This remake is a rather fascinating one on paper. You could say the idea of a Black Flag remake sounds "pointless" since one could argue that it plays "well" even know but I'm not sure if you could really say that about the original game. The story is good and is easily one of the series' better tales, many aspects of it's gameplay especially combat and stealth weren't that great even back then. A modernized version of the game does sound it could help make an okay game, a solid one.
Since I already praised it, the story especially for a franchise that has some characters I geniunely loathe(Ezio Auditore and his entire cast of characters) is surprisingly good. It was rather obvious that Ubisoft was trying to make a more "likeable" lead character again after the divisive if not outright negative reception Connor had at the time of Assassin's Creed 3's release. It worked here since while Edward Kennway is a charismatic lead, he isn't so likeable to the point where he can come off as someone who could never do any wrong or is always right like Ezio was.
For one, Edward starts off the game as someone whose broke and down on his luck and the interesting part is that his wife Caroline doesn't really seem to mind as long as he has him. Edward wants to change his down on his luck status and become more of a made man. He resorts to piracy and throughout the story, that slowly starts to become less of a viable option. He's becomes obessesed with the "Observatory" and he thinks that will get him out of that status. What really sells me on the story is how it can almost at times come off as a deconstruction of the AC series. Where Edward like the audience doubts the significance of the Creed but the more the story goes on, he becomes more accepting of it and views it more of a guide to help him out in life.
It's how all this happens throughout the game and how it feels like a journey is what sells me on the story. How Edward starts off as a no good greedy pirate to trying to make amends for all the wrong doing he did. It's kind of like the first Assassin's Creed with Altair but Edward Kennway has more of a clearly defined backstory this time.
The gameplay itself while certainly an improvement over the original game is nothing overly exemplary. With that said, an improvement is still an improvement.
You have an actual crouch button now instead of the stalking zones of the original game. So now, stealth feels like something that is actually possible. That does depend however since much of it can a game of getting to bush to bush and especially abusing the whistle feature and having enemies getting close enough to you to those said bushes to kill them. The only real way to be caught during these sections is if Edward kills a guard but he doesn't conceal himself and the dead body in the bush right away.
Since stealth in the original game wasn't really a high standard even for it's time with games like Splinter Cell Blacklist releasing the same year, this can be overlooked. I would prefer to have easy but doable stealth than having no crouching button and sprinting to bushes.
The frequent tailing missions are thankfully gone now. I don't mind a few tailing missions but the main story missions of the original game relied on them a little too much.
Combat is also better and arguably seen the most improvement. For one it's counter based and it's not nearly as easy to go on a chain killing spree and wipe out an entire small army. You need to parry and also guard break into order to effienciently kill enemies now. You can guard break through sweeping, kicking into walls, using Edward's guns, smoke bombs can help thin out the herd too. The only issue with combat is that the counter window can be very finicky and some bosses like Roberts can take an insane amount of damage to kill. I had to lower the difficulty here.
I'm describing the on foot combat a lot here but why is it that? For all of Black Flag's reputation of being a "great pirate, bad Assassin's Creed" game tends to be. That can be rather false. Many of the main story missions tend to be the on foot AC affair. Only a couple of the story missions at the most tend to involve the Jackdaw or anything sailing the high seas. Since this is the case, I'd rather put ship combat to easy and occasional get materials to loot to upgrade the ship due to infrequency of story missions that involve the Jackdaw.
Another massive boon this remake brings is that the modern day portions have been completely removed. So no more annoying pace breakers or reimagining plot points that never went anywhere like Juno dying in a comic book.
Overall, this remake did what it set out to do. Pick the AC game that isn't too fundamentally difficult to overhaul and refine that game. It's a decent game, now more of a solid one and is one of the couple games in the series I enjoy.
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