Yes the combat did change since Bro’Hood. Improved. Damn. Gotta get my yarr back on! <boots up BlackFlag>
I’ve also been absent from the series since Brotherhood, though I’m a little more critical of the combat. It may be improved, but 1) it’s still not as good as the Arkham games 2) I want to be pirating. Right now trying to hurry through the story missions so I can get my ship and enjoy the reason I bought the game.
While I agree that the modern day stuff is on the whole detrimental, AC4’s version is at least mildly amusing. I got some chuckles out of their self-deprecating meta-jokes (“We need more lies in this trailer!”), and the Frogger minigame is alright.
I purchased ACIV off of Origin for $20 back in their sale. ACIII pretty much soured me on the whole franchise; ACIV brought me back in a big way. The expanded naval combat itself is worth the price of admission.
So I just sailed to Nassau. Slight spoilers ahead for the early game.
I just can’t believe they made this game. I guess I thought it was going to be an Assassin’s Creed game, but it’s way, way more like Sid Meier’s Pirates!. As I’m sailing around after doing the “go hunt on the island” mission, I’m thinking "wait, are these ships from different nations patrolling around? Then I realized, due to the previous escape mission, that I can probably board all those ships, and shoot them. Then I go to the map and zoom out and realize holy cow, this is a big part of the Carribean, including Cuba, that I can explore. It truly is an open world pirate game. It’s the game I thought Pirates! should have been all along, with a pretty decent on foot combat system, a ship to ship combat system, waves that can capsize you, storms to avoid (maybe, not sure if that was just scripted or not), islands to explore, treasure to find, all that piratey stuff. I accidentally also read there are underwater wrecks to explore, whales to hunt, and all kinds of awesome stuff. What a treat!
As soon as I got to Nassau I started running around the island, completely ignoring the story and just exploring. This game is beautiful, and broad, and a joy to play. I kind of wish I had bought it for PC or gotten a PS4 for it now. If this is what the next gen holds, count me in!
Yep, AC4 is a better Pirates! than Sid Meier’s, no doubt about that. They did have a lot more money and hardware to play with, though, and the extensive foundations of the previous games.
Storms or at least those huge waves and water devils seem to occur randomly, in addition to the scripted stuff.
Yeah, it’s a shame that they gate a lot of things behind story progress, but sailing the briney blue is mesmerizing.
I hope at some point we get another game like this but better. Honestly they could really now take the framework and make it a giant actual pirate rpg that has nothing to do with AC and it would be a gift to us all.
AC4 is pretty great. It’s not quite as varied as I’d like, though. There’s only like 5 types of ships, for example.
Modding would bring a lot to this game, but of course Ubisoft doesn’t believe in modding.
Wait till you hear the shanties. That’s the best part.
Glad you are liking the game ElGuapo. Imo the best AC, precisely because it’s only half a normal AC, the other one is a Pirates! game, with an AAA budget. Still, once you play for 30 hours, the simplicity of the systems (it’s all ankle deep) and the repetitiveness of the missions and several jobs will get to you.
I stubbornly lost like 2000 rial trying to win that boardgame where you take turns placing checkers last night. Damn I am bad at that game.
FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! stupid uplay cloud thingamiebob ate my savegame! and i was damn fucking near done! FUCK! bakc to square one.
I just bought this in the Steam Summer Sale for half price, and got to play an hour last night - MAN this is awesome! And it runs beautifully as well with most settings on High.
Can’t wait to dive back into this tonight!
I picked it up too and have been having a blast. It’s my first AC game to boot. I wound up doing all the activities in Havana before doing any of the starting missions which gave you the tutorials on how to do all the missions lol. Really enjoying it so far.
So I’ve been having a blast hunting down random ships, captured my first frigates even, and trying to break in to various well defended areas is fun. For example the Cayman Sound has 2 gunboats and a frigate in a very small inlet. Trying to break into there, while severely underpowered, was a blast. I’m only doing missions so that the upgrades for the ship get unlocked.
That said it feels like there is a section of story omitted during the early stages. Kenway talks to various ship captains, and it just seems there was supposed to be something more about Nassau. Several times Kidd talks about the federation of Nassau, but it’s jarring since you never get any sense of anything in Nassau. It’s just sloppy writing is all, they easily could have had something in Nassau to explain a bit of the pirate federation there, or they could tighten up the writing so that it feels less like you’re missing something. It’s not just that scene with poor (or cut) writing, but it is emblematic of what I’ve seen in the story so far. Moments and scenes that could be interesting running aground through poor writing or missing scenes.
Still I’ve quite enjoyed it. Dashing in and out of a major naval battle between British and Spanish Man-o-Wars picking off smaller ships while a storm rages is a blast. Easily worth any annoyances just for that.
Only game I’ve ever bought the soundtrack for.
Yeah, a lot of the AC characters interact without bothering to fill the audience in on anything, but since it’s history, you can find out more:
http://www.republicofpirates.net/AboutBook.html
The Black Flag story is pretty terrible, though, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much.
Yeah, I’ve noticed. The real shame of it is that there are some hooks for a really good story to be told. In fact it wouldn’t take much to work the story structure into something spectacular. A little self awareness into how terrible and/ or stupid both the assassins and templars sound would have gone great. Have the pirate federation act as a counterpoint, and voila. It’s just a shame how close they get to having something interesting, only to veer into stupid in a hurry.
That’s basically the Ubisoft plot MO, game after game after game. It’s a shame, but I’m pretty numb to it at this point.
The historical background story of all those pirates is automatically added to the in-game library. Prepare for a lot of reading!