3 hours shows one of the best remakes ever

Well, it turns out 13 years might have been longer ago than I’d care to admit. After a three-hour session playing Assassin’s Creed Black Black Resynced this month, I’m no longer skeptical of its necessity. In fact, I’m convinced it’s time to revisit every “technological highwater mark” from the PlayStation 4 era. Screw it. Just redo them all. Forget the macroeconomic factors that would preclude such a thing, let’s just make every game the best version of itself.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced isn’t just a remaster — it’s a total remake of Black Flag, widely considered one of the best games in Ubisoft’s series of stabby historical tourism sims. In Black Flag, players were sent to the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy (circa 1710s), which is just about the best possible setting for such a series, thanks to the overall lawlessness of that specific place at that specific time.

Black Flag cast players as Edward Kenway, a restless man with Hemsworthian abs, hair, and jawline who yearns for little more than a life of “sun, rum, and leisure.” There were a few deviations, notably in the form of modern-day segments, narrative act breaks that continued the broader Assassin’s Creed story after the death of then-protagonist Desmond Miles. Those sequences will not be in Black Flag Resynced. (Black Flag Resynced will additionally not include a remade version of the well-regarded Freedom Cry expansion.)

But beyond that, based on three hours of gameplay, Black Flag’s charms appear on full display in Black Flag Resynced. It is remarkable how well Ubisoft has maintained the spirit of the original game, while also making it feel like any other new game you’d pick up in 2026.

The preview opened up with Edward on a pirate ship in a storm, fighting against total loser naval ships crewed by people whose mission in life is apparently to stop chiseled men from living lives of sun, rum, and leisure. Edward’s ship crashed soon after, leading to a sequence that involved chasing a man through a jungle, fighting him, stabbing him, stealing his clothes, stumbling upon a hapless merchant (the IRL Stede Bonnet), rescuing said merchant, then commandeering his ship and sailing off to Havana, all with swashbuckling attitude.

Right away, the improvements over Black Flag are clear. I say this as someone who’s played every mainline game in the series, but this might be the smoothest parkour has ever felt in an Assassin’s Creed game. Edward bounds through copperwood trees and up stucco walls with the grace of a panther. The addition of dedicated crouch and jump buttons give even greater control over how you can move, and are especially helpful during Black Flag Resynced’s stealth and tailing missions. Throughout my session, Edward rarely went anywhere other than where I directed him to — something that can’t be said for any previous Assassin’s Creed game, including the most recent entry, Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Combat has certainly been modernized, though due to a matter of taste (I’m so sick of parrying, you guys), I’m still undecided on whether or not that’s an improvement. You get full access to the entire combat toolkit, including a Spartan kick and the formerly late-game rope dart, fairly early in Black Flag Resynced, which rules. But, as with seemingly every action game these days, there’s a heavy onus on parrying, though the timing is more forgiving than, say, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Enemies are adaptable: According to Ubisoft, if you keep spamming the same attacks, they will change their patterns.

This is not to say that Ubisoft has done away with jank entirely. Come on; if Black Flag Resynced didn’t have some jank, it would not be a faithful interpretation of Black Flag.

One mission tasked me with eavesdropping on two soldiers by the docks in Havana. With the handy crouch button, I carefully snuck into position behind some crates. Then I hit the wrong button (fully user error here, to be clear) and jumped out of cover, striking the target with my cutlass. Within seconds, the city guard was chasing me around Havana, and… Well, let’s just say I’m grateful for Black Flag Resynced’s very generous, modernized autosave feature.

Later in the preview, during a routine contract mission (one-off target-hunting quests that grant small rewards), I found a loophole in the whole “enemies will change their attack patterns” thing. After identifying my target and accidentally user-erroring again (we don’t need to talk about it), I found myself getting chased by a large troop of soldiers, and escaped to the top of a lookout tower. I quickly discovered that enemies would die instantly if they fell from that height, so as they followed me up the ladder and reached the platform I was on, I’d Spartan-kick them off. They kept coming, one by one. They kept getting Spartan-kicked, one by one. They never learned.

If there’s one thing that, to me, seems unchanged between Black Flag and Black Flag Resynced, it’s the ship combat. This is a good thing. In 2013, Black Flag established a standard for naval combat in games that has not been surpassed, ultimately serving as the basis for Ubisoft’s 2024 open-world pirate game Skull and Bones. (Ubisoft Singapore, the primary developer of Skull and Bones, is also the primary developer of Black Flag Resynced.) Giant frigates aren’t lumbering vessels, but rather nimble vehicles you can turn and accelerate with precision. You can fire a multitude of cannons and mortars. And all the while, your crew of ne’er-do-wells chants sea shanties. It ruled then. It rules now.

And besides, there’s still plenty of new stuff to gawk over in Black Flag Resynced. Beyond the improvements to stealth, movement, and combat, you can dive anywhere. Many locations have been fully redesigned to feel more like modern games. Edward will receive a series of character-focused vignettes, as replacements for the omitted modern-day sequences from the original game. There’s a new sidequest associated with the pirate hideout, replete with additional characters and some story beats. Plus Ubisoft said Black Flag Resynced will include an endgame chapter with eight narrative missions. (Some fans will no doubt raise eyebrows at the addition of brand-new narrative content when beloved existing narrative content didn’t make it into the game.)

In many ways, Black Flag Resynced is the same game it ever was. In many ways, it’s brand new. Video game remakes have a reputation for being phoned-in cash grabs, projects that trade on nostalgia for a quick and easy buck. Some games, not naming names, have justified that reputation. But more recently, a wave of remakes, like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space, have helped push back against that reputation. They’re released to acclaim and heralded not just as respectful remakes but as terrific, necessary games in their own right. From what I’ve played, Black Flag Resynced will be the next one.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced will be released for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on July 9.