Parkour can be sticky and fiddly, scraps can break down into farce very easily and controls can generally feel quite unwieldy at times.

As good as Black Flag is, it suffers from some of the same problems as many of the series' other outings. But there's also a ton of side quests, assassin's contracts, naval contracts, ship and weapon upgrades, crafting, hunting, harpooning, rescuing your pirate brethren and treasure maps hunts to get completely lost in as well – and all of it is here on Switch, looking and performing as good as we could ever really have hoped. Battling it out with a particularly large enemy ship during a huge storm as the violent dark seas swell around your craft is worth the price of admission alone, to be quite honest. Of course, there's the amazing naval combat, the feather in Black Flag's cap, taken from Assassin's Creed III and turned to pure gold here it just never gets old and still feels and looks amazing. Besides the beefy main campaign here, starring one of the series' most charismatic and straight-up fun protagonists, you've got an absolute wealth of fun side activities to partake in as you breeze around the Caribbean. So too the seemingly endless islands dotted around the map to discover, each one with a check-list of treasure chests, viewpoints, hostages and other activities that are just perfect for jumping in and cleaning up in a quick portable session.Įxperiencing this adventure again, it's easy to see why Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag became such a fan favourite over the years. Missions tend to be pretty short with a handful of fun additional objectives to give them replayability and you can polish most of them off in twenty minutes or so, give or take the odd long exposition-heavy chapter.

With its absolutely enormous world map stuffed to the brim with secrets and treasures, it becomes apparent that this is a game that's actually perfectly suited to dipping in and out of in handheld. Playing through Black Flag in portable mode is actually something of a revelation.

Black flag switch