AC Black Flag breaks a bit with the characteristic scheme of the Assassin's Creed saga, to become, a decent pirate game. It is an action game, with a fast pace that personally reminds me quite of AC Liberation in terms of combat simplicity, shallow plot, and story with many fronts so that there is hardly time for characters' introduction or to enjoy their murders. All this takes us far from the level reached by AC III, but it gives us a lot of gameplay in a completely unique environment: the seas. More than half of the game is spent sailing, and here, Ubisoft has done a wonderful job to avoid it from becoming monotonous and to fill the aspect of game with new missions and possibilities. I'm not going to say that I was passionate about crossing the waters and assaulting enemy ships, it is not what I expect when playing an Assassin's Creed game, but I must admit that they have managed to make it entertaining. All the mechanics of the game are very well developed, being the first Assassin's Creed divided into areas of lesser or greater difficulty to which you gain access as you progress through the game. The "role-playing" side that we usually find in Assassin's games has been quite reduced, mainly limiting itself to the improvement of the ship, which makes the game even faster and less immersive. However, the game is long, and if you want to entertain yourself by collecting all the different collectibles out there, you are going to need a lot of hours.
In any case, the bottom line is that this is a pirate game fitted into the Assassin's Creed universe. Desmond Miles disappears, and the entire "contemporary" side of the game is severely depleted, adding very little to the Abstergo vs. Assassins story, and still leaving many doors open.
Normally I don't pay much attention to the audio of a game, but in this case, there are two important points to note: on the one hand, the excellent soundtrack, as well as the pirate songs, which both manage to make sailing on the high seas much more pleasant. On the other hand, the voices that fill the streets and squares, as well as those of the main characters, leave much to be desired. Ubisoft usually paid a lot of attention to this aspect, but in Black Flag we will have to hear modern Spanish in the golden age of piracy, even with phrases too modern to fit in that historical context. The same is probably happening with Portuguese, as well as with Italian, a language that did not exist as such at the time and that is surprising to hear from time to time among pirates. English has been more careful developed and even the letters written at the time show a more archaic English.
Finally, the quality of the menus is quite limited, at the level of AC Liberation, when it was expected to be more polished and user-friendly.
In short, a very entertaining action game that, although it does not manage to contribute much to the Assassin's Creed universe, it is worth playing it and putting yourself in the shoes of the pirate Kenway.
