AC Black Flag Resynced Preview: The Same, But Mostly Better

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag exists at a strange crossroads. While it still contains plenty of DNA from the first few Assassin’s Creed titles, it pivots to a focus on seafaring gameplay and delivers the franchise’s first stab at a gigantic open world. For many fans, it remains the peak of the series, but it’s also an oddly shaped game with plenty of room for improvement. Cue Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, a remake intent on accentuating the same core experience with some upgrades.

Screen Rant went hands-on with several hours of Black Flag gameplay at a preview event in San Francisco, and the experience revealed a lot about what fans can expect from Edward Kenway’s return. For dedicated fans, the updates might be the perfect incentive to return to the Caribbean. For the smaller camp of skeptics, they might not be enough.

Black Flag Resynced Adds A Lot Of Shine

Like the original Black Flag, Resynced‘s gameplay begins with Edward Kenway swimming to shore. Like the original, he finds himself on a sunny tropical island, lush with greenery. Like the original, the ensuing chase and combat are typical Assassin’s Creed fare, leading up to a narrative hook that charts Edward’s course to Havana.

In all of this, the difference that presents itself is, unsurprisingly, the graphics. Black Flag‘s opening island was always lush, but it’s now sparkling with newfound detail and variety. I’m often skeptical of graphical overhauls in remakes, which frequently sacrifice the original atmosphere or bespoke lighting. In this case, it’s pretty safe to call it a general improvement, though with a caveat.

Black Flag was always in a bit of an awkward spot visually, sacrificing the softer look of Assassin’s Creed 3 but falling far short of the next-gen heights achieved a year later in Unity. Resynced, on the other hand, takes advantage of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ technical feats. From rocks that finally go beyond flat textures to new weather systems wreaking havoc on the seas, the Caribbean is more alive than ever before.

This does mean that finding the right spot to climb a rock wall can be a bit tougher, but that’s a reasonable price to pay. If the graphical overhaul has any rough spot, it’s in the presentation of the characters, who are now at the whims of more variable environmental lighting. Sometimes, they look fantastic. At other times, something around Edward’s eyes just isn’t quite right, and it’s easy to long for the original game’s stylized shadows to return and do the heavy lifting again.

Parkour & Combat Feel Very Different

Gameplay in Havana revealed another pleasurable uptick in detail, and the city feels as bustling as you’d like any good Assassin’s Creed hub to be. It also revealed the depths of Edward’s parkour abilities, which have been overhauled, in greater detail. After years of struggling to please both casual players and freerunning enthusiasts, Black Flag Resynced has a good handle on how to split the difference, moving more technical moves like back ejects behind options that can be toggled on and off.

At the same time, Black Flag Resynced‘s revamped parkour loses some of its original weight. Edward moves faster and jumps higher, and while the difference isn’t huge, his increased acrobatics feel a bit less natural. Some players might find the uptick more fun, but I do mourn the days when each assassin’s animations and move set felt consistently bespoke.

Black Flag Resynced‘s parkour changes don’t reinvent the wheel, but its combat does. Brawling through Havana, boarding ships, or raiding outposts is an entirely different experience, as Edward now has to treat each enemy as an individual threat. Although it’s not as punishing as getting into open combat as Basim in Mirage or Naoe in Shadows, there’s a layer of strategy to dispatching foes that wasn’t present in the original Black Flag.

Like everything these days, Black Flag Resynced adds a greater emphasis on breaking defenses and dodging and parrying attacks. The most interesting change is a system of adaptable enemies. If you successfully spam heavy attacks on one guard, his compatriots are likely to block them more effectively. It makes a real difference in practice, and it successfully prevented me from becoming complacent in any fight.

If you’re good, it’s still possible to deal with enemies in a fluid and efficient manner. Finishers can be chained, taking down combatants in quick succession. A quick pistol shot is often efficient, Indiana Jones style. The preview didn’t provide an opportunity to try out every weapon in the game — although it did reveal that you can’t grab enemy rifles anymore — but if it’s anything like Shadows, different weapon types should play out in very different ways.

Ships & Stealth Have Their Own Tweaks

Outside of Havana, a good chunk of the preview combat focused on ships, which feel a bit more familiar. Naval fights also come with some changes in weaponry and mechanics, but if you were good at sinking ships in Black Flag or Rogue, you shouldn’t have any trouble here.

More of Black Flag Resynced‘s added content also presents itself on the seas. The Caribbean is dotted with new points of interest, meaning that it’s easier to break up long sea voyages with small stretches of side content. In the scope of the preview, it was tough to get a feel for how much of a difference this will make in the overall game, but I’m hopeful it could address some of my traditional hang-ups with Black Flag‘s overall structure.

The final core pillar of Assassin’s Creed is, of course, stealth, which also borrows a lot from Shadows. Crouching is an active input this time, not a passive response to entering underbrush, and enemies seem fairly alert on the whole.

I bungled things more often than I expected, especially while getting used to the revamped control scheme. Making a mess, however, doesn’t mean that Edward has to give up entirely. Instead of desynchronizing after messing up a tailing mission, Edward can now deal with the guards that take notice, shifting the course of gameplay instead of cutting it off entirely.

Resynced Is Still Black Flag

Overall, most of Black Flag Resynced‘s changes feel like improvements. Virtually everything mentioned above adds a bit more depth and complexity to the gameplay, and even the UI revisions result in something less intrusive (and borderline insulting) than Black Flag‘s original HUD. Ubisoft has learned a lot since Black Flag, even if later games have lacked its magnetism, and a lot of it is coming into play here.

None of this substantially changes the character of Black Flag, though, which might be exactly what fans want to hear. Despite tinkering with plenty of details (and dropping the modern-day Abstergo segments entirely), Black Flag Resynced constantly shies away from changes that would reshape the big picture.

While I love Black Flag‘s piratical nature, I’ve always thought it struggled to reconcile it fully with the franchise formula, and I’m not sure that Black Flag Resynced will do what the original game couldn’t. Everyone else seems to love it, though, and if you’re in that group, you’ll probably love it again.

Systems

Released

July 9, 2026

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence / In-Game Purchases, Users Interact

Franchise

Assassin’s Creed

Number of Players

Single-player

Steam Deck Compatibility

Unknown