As you know I have Assassin's Creed IV. I played every game of the series, so Assassin's Creed IV couldn't lack. The reason that my review is late is that I had to think quite long whether it's good or not and my game has an bug which doesn't let me finish the game.
The pirate theme is very anti Assassin's Creed I think. Pirates are violent criminals, while assassin's are sneaky and honourable. Ubisoft combined those aspects very good I think. There are a stealth mission which are just as good as in any other Assassin's Creed game, and there are action packed, pirate style missions. The missions are another problem for me. The missions are nearly always one of these: stealth mission, a chase or a naval battle. You can choose to start a fight while playing the stealth mission, but the missions are so often the same. The chases were always boring in any Assassin's Creed game I think. In this game there are more of them, and they are also longer, which annoys me very much. The stealth missions are very good, but there are too much of them, so later on I chose often to start some battles with enemies. The naval missions are good. They are full of action and they are challenging, but not too much. The secondary objectives are still present, but they are more easy than in Assassin's Creed III.
The naval part of Assassin's Creed IV is excellent. Sailing works good and is most of the time not boring at all, which I feared because of the huge map. Only the long distances are not too much fun, but you can choose to make those more fun by attacking ships which pass by. When battling a ship you can choose to destroy it or to board it. When you board ship you need to kill enemies, the bigger the ship, the more you need to kill. At the largest ship you also need to do a little missions, for example two kill officers or destroy the flag. After you killed enough people you won and the goods of the ships are yours. These battles are fun to do and they reward you with goods, which can be used to upgrade your ship, the Jackdaw.
The cities have a very different layout, Havana is a classic city which is perfect for freerunning. Nassau reminds me very much of New York from Assassin's Creed III. Kingston has much more nature between the buildings, which makes it a city like Lexington from Assassin's Creed III. Besides the cities there are also tens of islands and settlements to discover. What I miss is a big natural area like the Frontier. Of course you can find collectibles on these locations. There are Animus Fragments, chests, letters, manuscripts, song sheets, treasures maps and Maya stones. Animus Fragments only help you to reach 100%. The chests give you money, the letters give you information about personal lives, manuscripts give background information and song sheets give you texts. Treasure maps are more exciting. When you found one you get a drawing and a coordinate. When you go to the coordinate you can find a treasure somewhere around the coordinate. Maya stones let you solve a puzzle and then you can find a stones. When you have them all you get an outfit.
The weapons are much like the other games, but you have a blowpipe in this game, just like in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. You can shoot sleep darts, berserk darts and lethal darts. The berserk darts are often fun to use because the enemy which was hit will kill other enemies. You don't have a bow, which was very useful in the other Assassin's Creed games because it's lethal and fast. In this game you don't have one, but two swords. This is very unrealistic, but gives the opportunity to many cool moves. You also have multiple pistols, between two and four pistols. To get more ammo or pistols you need to craft items with animal hides. The better the upgrade, the harder it is to kill the animal. This system is basically the same as in Far Cry 3. Hunting is a not as good as in Assassin's Creed III. You don't have bait and a bow, which makes it not very tactical. Harpooning sea animals is possible now. When you found a whale or a shark, you can start harpooning. When harpooning you are in a little boat and you need to throw harpoons at the animal. This is a fun activity the first few times, but after several times it gets boring.
The final part of my review is about the bugs. At first I thought there weren't as much bugs as in Assassin's Creed III, which satisfied me very much. After a while the first bugs starts to occur. The first annoying one which I had didn't let me counter. When an enemy attacks there is a red dot shown above their head. When you see it you need to press a button to counter. Sometimes Edward doesn't counter even if I press the button. Later on enemies became sometimes invisible. They are shown on the minimap, but I can't see them on the locations indicated on the minimap. When I attack the invisible, they suddenly appear. Especially in stealth missions this is very annoying. The worst bug of them all appeared in mission two of sequence nine.
Minor spoilers ahead. After sneaking through the first area I needed to enter a little settlement and kill two targets. The first time I heard their voices, but they were nowhere to be found. After 15 minutes of searching through the area I gave up. One day later I tried again, same problem. The third time, same problem. This glitch is known, and patched at day one, but that didn't work for me. Currently I'm still stuck at this point, so I can't tell you about the ending.
I think Assassin's Creed IV is a good game, but Ubisoft made many small mistakes which are summed up quite a big problem. The missions are often fun, but they are too repetitive. The naval part of the game is amazing. Cities are nice and different designed and there are many collectibles to find. The weapons are good, but I miss my bow. Hunting isn't very good anymore. Sadly the game has some very annoying bugs which stop me from having fun.
Written by: WZ
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