When rumors of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced began to circulate, I was of two minds. Black Flag is still my favorite of the Assassin’s Creed series — I’m a sucker for a pirate game, and I would’ve taken even the flimsiest excuse to revisit Ubisoft’s take on the genre.

But the later entries in the Assassin’s Creed series have left me wanting. I was worried that, in an effort to “modernize” or worse, “expand” Black Flag, Ubisoft could wind up doing away with what made it so special: that perfect balance between stealth, naval combat, and exploration that keeps its massive open world from feeling bloated.

It’s not a perfect adaptation, with lots of bugs and a relative lack of friction, but it is undeniably fun, and it’s far and away the best Assassin’s Creed I’ve played in years.

The Best AC Has Ever Looked

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Black Flag Resynced looks incredible. From the vibrant cities to the churning sea to the dense jungles, every inch of its massive open world is arrestingly gorgeous. Assassin’s Creed has always excelled when it comes to spectacle, and this is no exception.

The visuals (and audio) create a sense of immersion that touches every single aspect of the game, but is especially prevalent during the sailing sections. Each time I set out on the water, I felt a fresh sense of excitement and adventure as I watched my ship careen over the waves. I’ll let my screenshots speak for themselves.

This is thanks not only to its greater level of detail and improved draw distance, but also to Resynced‘s lighting. The way the bright Carribean sun dapples on the water, filters through leaves, or reflects blindingly off the sand, contributes to a stunning sense of realism. That goes double for the underwater environments, which are also beautifully lit and richly detailed with colorful coral and reactive sea life.

When it came to exploring new islands, it wasn’t the promise of treasure that drew me in (and there was plenty of that), but the desire to see more of the world. Running into new animal species, solving a new parkour puzzle, or discovering a forgotten shipwreck — these were much stronger incentives.

What’s New In Resynced

Perhaps Resynced‘s biggest gameplay change is the expansion of stealth mechanics. Where the original game only allowed you to crouch in tall grass, here, you can crouch anywhere, and you unlock certain sneaky combat tools like the rope dart significantly earlier. As a result, sneaking around in Resynced feels less like solving a puzzle someone else laid out for you, and more like a true sandbox where you can experiment and use the methods that work best for you.

Flexibility is a theme in Resynced‘s gameplay changes, but that’s not always a good thing. Certain missions — namely, the original game’s tailing and eavesdropping missions — have been expanded to include alternative pathways to completion. If you get caught while you’re supposed to be stealthy, you might have to win a quick fight, or lose an enemy pursuit to continue.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the eavesdropping missions in the original Black Flag were the bane of my existence. It’s simply not fun, interesting to follow an NPC in any video game, and since getting sighted would cause an immediate desynchronization, these missions often felt like chores between the game’s bigger set pieces.

That said, the new approach can make certain sequences much too easy. If I got caught during a tailing mission, I would simply tag the enemies using Eagle Vision, throw down a smoke bomb, and run away. They’d then retreat directly to the mission target, and I’d be able to follow their silhouettes back to their secret Templar hideout without a moment of thought or strategy.

Much like the original tailing missions, these aren’t really fun or interesting — but then again, neither is getting desynchronized and having to start the whole mission over from scratch. Still, there must have been a happy middle ground between lengthy, boring missions with near-infinite opportunities for failure and instant, frictionless completion, and I don’t quite think Resynced has stuck the landing in that regard.

Also, in an effort to increase flexibility, Black Flag Resynced has greatly expanded your options for hand-to-hand combat, with artful dodging animations and special moves that allow you to throw your enemies off-balance or kick them backward to give yourself some breathing room. Enemies also now have a sort of block meter à la Sekiro: once you deplete it, you can usually perform a flashy takedown that finishes them off instantly.

It all looks very nice in trailers, but in practice, it’s awkward and underwhelming. Normally nimble, Edward Kenway is slow and clumsy when he has to fight hand-to-hand. The lock-on system is finicky, and the camera angles make it difficult to keep track of entire mobs at once. Attack animations are long, the parry timing window is short, and there’s no way, at least not that I know of, to cancel an action once you’ve begun it.

This normally wouldn’t even move the needle in an Assassin’s Creed game: stealth is, and has always been for me, the main attraction. But it comes into play more often in Black Flag, where boarding ships and whittling down rival crews are core mechanics. Plus, some missions seem to have been redesigned in order to force you into melee confrontations, which just made them more frustrating.

As for naval combat, you’ll find it largely unchanged. That was the right choice: the original Black Flag did it just about perfectly, and the remake faithfully recreates it. The controls are complex enough that you feel the weight of your ship while maneuvering, but switching between weapons, aiming, and firing is as simple as pointing and shooting.

The biggest addition here is the introduction of alternate fire modes for most of your main weapons, like short-range incendiary shot for your broadside, and a double shot mode for your chase cannons. These undeniably give you more options (again, flexibility), but they’re not totally necessary. Still, I was glad to have them, if only because they were fun to play with.

The same can be said of parkour. While there are a few new bells and whistles, it’s by and large the same as it’s ever been for the series. The controls are appropriately snappy, and traversal is intuitive enough without detracting from the feeling of complete control over where you’re going. I did run into some bugs with weird collisions (more on that in a moment).

The main story of Black Flag Resynced is barely changed. Still, I have to give it props as one of the most distinct Assassin’s Creed stories: it eschews lengthy exposition and drops you straight into the action, with your ship and assassin’s uniform unlocked within the first couple of hours.

There’s a lovely cast of colorful, real-life pirate characters. It all centers on Kenway, who, in an interesting departure from the norm for AC protagonists, spends the entire plot in disguise as an assassin, a pretender to their order. The contrast between his roguish charm and his lofty ambitions makes him a worthy hero.

This is all bolstered by the addition of new content in Resynced: an extra postgame chapter, and some more extensive character development for side characters like Blackbeard and James Kidd. There are also three new mission chains that allow you to recruit new officers for the Jackdaw, each of whom unlocks new naval combat abilities, and collectibles that let you unlock virtual currency to spend on cosmetics, if you’re into that sort of thing.

In addition, there are a handful of extra sidequest chains and new islands to explore. The underwater environment has been significantly expanded, allowing you to dive anywhere and find extra treasures. All the new content was all well executed, although none of it felt totally necessary to the overall setting and story.

That said, Black Flag Resynced‘s open world is, as a whole, excellently conceived. It’s been a while since I could find the patience within myself to tackle a massive open world game, but Resynced snapped me out of my funk.

I think it’s the quartet of sufficiently deep main game mechanics — stealth, sailing, exploration, and parkour — that make it work better than similar open-world games, many of which have a single main mechanic flanked by a plethora of underdeveloped side activities.

But it’s hard to create a world this vast without running into a few issues. Bugs were rampant, and, although rarely game-breaking, they did put a damper on things sometimes. Enemy and NPC AI would sometimes seem to fail, breaking immersion and making some fights way too easy to win.

It also happened quite often that I was caught on objects in a wonky collision, causing Kenway to take a weird path around obstacles and, at least a couple of times, get spotted by guards when I was trying to be stealthy. Once, I got stuck inside a treasure chest and had to wiggle the thumbstick around until I popped out. I suspect many of these things will be resolved by early post-release patches, but there’ll probably always be at least a few bugs.

For all its flaws, though, Resynced succeeded in one way I never thought a remake could. It made me feel like I was playing Black Flag for the first time again: I felt the same joy and excitement upon rediscovering its world and reacquainting myself with its core mechanics as I did way back in 2013.

More than anything, I was struck by how incredibly well-balanced Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced still manages to be — not necessarily in difficulty, but in scope and variety. There’s truly something for everyone here. First-time players have a great new experience ahead of them. Returning players will savor their return to the Caribbean while marveling at just how fresh and new this remake feels. I know I did.