I loved the original Black Flag back in 2013. After the wobbly Assassin's Creed 3, it reminded me why I fell in love with the open-world, parkour-focused stealth series in the first place. While that nostalgia was enough to carry me through Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the hundreds of hours of familiarity with the classic has also left me feeling like this ambitious remake – while good enough fun – missed the mark at truly living up to my memories, even while it tries very hard to be a faithful remake.
I detail some of this to what some might call an exhaustive degree in my full Assassin's Creed Black Resynced review – how removing some story and mechanical elements flatten aspects of the original, how the updated combat changes the pace of play, or how there's dissonance between enhanced stealth detection system and still very simplistic enemy AI. For the many ways it tries to remain as faithful as possible as a remake, it can trip over itself with what it changes, with each update that works for me matched by another that just feels off as a fan of the original.
