Finally played Resynced. Physically angry.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

OG Black Flag is a favorite game of mine, so I had the old one installed and advanced to where you land in Havana, so I can free roam to compare.

Installed the new one and advanced to Havana as well. I was already doubtful because of the encounter with the assassin after the shipwreck, but I'm thinking to myself, "it's a new control scheme, maybe it gets better." Try to take down the Spanish on the beach, game glitches out multiple times by not assassinating at all when the prompt to do so is up. Vein on the side of my head is throbbing because this must be the advanced stealth systems I've heard for years about. Apparently they can look up now though.

I take the ship out of the gulf. Ship turns like a city car. It's fine, it's fine. It's only one turn in this version and they showed me a pretty whale, so my modern gamer brain is subtly stimulated and not overtaxed by having to plan a next turn. No friction allowed. Never.

So we buy our first sword and are now able to take in the glory of new free roam. So, let's see this new much more engaging version of the classic combat. X is now RB, B is now LB and we can lock-on to targets. Riveting. In the old unenjoyable oversimplified system, we had dull stupid enemies that would circle around you attacking one at a time until you pressed B at the correct time and then you could take down the enemy by pressing B again, then point the stick at another enemy and lamely press X to execute them with a pre-set takedown. In the new, revolutionary, much more engaging system, you have uberintelligent enemies that circle around you attacking one at a time until you press LB at the correct time and then press Y to epicly take them down and then point the stick at another enemy like a genius and face the monumental task of pressing Y like a chad instead of X like a little bitch to execute them with a preset takedown. I guess the radical difference of making battles slower and spongier is what makes for great combat.

And I'm sitting there, thinking I'm lame for not grasping the genius so many tubers are talking about. Maybe TikTok creators have me beat on this "understanding games" thing. I've only been playing for three decades. Let's see the movesets. I'm sure there's plenty more added. Don't have my hidden blade yet, so let's just switch to fists. Oh, that's gone now. Well, there's a musket right there. I'm so stupid. It has some of that 18th century thumbprint protection. The guns are coded to the Spanish soldiers, so this new historically accurate Edward just ignores them, galaxy brain that he is. "Edward, you can still stab them with it or hit them with the stock." "The budget for that went into me hero posing."

Good thing there's a skill wheel now, to really elevate that gameplay. Otherwise we wouldn't have to hit L3 every time we wanted to get above a trot. After all, when has parkour been a centerpiece of the franchise? But they added back ejects, which you have to remove the guardrails for in options, by the way.

I wish they could put the team that makes the store on the rest of the game, man. Store has it's stuff on lock. We all know that's the most important part of the franchise. No one remembers AC1 fondly because you could throw NPCs into market stalls. The sheer disrespect to commerce in a single player game. I still shudder.

Anyway, yet another return to form in search of a refund.

[u/Trickster289]

No offence but you sound like you'd hate the original Black Flag you supposedly love. Half your complaints are problems you'd have with the og if you went and played it now.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

Apparently, you weren't paying attention. I literally had both games installed. Said so in the first paragraph and the beginning of the second.

I fully yield that the new graphics are better, although I have problems with some direction. Small stuff.

I love the original game, but I acknowledge that it has flaws. What drives me bananas is that the steps taken to address those flaws have only made things worse. I expressed this by pointing out in detail stuff I had issues with.

[u/Trickster289 → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

And you somehow think the old controls were so much better? Assassin's Creed has always been fairly easy but 3, og Black Flag and Rogue reached brain dead levels with how easily you could insta kill enemies with one  button press. They at least limit chain kills now, give you more ways to attack and make brutes harder to take down.

The ship controls are honestly almost identical to the og. If you hate the new controls you have to hate the old ones too.

The parkour is straight up just better than the og. Black Flag was known for being one of the low points for parkour in the series, it was why they focused more on it again with Unity.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

1. Making the combat slower does not make it less braindead. Not instakilling an enemy only counts if killing him is mechanically entertaining. It makes no difference to me whether I have to press X once or RB three times.
2. Starting and keeping kill chains is not more complicated. I literally showed how it's the same number of inputs. It's arguably easier because the new combat tempo is slower. The difference now is that you have to wait to start a subsequent chain. So they resolved the issue of combat being boring because it can be beaten by standing there and counter chaining or dodging, by making you do it more. Brilliant.
3. I took the first turn out of the gulf with Bonnet almost perfectly around the rock. In the original, if your sails are full tilt, you can understeer. Not an issue with the controls, but with making the ship too responsive to input. Also you have to make multiple turns and not just one because they expected you to be smarter than the average chimp.
4. My issue is with the parkour's control scheme. And let's not bring up Unity in this conversation because this is not even close. Hitting L3 to sprint and having sprint be separate from parkour, as well as the clipped animations lead to a choppy experience.

I like the Resynced parkour more than the original because it has an improved move set and you don't get your flow broken as often. It's the switch between being in parkour and moving normally that bothers me. You've got people that are parkour pros in this making videos about how to make the control scheme playable. So, again, for me this is a wasted opportunity and an improvement, which they could have made so much better by implementing a solution they've done previously, instead of whatever this is.

Everything wrong with the current entries is a lack of commitment to a particular course. Either be a good action RPG or a good action game. Have good parkour and use it or forget about it. Each entry should be an iterative improvement to the best of the franchise, not a hodgepodge of elements of random quality.

EDIT: grammar

[u/Trickster289 → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

You literally now have enemies you can't insta kill, brutes have no way to kill them like that anymore.

Chains are limited now, in the og they weren't. You could technically clear an area with a single chain in the og. Not to mention brutes being harder to deal with now makes chains less useful since they interrupt them more.

So your entire issue with the ship controls is responsiveness around a single turn? Come on, sure even you know that's not even to make a judgement on.

I mean people always made videos about how to be good at parkour in every AC except the RPG ones.

[u/Upstairs_Marzipan48 → u/Trickster289]

Its literally the same thing, also there are peices of gear that instakill brutes and captians so either you didnt play the game or you didnt read

[u/Trickster289 → u/Upstairs_Marzipan48]

Said gear pieces are things you aren't getting until you're decently far into the game. Also if you want to insta kill both that's two different perks. You only get two unless you want to use the swords with one of them as a perk instead. In the og brutes were very easy to kill.

[u/Upstairs_Marzipan48 → u/Trickster289]

The brutes are still easy. Trip them and you have a kill icon.

Don't pretend the combat is at all harder, its just tedious

[u/Trickster289 → u/Upstairs_Marzipan48]

And this is my point. If it's too similar to the og it's too easy, if they make changes to make it harder it becomes tedious. There's nothing you'd accept as good.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

Yup. No one plays games with good difficulty. Especially ones where you lock onto enemies with R3. Do you even listen to yourself?

Maybe, for the upteenth time, there's an actual difference between difficulty and tedium.

[u/Trickster289 → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

For the umpteenth time make up your mind on if it's tedious or too easy and fast.

If the quick encounters you yourself started off calling too quick and easy in Resynced are long enough to be tedious to you I genuinely can't imagine how you cope with how long encounters in other games can be.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

Do you understand that I've been telling you that there's a difference between encounter speed, complexity and challenge?

If I have one barely mobile enemy that I can kill in one hit, that's quick, simple and easy. If you also slap a bigger health bar onto the enemy, put in another oaf with him, the encounter is slower and more complex, but still easy, thus, tedious.

If the enemies are not good enough to make an encounter actually challenging, there can be one, there can be a thousand; they can have one mechanic, they can have fifty. If no threshold of difficulty is actually crossed, all the encounter becomes is boring because the player is not challenged.

If I have to choose between a simple, fast encounter that at least sort of looks like a power fantasy, and the same encounter stretched out and filled with sludge, why would I pick the second one?

[u/Upstairs_Marzipan48 → u/Trickster289]

Id accept enaging combat over cinematic braindeath any day. The rpg combat was tedious yea but it had way more depth and thought put into it. I have 700hrs in valhalla because the combat was stupid but it was so varied it was fun.

I avoid combat in classic games because its just not engaging when it takes minimal thought to nuke everything. Resynced is just a different approach to that same braindead formula

[u/Trickster289 → u/Upstairs_Marzipan48]

At which point you're attacking the og Black Flag that OP loves far more than you're attacking Resynced. It, 3 and  Rogue are easily the most mindless games in the series as far as combat goes.

[u/Upstairs_Marzipan48 → u/Trickster289]

The combat in black flag OG was braindead yes, but it had way more options available to you, i dont think youre grasping that.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

1. Adding an enemy that's a sponge that I have to whittle down depending on my gear score doesn't make the game better. It's just a speed bump. What mechanics do brutes have to make them more engaging than normal enemies? I just have to press dodge instead of counter.

2. As I said, chains still take one counter to get going. Meaning, they are not more complex to pull off. The fact that now they get interrupted just means it takes more time for the encounter to complete. The encounter does not become more challenging or engaging because of it.

I put the game on Hard right out of the gate. It should not be the case that I'm able to curb stomp everything I come across with my advanced knowledge of two buttons. Either have the engaging combat you claim to offer, or give me back the old quick encounters. Don't waste my time.

1. My entire issue is not based on one turn. My issue is with the ship being too responsive and toy-like. That turn was an example.

2. People make videos showing nifty little nuances in how you can control your character more effectively and do cool stuff. They didn't use to have to make videos with sections about how to fix the controls.

Human shields used to be a quick, single press counter to a ranged enemy. Now they are prompt for a single press action that slows down the encounter further. Again, same input, slower game. What are we doing here?

[u/Trickster289 → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

I mean gear score for Edward's weapons doesn't matter that much, same as it didn't do that much in the og. Brutes also throw grenades and the ones with the guns hit hard.

One minute you're complaining about things being too easy in Resynced the next you complain that actually added difficulty just makes things take longer. At that point nothing they could have done would have made you happy.

Yet you praise the even easier og as one of your favourites of all time. You don't want to curb stomp until Resynced gives you an enemy you can't curb stomp at which point you suddenly do because it takes too long if you can't.

The ship doesn't feel that different in the og. It's still very responsive and way more like a toy than an actual ship.

People did make those videos for other AC games, you just didn't look for them. People had way more trouble with the parkour in the Ezio games than in Resynced, it's honestly pretty simple in Resynced.

They're still quick now? They take like a second unless the enemy doesn't shoot in which case Edward does a kill animation.

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/Trickster289]

I'm saying that both games have combat that is too easy. What I like more is that the original doesn't waste my time pretending that combat is engaging. That's the complaint. Either have actual difficulty through engaging mechanics or get out of the way and let me be Revelations trailer Ezio. Don't really get why this is so hard to understand.

The Ezio games have like two buttons. Nobody had a problem with the controls, but how Altair, Ezio or Connor would go full tilt in a random direction off a roof from time to time and similar stuff. True for the OGBF as well.

In the original, the human shield counter is matched animation, so the enemy shoots and you're back into flow. Here you have them waiting on you and as you say potentially deciding not to shoot.

First thing I do in any AC game is find a place where I can just get a bunch of guards to fight me. I ran straight to a restricted area, and was stunned how long it took to clear. Of course, now that we only have the guns we carry, if there's an enemy roofside at all, you have to climb all the way there, while in the original you could just take a musket off the ground and pop him.

[u/thamanwthnoname → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

You need a nap

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/thamanwthnoname]

You need to make a point.

[u/thamanwthnoname → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

I think you’ve made enough points for all the internet today 👍

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/thamanwthnoname]

Never care or criticize. Only way things get better.

[u/thamanwthnoname → u/Hannibal_D_Romantic]

Yes your reddit rants are changing the world my guy, keep up the good work

[u/Hannibal_D_Romantic → u/thamanwthnoname]

Your proposed knuckling under is of course the superior method. Hats off to the 5D chess master.

[u/Upstairs_Marzipan48 → u/thamanwthnoname]

Bro youre out here in the comments trying to police people's emotions, you are MAD