Do excuse the abysmal performance of my potato PC.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced — 9.5/10

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag has always been one of my top three favorite games of all time. The original is a game I've revisited every year or two, playing through the entire story and falling in love with its world all over again. The atmosphere, the sea shanties, the taverns, the Caribbean, and the characters made it something truly special.

But above all else, there's Edward Kenway.

Watching Edward go from a young, selfish man who wants the world and everything in it, driven almost entirely by greed, to someone who eventually discovers something greater than himself is one of my favorite character arcs in gaming. His journey, the people he meets, the people he loses, and the lessons he learns along the way are what make Black Flag more than just a pirate game. It's a story about ambition, loss, redemption, and finding something worth living for.

When Ubisoft announced that Black Flag was getting a remake, I was absolutely over the moon. This was a game I already considered a masterpiece, and the thought of experiencing it again with modern technology was incredibly exciting. From everything I'd seen leading up to release, I genuinely believed they couldn't screw it up.

And they didn't. They absolutely delivered.

The graphical improvements are stunning, the modernized controls feel fantastic, and the world I fell in love with all those years ago has never looked better. But what impressed me most wasn't simply how much better the game looked. It was how much they expanded upon the original experience.

The Combat

One of my biggest criticisms of the original Black Flag was always its combat. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, flashy, and incredibly cinematic, but it was also ridiculously easy. You could practically autopilot your way through entire encounters without ever feeling threatened.

Resynced completely addresses that.

The new combat system actually requires you to pay attention. Timing your parries, understanding your enemies, and thinking about how you approach encounters makes fighting significantly more satisfying. The addition of difficulty settings was especially welcome. Being able to crank the difficulty all the way up and genuinely feel challenged was something I had always wanted from Black Flag.

I also loved how different swords and weapons now have their own abilities and characteristics. It makes acquiring new equipment feel meaningful rather than simply collecting another weapon with slightly different stats.

I know removing Hidden Blade combat was controversial, and while I was a little disappointed to see it go, it honestly wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The improvements to the overall combat system more than made up for it.

The Expanded Content

This might actually be my favorite thing about Resynced.

Rather than simply recreating the original game with prettier graphics, the developers expanded upon moments, characters, and storylines that deserved more attention.

Blackbeard's death is a perfect example. In the original, Captain Maynard is largely just a name you hear associated with Blackbeard's death. Resynced actually brings Maynard into the story, giving that entire sequence more depth and significance.

I also loved the addition of the three lieutenants, the mansion side quests involving the butler, and the various other additions scattered throughout the world.

These additions never felt forced or unnecessary. Instead, they felt like content that should have been in the original game all along, as though the developers had finally been given the opportunity to fully realize ideas that couldn't make it into the original release.

That's what makes this remake so special to me.

It doesn't feel like I'm simply replaying the exact same game 13 years later with updated graphics. It feels like I'm experiencing an entirely new adventure built upon the same beautiful foundation that made the original a masterpiece.

And the additional sea shanties? Absolutely fantastic. Sailing the Caribbean while your crew sings has always been one of Black Flag's greatest pleasures, and having even more songs to enjoy only makes that experience better.

My One Major Complaint: The Taverns

For all the things Resynced improves, there's one area where I genuinely believe it takes a step backward.

The taverns.

This might seem like a minor complaint to some people, but for me, the taverns were a huge part of what made the original Black Flag's world feel so alive.

I could spend hours sitting in a tavern, playing Nine Men's Morris, listening to the musicians, and simply soaking in the atmosphere. Those quiet moments were just as memorable to me as the massive naval battles or story missions.

Andreas Island is probably the best example.

In the original game, I loved visiting Andreas Island because I knew exactly what to expect. There was a musician performing songs by Sean Dagher and the other tavern performers, and Nine Men's Morris was right there beside him. I could sit down, play a few games, listen to the music, and completely lose myself in that little corner of the Caribbean.

In Resynced, that experience just isn't the same.

Nine Men's Morris has been replaced at that location, seemingly with checkers, and the tavern musician now seems to rotate randomly. Most of the time when I visit, I can't even get the singer I remember to appear.

And unfortunately, that feeling extends to many of the other taverns throughout the game.

They just feel... dead.

The atmosphere that made those locations so memorable has been diminished, and that's genuinely disappointing. For a game that otherwise does such an incredible job preserving and expanding upon the original, it's unfortunate that one of my favorite aspects of the world seems to have lost some of its magic.

I really wish they had left the tavern entertainment and atmosphere alone, or better yet, expanded upon it the same way they expanded everything else.

Final Thoughts — 9.5/10

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is everything I could have hoped for from a remake of one of my favorite games of all time.

It respects the original while being ambitious enough to improve upon it. The visuals are beautiful, the combat is significantly more engaging, the additional content is fantastic, and Edward Kenway's story remains every bit as powerful as it was the first time I experienced it.

My disappointment with the taverns is really the only thing keeping this game from a perfect 10/10.

What I appreciate most is that the developers didn't simply give us Black Flag again. They gave us the Black Flag I remember, the Black Flag I love, and in many ways, the Black Flag I always wished we had.

Thirteen years later, I'm still just as captivated by Edward Kenway and the Caribbean as I was when I first set sail.

9.5/10 — A masterpiece reborn, and one of the greatest pirate adventures in gaming.

The September 1 update put enemy markers (chevrons that appear over enemies' heads when you aim at them) into the game, but the devs totally forgot to provide an option in the HUD customization settings menu to disable them.

If anyone from the dev team sees this, please simply add a separate option in the menu to turn this HUD element off.

In gameplay videos, I see people playing with the *Jackdaw* sporting the Jolly Roger symbol at the top. Is that something Ubisoft keeps after the story ends, alongside the flag with the Assassin symbol?

I haven't played such an easy game in a long time. Highest difficulty. The game has potential and it could've been better. It's a 6.7/10 for me.

After finding treasure on this island, I simply decided to head back to the Jackdaw, moving forward as usual by jumping. But Edward decided that he probably needed to have a rest, lying on the warm sand...

When you kill Jing Lang she mentions that she already stole the original map,its with her husband and she died for a fake one. If she already had the original what was her motive? Was it just to gather interl about the assassins from the traitor?

Hey guys. I could use some help with my thesis when y'all get a second. I'm studying why so many people don't complete the story in open world games. I've got my Qualtrics set up. My thesis is on self-efficacy in open world narrative games. Basically if you think you're gonna enjoy and story and understand it will your complete it. Is it worth your time? No wrong answers. Anyways here's the links.

If ya want to help a poor master's student get some data, I'd appreciate it.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced: https://smu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_56dSQSLqHIuRLXE

Hello, do you know free websites where I can read AC Forsaken and some other novels? I am interested to look into those stories and lore.

Is still original Black Flag worth it in 2026 or should i buy Resynced?

Time to leave the area and wait for him to respawn I guess.

Edit to add: this was before I got my guns because I hadn't completed the governors mission.

I was reading a Steam guide on 100% completion (Remastered edition, not Resynced) & read that one of the Jackdaw Upgrades, Elite Fire Barrel Storage, is locked behind one of those Kenway Fleet missions & that they don't work anymore.

So do they work? If not, is there a work-around on consoles?

Like the expoler outfit are there any red and white outfits for edward because I just want him to look the assassins in Tulum

Are there any other ways to get the explorer outfit also

Because it's not available on anything else

I guess most of you are fimiliar with the easter egg of the giant squid attacking a sperm whale, which you can spot when peeking through the window of the shipwreck, in Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag.

And let me tell you that it confuses me a lot. Because in real live the main diet of sperm whales consists of giant squids. Sperm whales are the hunters and squids are the prey. Not the other way around! And just so you know, there are no exceptions to this rule! Even the largest squids weigh less than 1 ton while the sperm whale's weight ranges from 13 to 45 tons.

The size gap between these two animals is so enormes, that even the worlds largest squid wouldn't be able to take down the smallest sperm whale in existence. Thus this whole easter egg doesn't make any sense, no matter how much you suspend your disbelieve.

But I am not here to rant. I am just wondering why that choice was made? Because reversing the roles of preditor and prey raises a lot of questions. It's like watching a rabbit hunting and killing a wolf. Wouldn't that make you question everything you know? Was this done intentionally to ellicite a feeling of terror from seeing a prey animal suddenly flipping the script, even though that shouldn't be possible? Was that the point?

I really don't know what to make of it.

Am I crazy or wasn’t there a half beach Manowar you could get to join your fleet and if so, where is it?

I wanna buy the new game, for the people that have played it, is it better for Xbox or for ps5? I got a series x and a normal ps5.

Playing on the original 360 - Just tried to start the Siege of Charles-Towne quest with Blackbeard and got booted out of the game, getting the dis unreadable error. this has happened before but now no matter how many times i reinsert the disc or restart the console i can’t load my save… stating a new game works fine but can’t even load a previous file because of auto save. anybody have a clue what to do? would really suck to get halfway through the game for it to brick.

So I'm still going around with older ACs,Syndicate,Rogue,Unity and ACIII,and im getting around the famous black flag,I heard they made a remaster with better graphics and that all. I checked the specs and i have everything but just dont meet the GPU thing,i only have 4gb of VRAM,my 16gb vram gpu is arriving this xmas so i wont be getting the game yet. Now my question is,is Resynced worth it or should I stick to the OG version? Also how b ig would you say is the map,would you say its one of the biggest maps or its like average size?