Yarr! Scurvy, rum, and booty!

Let's begin with the game's strong point: The gameplay. I really love sailing the ships in this game, moving around the map as pirates sing their shanties as I search for a target to plunder or a port to head in to. I really wish they made more pirate/naval games and I really wish the ship travelling and battles felt as awesome as this. Now to get into this game's negatives starting with the gameplay's dark side... As with the other Assassin's Creed games I've played, movement is very fluid and all you need to do to run past guards, to climb buildings, to leap from post to post, is simply hold down one button. You'd think this simple control is a good thing but no... When climbing there are times when you can see the path to climb is right before you but for some reason the game's character can't find a handle, to fix this sometimes you need to move the joystick a little in a particular angle whereas other times you gotta leap to the next grabbable spot to climb... Except this is the same buttons to make the game's character leap off and away from whatever you're climbing which happens at least a third of the time with me. Combat? You can easily fight 3-4 people surrounding you and press 1 button to counter their hit, then immediately hit a another to instantly kill them. Once again, sounds easy and simple... But there are times YOU'RE on the offensive and someone goes to attack you, pressing the counter button does not always work as it should. Furthermore, combat becomes more tedious and annoying when you're trying to sneak into a place, or grab a secret shanty flying in the wind, or even when you're trying to take a ship, and a group of guys come out of from behind the camera's angle and start attacking you. The only other pain in the ass I can think of is climbing the masts on the ship and a gunner runs at you and there's an occurring glitch where you just slide off the platform, can't grab a holding to save health or nothing, you fall ALL THE WAY to ship's deck and lose a good 50-90% of your health and you gotta climb that mast or cliff or tower all over again...

"I believe I can fly... I believe I can touch the sky..."
-Captain Kenway

I just scratched the surface with this game's annoyances, next I'm getting into the story which (Yes, there'll be spoilers) begins with you being a game design guy for this company that uses the Animus ancestral DNA memory reader to create entertainment. They assign you to a pirate project and you're looking into the pirate life of Edward Kenway. You see Kenway telling his wife he's tired of being poor and wants the high life for himself and his family, and so he departs for the caribbean to loot his riches. Kenway's plan turns to the worst at every turn and he winds up on a deserted island with an Assassin who was on the enemy ship that sunk his own. Kenway kills the Assassin, dons his uniform and goes to see what riches awaited for the man in his life. Turns out this Assassin was a traitor working with the Templars, mortal enemies of the Assassins, to find something called the observatory. Kenway helps the templars fight off a group of Assassins only to be discovered as not being the man he disguised himself as... Making Kenway want to seek out the observatory and sell it to gain glory and fortune. He meets with old friends including Captains Blackbeard and Hornigold but almost every turn Kenway makes he seems to be getting double crossed or sent to fix everyone's problems. As years pass, Kenway finally discovers the observatory with the help of another famous pirate, Captain Bart, and I shit you not, the artifact everyone's fighting and killing over is a crystal skull found in an alien looking temple in the middle of the jungle and is said to be created by an ancient race that were responsible for creating us humans.

"Ugh, I tell you, matey: Everyone's betrayed me, keep trying to kill me, who'd think bloodthirsty pirates obsessed with gold would be so selfish and traitorous? You're not gonna go insane and try to kill me, will ya?"
-Captain Kenway

Bart betrays Kenway but is saved by former Assassin adversaries who Kenway (eventaully) decides to seek their aid now knowing the power of the observatory must not fall in the wrong hands. So finally the pirate captain learns the ways of the Assassins and gets revenge and saves the world. This whole story is told while the modern story is being told of a game designer person (You) getting calls by assholes blackmailing you to hack into systems and such to deliver data and crap to people who wind up being Assassins and the company you work for is revealed to be controlled by the Templars. Oh, and to make things better is the lead IT guy of this company is trying to reawaken some old bitch of the ancient race to take over your body and he loves her or something crazy. They don't really get into that part short of the guy is like the fanatic reincarnation of Captain Bart, but this whole scene really reminds me of some Lovecraftian Cthulhu thing... Be a crazy person obsessed with science AND artifacts of power, reawaken the Old One, give the Old One a vessel to live inside, worship the Old One as it destroys everything...

"Ia, ia, Cthulhu! Dagon, I summon thee from the sea's abyssal darkness!"
-Insane Bart reincarnate

The gameplay is pretty fun despite it's glitches and flaws but I'm sorry, the storyline? Why couldn't Assassin's Creed just cut out that sci-fi stuff and make a more historical game? Why'd there have to be some modern day explanation of how we're looking into events in the past? To me it feels like 3 seperate stories rolled in 1 and they don't mesh that well together! You might as well combine Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, and make a half assed attempt to connect the 3! They all have great stories and are amazing as their own thing, the modern setting and sci-fi storyline would've been cool as it's own game but to integrate it in a game about pirates just makes it feel like senseless filler that wastes time. Will say though that nothing beats being able to captain a ship and blow your enemies out of the water, they NEED to make more pirate games like this. AC: Black Flag redeems itself for the fun but lost my attention with the almost random timeline connection in the story... For this, the game gets 3 out of 5 Spanish galleons.