Freedom Cry is an expansion to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and a pretty promising one at that. It takes the framework of Black Flag and tosses us into an additional campaign that has a grim and emotional premise. It's a narrative about slavery, liberation and taking back your freedom. And while solid as a premise, the execution hinders the weight and potential of this personal expansion.
The reused framework immediately makes Freedom Cry great on a gameplay level. The mission design is solid, combat is still decent but unpolished and the naval gameplay is a bit more streamlined but still mostly compelling. What takes a hit is the world design. It's fine for an expansion to not have a large or similar sized space as the base game, but the map or world in Freedom Cry doesn't really leave much of an impression. It lacks interesting landmarks and just feels a bit shallow. At least the side content is pretty decent for an expansion of this size.
The story and overall campaign is good, but I feel like it needed more focus on fleshing out certain aspects. The horrific nature of slavery and the themes are there and pretty well done, but the story kind of lacks a compelling arc. The characters aren't all that fleshed out and there's not much emotional connection to them. Most of the plot also focuses a bit too much on the antagonist's escapades - but struggles to make a memorable or compelling antagonist, while also not making any interesting or worthwhile connections to the slavery aspect in this regard.
The story also tries to implement other narrative aspects to the story that really don't feel important - irrelevant plot points & weak attempts at characterization - and rob the potential that Freedom Cry's narrative could've had.
The atmosphere and soundtrack of Freedom Cry is beautiful, though. With slave ballads and hymns, mixed in with beautiful orchestral production. The atmosphere of Freedom Cry is somber, which really gives the world some sort of emotional depth.
Freedom Cry is a solid expansion that feels a bit lost. It's got some great narrative potential and could've done with some tweaks of the campaign's design. For a 3-4 hour campaign, Freedom Cry is good enough as a quick slavery tale, but not as a good fleshed out slavery tale.
