100 percented AC4

[xt1me]

So I finished Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag.

I've gotta say it is infinitely less frustrating than the previous game. In all honesty there was only actually one point I had to really Google and that was one of the animus pieces in Kingstown. This is obviously a well-known issue to anyone who played the game because the first thing that came up when I googled it was a video basically saying 'if you're looking how to get an animus piece chances are it's this one'. The Kingston area is a lot of animus pieces that require weird jumps you don't usually need in the rest of the game but this one piece required holding down a button so the prompts change and then pressing the button jump straight up, something not only do you never need in the in the entire game but also something you'd probably miss even if you're mashing every single button trying to figure out how to make it work.

That said that really is the only one place I can think of that it feels like you have to Google to figure out what to do.

There were some frustrating bits like hidden chests that seemed to be awkward to get to and trying to find some of the buried treasures but I never actually ended up needing to resort to google for them.

 

I can see why a lot of people like this game very playable. It's not a bad introduction to the series if you haven't played previous ones and, of course, pirates. You know that's always fun.

Main plot is fine, it went along steady pace if you wanted it to. I took my time to 100 percent it 'cause I wasn’t in a rush, so my run though of the plot was interrupted quite a bit by side quests.

I will say it does appear that I am not the only one who was immensely frustrated but the fact that 100% in AC3 required breaking the entire premise of the 100% mechanic in the first place. Because, in this game, if you do the optimal path on the missions chances are you would 100 percent without even realizing it. Which makes so much more sense. In fact if you follow the prompts sometimes it can make your job easier, such as finishing the last guy off with an air assassination or something. You can still sometimes miss the prompts 'cause you're focusing on other things but it's not too hard. It does appear Edward’s a lot more stealthy than me though, because the amount of times that to restart things because I got detected was pretty high. But at least I could actually do it and I wasn't tearing my hair out. No missions where you don't have to get hit thank God!

 

The optional extras things that used to be thief and mercenary missions and the like in the previous games was just a list this time. They're pretty easy as well. By the time I was mostly through the game and decided to pay attention to the things it turns out I had pretty much done most of the missions just by pure happenstance. The exceptions being the rope darts, which is a late game addition so I had to actually work to complete that one.
Headshots, mainly 'cause I just really wasn't aiming at headshots any point during the game but it didn't take too long to finish that either.
The disarming and killing the quick guys with their own weapon one was a bit annoying because it's not obvious that you can only have one knife at a time and it has to be their knife that you throw at them. I probably could have figured it out myself eventually but I did Google that so whatever.
The community chests you have to share was a bit annoying because, obviously being an older game now, none of the multiplayer features are really working. Plus, there's like, 60 different possible places that these chests can pop up and most of them are in individual islands in the middle of nowhere on the map so kind of annoying. when I was playing the game normally  I only actually came across one the entire time. I ended up looking up just a couple of places I would remember the area of and decided I was going to just check them every day I logged in and see what turned up. I expected it to take a while but instead it only took a couple of days. Thankfully I only needed to find three of them so that was fine.

The last thing was the gambling mini games. They were technically all different forms of checkers. It was annoying.
Checkers I know how to play, the four man’s Morris and whatever that other one is was irritating. I did look up they how to do these and it turns out the best thing to do is basically find the easy ones and then look up an online game and set the AI to challenging or whatever the highest difficulty is and then make the moves that the computer is doing. Basically pitting one AI against the other. I kind of get the feeling the Assassin's Creed AI is a lot better than the ones you get online because I tended to draw a lot of the time and when the mission is to win a certain amount of money from these games drawing doesn't get you any thing. So that was kind of frustrating, got in the end though.

Nothing game breaking 'cause that was all optional stuff so that's fine. No real bugs that stood out although it is kind of funny when you're in the middle of a cut scene and you see a boat drop out of the sky or bob up from the middle of nowhere in the water.

 

Modern day plot is bonkers as usual. I was initially worried about having to hunt all over the place for those sticky notes (although I did think it was cute for them to do to have the sticky notes to mirror the messages in the bottle you could find in the main plot) turns out I shouldn't have worried. If you just keep an eye out during all the modern day parts you can find the most of the sticky notes pretty easily. The hacking mini games weren't so bad either. Bar that weird frogger one, I just tended to button mash until I solved it. I didn't actually have to really think or figure out them at any point which is just the right amount of difficulty really for something that I had to do on 33 computers snce wanted to be all completionist about it.

 

That said first person POV.

As nauseating as usual.

 

I understand why. After killing off your main protagonist and player POV character from the last games you need something. And if you don't have a character to fill that place just having it be first person is a great shortcut to having to make up someone new. Why bother with the pretense at al I guess.

But I hate first person POV.

At least this time there weren't any stupid jumping puzzle platform things so I didn’t constantly feel like I was going to throw up.  It's just walking around the office, which I can handle.

if you're interested in the modern day stuff they had a bunch of neat little Easter eggs in those hacking mini games so that was fun. Totally not needed for anyone who didn't care about them so that was a good idea on their part.I did mean there was no reward for getting all of them though.

 

The ending it was good. The modern day plot point where you're still working for Abstergo and handing things off to the assassins seems well enough. Wrapping up the main plot also works pretty well. If you've played the previous games you obviously know it's not going to last but it comes off more poignant than kick your teeth in depressing like the last one so all in all that's pretty good.

Like I said I can see why a lot of people like it, it's a very playable game. Slight pity I can't 100% the swords and pistols because community challenges no longer work but that's what happens when it's an old game you're playing and there's no longer any multiplayer support. Though I wish they wouldn't had made it part of the main game though because it really annoying to have something sit there almost complete knowing you'll never actually be 100%. But whatever it's fine.

The art you can buy to decorate your house, in fact the house you can upgrade and the rest of the island seem more superfluous in this game than any other. The only thing you really need to worry about is your ship, and the money never really came into it, just the supplies. Maybe because I took my time to get all the treasure chests but I never really needed to worry about it.

 

Oh, and one last thing. I really wish I could have speed up the battles in the Kenway’s fleet part (what replaces sending assassins’ on missions in this game since you’re not a mentor here). If there is a 100 % change of winning the battle why do I have to sit there doing nothing for the whole thing?
Oh and speaking of speeding things up, I would have really appreciated if the button to skip the cut scenes actually worked for all the cut scenes. For some reason I could nwver skip the end cut scene & when you're redoing levels for the 100% that can get a bit annoying.

 

Ok that enough complaining.

 

I got Liberation with this game as well so I think I might play that next. I might take a break after that from the main games and have another go at the platformers. I've done the China one, I've got the Russian one and the Indian one to go.
EDIT: It turns out I didn't get Liberation I just got a few levels of Aveline, one mission really, that was more of a demo.
I actually have Freedom Cry so I'll be playing that.

 

 

The 15th year anniversary is coming up and they've got a new game coming out and those other games in the pipeline. Considering I'm working my way through all the Assassin's Creed games I'm not actually all that interested to be honest. But hey, probably by the time I make it up to those games I'll be more invested. We'll see.