In a lot of ways it reminds me why I was so lukewarm on AC3. The story missions are filler-y and repetitive (I lost count of the number of times I had to tail someone back to the same exact ship just to climb the same exact mast and perform the same exact assassination from above), the story is whatever, the melee combat is very basic, it looks flashy but all you have to do is spam the counter button to win, with the occasional someone making you hit the break defense button first instead (or that one piece of shit boss you have to hang back and shoot like 20 times), and there were lots of rough edges with the ragdolls often going crazy, animations not always lining up and a couple missions that had me spawning in clipped under the ship. Redeeming it though is how much it leans into what’s probably my favourite thing about these games, immersing in the historical setting. Sailing the high seas, getting into ship battles, singing sea shanties, navigating storms, exploring the tropics, diving for treasure, this game really lives up the pirate fantasy, gives you lots to do and I love it. I do really wish though that you could keep more weapons on your belt than just the dual swords. Muskets, hatchets, boarding axes, or even just single swords, you could keep all of them in AC3, so I don’t know why they decided to slap an arbitrary limit on you here. Aside from that though, my experience was positive. I think this might be my favourite Assassin’s Creed game.