After the fairly decent AssCreed3, and considering the many positive reviews for this game, I made the mistake of having slightly higher expectations than usual. This unsurprisingly led to some disappointment (yes, sadly going against the trend in most other reviews). But once I recalibrated my expectations to "standard AssCreed fare", it was not too bad.
The story is messy and silly. It has some good parts but most of it is mediocre - overall not as good as AssCreed3 in my opinion. I have the suspicion casual or younger gamers may like it more. It sorely lacks atmosphere when compared to games like Dishonored or The Witcher or films like 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. The script is full of plot holes (even more than usual). Half of the game is fairly serious and makes some sense, but the other half is silly and does not make any sense. This inconsistency harms immersion. The main character is decent, but does not quite have the charisma of Ezio or Haytham from previous games.
The missions and gameplay built on the story are very bland and repetitive. Almost any potentially interesting story scenario is reduced to a handful of copy-paste follow/sneak/kill/eavesdrop gameplay designs. It seems like the devs were slightly lazier than usual - AssCreed3 missions were far from perfect, but still seemed slightly more varied and hand-crafted.
The difficulty balance of the gameplay is poor. AI detection feels arcade and inconsistent. Stealth areas are severely overpopulated with guards, meaning you are forced to look at the minimap all the time to have any chance of avoiding detection. If you don't reload checkpoints often, open combat is nearly inevitable, which in turn is far too easy. This makes trying to play stealth frustrating, because the odds feel unfairly stacked against you, and it is always so much easier to just fight and kill everyone. But fighting gets boring quickly - you just spam attacks, then counter when prompted, and repeat that indefinitely.
The sandbox gameplay has been brought to the fore, but like the main missions, it is very arcade, bland, and repetitive. The open world is large, but most places all look the same. Compared to AC3, there seems to be slightly less content overall, though still more than enough. The problem is a lack of quality, not quantity. Still things like naval battles and boarding enemy ships are novel for a while and work fairly reliably, which is more than can be said of naval battles in a Total War game (Shogun II etc). The sea shanties (songs) are a nice touch, and possibly the single best feature in this game.
Graphics are the best yet for an AssCreed game, and the first in my opinion to just about match those of Crysis 1 (released 6 years earlier). The water out at sea looks particularly good. The visual quality does not hold up everywhere though - quite a few ugly meshes and textures here and there. The default settings are poorly optimised - you need to manually tweak the settings to get the best visuals while keeping the FPS high. Ship physics are decent and must feel amazing to the average console peasant, but if you have an eye for realism and have been on a real ship, it still leaves much to be desired. Your 150-ton brig behaves like it has the mass and manoeuvrability of a modern olympic racing yacht combined with the stability of a modern river ferry (complete with bow thrusters). You can sail straight into the wind with no speed loss. Enemy ships also handle like powerboats. In some ways the sailing physics were more realistic in AC3 - you could not sail into the wind, and it felt slightly more natural, though admittedly less reliable (momentarily flying ships etc).
PC controls are as bad as usual. They are not game-breaking, but they do work against you - I messed up a lot of missions because my character would do the wrong thing like randomly climbing a wall. A few times just before successfully capturing a huge enemy ship, I would fall from a mast to my death due to glitched controls. The checkpoint system has its usual annoyances and reloads sometimes caused technical problems like missing quest items (requiring quiting to desktop and reloading). I encountered more bugs and glitches and generally rushed content here than in any previous AssCreed game.
Overall, for me, AC4 is a mediocre AssCreed game that wasted a lot of potential. It is not a "bad" game, but it does not deserve any of the hyped reviews.
The story is messy and silly. It has some good parts but most of it is mediocre - overall not as good as AssCreed3 in my opinion. I have the suspicion casual or younger gamers may like it more. It sorely lacks atmosphere when compared to games like Dishonored or The Witcher or films like 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. The script is full of plot holes (even more than usual). Half of the game is fairly serious and makes some sense, but the other half is silly and does not make any sense. This inconsistency harms immersion. The main character is decent, but does not quite have the charisma of Ezio or Haytham from previous games.
The missions and gameplay built on the story are very bland and repetitive. Almost any potentially interesting story scenario is reduced to a handful of copy-paste follow/sneak/kill/eavesdrop gameplay designs. It seems like the devs were slightly lazier than usual - AssCreed3 missions were far from perfect, but still seemed slightly more varied and hand-crafted.
The difficulty balance of the gameplay is poor. AI detection feels arcade and inconsistent. Stealth areas are severely overpopulated with guards, meaning you are forced to look at the minimap all the time to have any chance of avoiding detection. If you don't reload checkpoints often, open combat is nearly inevitable, which in turn is far too easy. This makes trying to play stealth frustrating, because the odds feel unfairly stacked against you, and it is always so much easier to just fight and kill everyone. But fighting gets boring quickly - you just spam attacks, then counter when prompted, and repeat that indefinitely.
The sandbox gameplay has been brought to the fore, but like the main missions, it is very arcade, bland, and repetitive. The open world is large, but most places all look the same. Compared to AC3, there seems to be slightly less content overall, though still more than enough. The problem is a lack of quality, not quantity. Still things like naval battles and boarding enemy ships are novel for a while and work fairly reliably, which is more than can be said of naval battles in a Total War game (Shogun II etc). The sea shanties (songs) are a nice touch, and possibly the single best feature in this game.
Graphics are the best yet for an AssCreed game, and the first in my opinion to just about match those of Crysis 1 (released 6 years earlier). The water out at sea looks particularly good. The visual quality does not hold up everywhere though - quite a few ugly meshes and textures here and there. The default settings are poorly optimised - you need to manually tweak the settings to get the best visuals while keeping the FPS high. Ship physics are decent and must feel amazing to the average console peasant, but if you have an eye for realism and have been on a real ship, it still leaves much to be desired. Your 150-ton brig behaves like it has the mass and manoeuvrability of a modern olympic racing yacht combined with the stability of a modern river ferry (complete with bow thrusters). You can sail straight into the wind with no speed loss. Enemy ships also handle like powerboats. In some ways the sailing physics were more realistic in AC3 - you could not sail into the wind, and it felt slightly more natural, though admittedly less reliable (momentarily flying ships etc).
PC controls are as bad as usual. They are not game-breaking, but they do work against you - I messed up a lot of missions because my character would do the wrong thing like randomly climbing a wall. A few times just before successfully capturing a huge enemy ship, I would fall from a mast to my death due to glitched controls. The checkpoint system has its usual annoyances and reloads sometimes caused technical problems like missing quest items (requiring quiting to desktop and reloading). I encountered more bugs and glitches and generally rushed content here than in any previous AssCreed game.
Overall, for me, AC4 is a mediocre AssCreed game that wasted a lot of potential. It is not a "bad" game, but it does not deserve any of the hyped reviews.