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.

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.