshit gamers will just whine about diversity or some other batshit stuff instead.

To me Black Flag is where the AC series peaked. It went all downhill from there. To this day it's one of my favourite games of all time, the favourite AC game and Edward is my favourite protagonist.

My favorite AC game... because it's the least AC game in the series lol. It's a pirate game first and an AC game way way way second. I'm not a fan of the series at all after playing many of the games, but I love this one. Really wish Ubisoft would come back to the naval engine in the game and just let the devs make a straight up pirate game. I feel like the devs pitched this game as just Black Flag and Ubisoft was like "yeah that's cool and all but let's make it an AC game so it'll sell." Seems to me that most of the AC games at this point are that way, it was gonna be a totally different game but then the AC brand gets tacked onto it.

After the mess of AC3 , Black Flag was fantastic and i dont think a better game has been created since this game, the open world, the naval side, some parts were boring but in general it was fun to play, who didnt enjoy going on a mass pirate spree, taking down man of wars, taking on the legendary ships which i found to be a pain in the ass but fun, Origins was ok, Odyssey was ok, Valhalla was shockingly bad, by far the worse AC created and im praying it stays that way. I’ve played Black Flag over and over, along with the Enzio trilogy the rest are not worth the hassle, although i am hoping for a ps5 remake of AC , I know its not going to happen but i can dream. I have a few games installed on my ps5 and Black Flag is one of them as I’ve started a new game a few weeks ago, something to keep myself busy, it’s not like ill ever be playing Valhalla again! Black Flag is worth it!

Gamers are in the enviable position where they have Grand Theft Auto 6 (wow..), Starfield, Black Flag remake, Red Dead 1 Remake, Witcher 1 Remake, Fable 4, Witcher 4, Mass Effect 4, Mafia 4 all on the horizon being worked on now, or releasing very shortly. All on the way ..

I'll always remember the day I bought this game because I got it with Wind Waker HD. Two sailing games in one day!

its going to get a remake so we can dream of having the tailing missions to be less (notice i said DREAM)

The modern day could've lead into something but it doesn't really do anything same with rogue but though Hi they kind of had the right idea they just fumbled really

Hey dude MrBossFtw is using Strange Man’s Content and urs u need to report him for that like ur RDR2 content

This was my first AC game I Truly played. I remember I played AC 1 back during its PS2 release but found it boring after a couple hours. Never played again... Until, I had been consumed by PotC movies, games and history in general. One day, saw my youngest bro playing some pirate game on his PS3 tearing apart ships, boarding, looting and sailing to the next poor victim in some beautiful rich game world... He told me the name, I purchased on my 360 along with the Freedom Cry DLC.. Cried like a bih at the games end with "Parting Glass" 😢. Black Flag and Origins are the only AC games worthy of my time and money well spent. Odyssey was meh after 10hrs so I quit. Valhalla is set in England... I'm from England... England's boring... Viking or not 😒

AC 4: great. Star Wars Episode 4, A New Hope: great. COD 4: great. Battlefield 4: great, according to what I know. Any others?

Was about to replay this, however Ubisoft in their never ending quest to fuck this series to death updated the game and broke full screen on PC. Thanks Ubisoft!

AC Black Flag was the best assassins creed.

Honestly don't get how u can like this n not like odyssey or especially Valhalla..as I think Origins n Valhla r far and away the best games of the series

With all due respect, do you realise "Naval" is an adjective?

I always hated the modern day plotline trying to link the historical gameplay to a greater narrative ever since I first rented AC1 from Blockbuster. It just took me out of the setting, took me out of the story, and felt like much ado about nothing. Feeling like it was very much going for the LOST storytelling method of "be mysterious and vague while you make it up as you go." Why can't we just have the historical setting? Why do we need this clunky and ill-conceived framing device? As for AC4. I remember fondly enjoying the game... yet when I tried replaying it recently, I was immediately bored of the game. That's a me problem though, as I find some games I used to like just aren't as enjoyable as they once were. To be young and easy to please again. And free of the burdens and stresses of adulthood.

Why are you so down on yourself

Hey Ethan I love you so much Ethan you’re the best Ethan ❤️🥰😘 please play AC Odyssey coop with me Ethan 😍💞🤷🏽‍♂️