History YMMV / AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag

* PolishedPort: In contrast to the Wii U port of the game (see below), the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, version is a MUCH better translation. While taking a slight hit visually, the port manages to fit not only the entirety of IV, but also all single player DLC, and ''Rogue'' onto a single cart, the framerate rarely dips whether docked or in handheld, and it has exclusive Switch features like HD Rumble and gyro-aiming for ranged weapons.

* PolishedPort: In contrast to the Wii U port of the game (see below), the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, version is a MUCH better translation. While taking a slight hit visually, the port manages to fit not only the entirety of IV, but also the DLC, and ''Rogue'' onto a single cart, the framerate rarely dips whether docked or in handheld, and they even managed to add HD Rumble and gyro-aiming for ranged weapons.

** Abstergo Entertainment and its employees as a whole. Are Olivier Garneau and Melanie Lemay simply decent people who are an UnwittingPawn to their JerkAss bosses[[note]]for example, Olivier claims not to know why, other than "orders from above", they're not allowed to call Julien du Casse and others "Templars"[[/note]] or are they PunchClockVillains who are JustFollowingOrders no matter how bizarre and illegal[[note]]Lemay -- although reluctantly -- locks down the Abstergo building and imprisons all her workers in the office, which violates more civil rights than you can shake a fist at! Then again, according to her, she had the authority to detain them ''indefinitely''...[[/note]]? Are the employees merely interested in working to make a good product or are they consciously spreading Templar propaganda. WordOfGod is that [[spoiler:Olivier may be the only one who 'does know who his bosses are', while 'most people at AE' are indeed the UnwittingPawn.]] It's later revealed in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRogue'' that [[spoiler:Lemay, at least, is indeed a Templar. And given that a file for Otso Berg, who plays a big role in ''Rogue'', shows up in Black Flag, it seems that WordOfGod was misleading. For all that she's quite perky, it appears Lemay knew from the start. Although she may only have been promoted after the Assassins kidnapped Olivier.]]

%%%%* DesignatedHero:
* DracoInLeatherPants: While not shirking from emphasizing the fact that Pirates live off plunder, the game's perspective on the pirate's republic and the relative egalitarianism of their life over that of the Law enforcers like Woodes Rogers and Julien du Casse makes many players openly root for the Pirates over the Templars ''and'' the Assassins, with some lamenting [[spoiler:Edward joining the Assassins and becoming a ReformedCriminal, preferring him to remain a pirate forever instead]].

* {{Fanon}}: Edward Kenway in the game is a WildCard who care more for [[{{Greed}} obtaining a fortune]] [[FatalFlaw at the cost of those he consider friends and family]]. To the fans, he's a daring [[CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority rebel]] {{Badass}}, fighting against those in power for their own greed and corruption.

* {{Fanon}}: Edward Kenway in the game is a WildCard who care more for [[{{Greed}} obtaining a fortune]] [[FatalFlaw at the cost of those he consider friends and family]]. To the fans, he's a daring [[CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority rebel]] {{Badass}}, fighting against those in power for their own greed.

* {{Fanon}}: Edward Kenway in the game is a WildCard who care more for {{Greed obtaining a fortune}} [[FatalFlaw at the cost of those he consider friends and family]]. To the fans, he's a daring [[CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority rebel]] {{Badass}}, fighting against those in power for their own greed.

* EarWorm: Most, if not all, of the collectible Sea Shanties.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_eMlxsUV60 Running down to a Cuba with a load of sugar, weigh, me boys, to Cuba! Make her run you, lime juice squeezes, running down to Cuba!]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5NfmJ6BW0s The mate was drunk and he went below to take a swig at his bottle o so early in the morning!]]

* DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound: The narrator's [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper "helping"]] whenever an AI starts lowering your chest bar in Wolfpack. Since it informs you every time an enemy so much as touches a chest, and there's always +1 chest to your player count (to prevent players just sitting on one), it often results in the game shouting a near-constant stream of information at you:
-->'''"ONE OF YOUR CHESTS IS UNDER ATTACK! ONE OF YOUR CHESTS IS UNDER ATTACK!''' -- ''One minute remaining!'' -- '''ONE OF YOUR CHESTS IS UNDER ATTACK!''' -- ''Kill the extra target!'' -- '''ONE OF YOUR CHESTS IS UNDER ATTACK!..."'''.

* MostAnnoyingSound: The narrator's [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper "helping"]] whenever an AI starts lowering your chest bar in Wolfpack. Since it informs you every time an enemy so much as touches a chest, and there's always +1 chest to your player count (to prevent players just sitting on one), it often results in the game shouting a near-constant stream of information at you:

* PortingDisaster: Whereas the UsefulNotes/WiiU port of ''III'' wasn't anything special, it wasn't a ''complete'' disaster by any means. The same can't be said for this game's Wii U port, however, which runs with a very poor frame rate and suffers from massive input lag, which at best can make assassinations feel clunky and imprecise, and at worst renders the game borderline unplayable. LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading and missing graphical effects that make the image duller even compared to the older 360 and [=PS3=] ports are also issues.

** [[spoiler: Bartholomew Roberts is especially a disappointment since he's made out to be the GreaterScopeVillain of the Caribbean and Edward's AlwaysSomeoneBetter as a pirate, and he's also a HumanoidAbomination, a reincarnation of the God of Death in many old religions. Given this buildup, you would be forgiven for expecting, at the very least, a {{Magitek}} based BossFight on the order of the Altaïr-Al Mualim or Ezio-Rodrigo Borgia or even Connor's fight with King Washington in the DLC.]]

* ThatOneBoss: ''El Impoluto'' is by far the toughest Legendary Ship of the five. It's just as tough as the other four, but whereas their gimmicks were fairly simple to deal with, the ''El Impoluto'' features a massive ram that can do heavy damage to your ship, taking off a full health bar if you don't brace against it. It's also terrifically fast, so much so it can easily catch up to you even if you full speed away from it, and it can turn on a dime at a moment's notice. Finally, it has powerful broadside cannons. All in all it's a LightningBruiser of a ship that can take lots of punishment, evade poorly-aimed fire (especially mortars), and use its ram and cannons take you out with only a few shots. Even with elite upgrades, it's a challenge to sink.

** The Charge attack, gsined by beating all four legendary ships. A bit unwieldy to use sometimes, but on a successful ram, the enemy vessel will instantly be crippled to boarding status. Even a ''man-o-war'' will be brought down in one hit from a charge.

** As described under {{Padding}} above, achieving OneHundredPercentCompletion wouldn't be bad at all if it didn't include hunting down ''eighty (80)'' useless collectibles on tiny islands all over the Carribean Sea.

* ThatOneSidequest: Those damn sea-shanties. They're hard as shit to locate on the map, easily blending into its surroundings so that you'd have to scour every inch of it to find them. Like the Almanac pages from ''III'', they're floating pages that fly away when you get near them, requiring you to run all over the friggin city chasing them down. And if you don't catch them in a certain amount of time they disappear, requiring you to go all the way back to the start and wait several minutes for them to respawn.
** Most shanties are trivial to catch by simply spawn-camping their respawn point for a minute after their disappearance. Still tedious and annoying, though.

** By now, a staple of the series with [[spoiler: Laureano de Torres being a Platform Puzzle boss, who as an old man, dies with a single air-assassination.]] But it's also played straight with others like [[spoiler: Benjamin Hornigold and Black Bart]] who you would expect to put up more of a fight. The game's Legendary Ships are far more tough than any story-mission boss, either on land or at sea. Especially galling in the case of [[spoiler:Hornigold]] since his sea fight is against a Schooner, the weakest class of ship, when in real life, he had a 30 gun sloop.

* Wreck diving sucks to some players because all your skill, armor and weapons don't mean squat down there. They're also {{Timed Mission}}s in areas with numerous invincible patrolling enemies, which doesn't do the feature any favors. Made worse by the fact that most of the ''Jackdaw'''s elite upgrade plans can only be found in nondescript chests at these locations, so you're pretty much forced to do them if you want to have a chance at taking on the legendary ships.

* DemonicSpiders: Water spouts deal an insane amount of damage to anything caught in their large area of effect[[note]]it takes about three seconds to empty a fully upgraded ''Jackdaw'''s health segment regardless of bracing or not, making it the most damaging thing in the game[[/note]], move around erratically, always happen in heavy weather that makes navigating difficult anyway, and there's absolutely nothing the player can do about them except running away, which isn't always an option and harder than it sounds in any case. They're also much, much faster than any ship including the ''Jackdaw''. The storms that spawn them can happen anywhere at any time outside of story missions, so there's always a chance of a random spout completely ruining your day in 30 seconds or less. Oh, and they usually come in packs of three, with you caught right in the middle. They do sometimes help the player by destroying enemy ships, but the odds are much higher that they'll go after the ''Jackdaw'' instead.

** Like with ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', Microsoft are charging 70 dollars for ''Black Flag'' on their Games On Demand Service. Unlike ''GTA V'', most of the arguments are one-sided attacks at Microsoft, as most of the other games are a ''seventh'' of that price (''3'' is the only one above ten dollars, at 30), and it came out during Microsoft's Winter Sale, where many games were much cheaper than they would have been. Even ''worse'', ''Freedom Cry'', a spin-off DLC, came out right before the [=GoD=] copy of ''Black Flag'', and guess what its price was? Ten dollars. However, Microsoft lowered the price to thirty dollars, avoiding this splintering of the base.

** Edward Kenway is unique in being largely mercenary in motivation, a more-or-less normal person thrust into the ongoing Assassin/Templar conflict. The Templars are appalled that Edward would prefer piracy over their ideas of a NewWorldOrder, while the Assassins regard him as a selfish jerk who's wasting any potential he might have. Even his own beliefs about making money to provide for his wife is suspect, since she loved him for who he was and it was he who wanted "a good life, and easy life". Whether he's a good man who's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold or a self-destructive FailureHero who wasted many of the best things that happened to him is up to fans to decide.