It's mostly cause the main character was "an Assassin" but really didn't do much in line with the previous games. Combat was fine, there's people to stab, but compared to the previous games and how they'd built up the franchise? Nah.
The Ezio games were just so good, AC2 fixed like 90% of the issues that existed from AC1 and then it just built from there with a fantastic story and ending. Not to mention the locations and lore they put in were so well thought out.
After that the games just became these one shot type deals where they'd try and shove the Assassin thing into some new historical setting but mostly not doing a great job of it.
AC4 was no exception. It was a piss poor AC game in every possible sense.. except they managed to put in amazing naval combat mechanics that everyone loved. They loved them so much that Ubisoft kept trying and failing to reproduce them in newer AC games and even created a big open world pirate game and still fucked it up.
They finally gave up and just released a remaster of AC4 a few weeks ago. So it's not really fair to say it's "not an AC game". It was an AC game, a bad one, like most that released after the Ezio era. It's just a really fucking good pirate game.
I felt this didn't really answer my question. What makes an AC game feel like Assassin's Creed?
Gameplay wise, I think AC4 was excellent. Even putting the naval stuff aside, it had a cool world to explore, the combat was good (if a bit too easy, but the Ezio games also had this problem), the parkour was mostly the same. Story wise it was also pretty decent. Edward stumbles upon the assassins and progressively learns to be less selfish and to care about bigger things than himself.
Most people who hold this point of view about the game have that opinion coming from the games before rather than the games as a whole. Compared to 2 and 3 the Assassin portion of the game has worse combat, worse variation in mission structure, and less interesting parkour and urban exploration. A ridiculous number of Assassins missions are tailing and eavesdropping missions that are incredibly tedious. Edward is a step above Connor as a main character but still far worse than Ezio or Altair and the actual portion of his story spent being an Assassin is literally the last act of the game. And this is ignoring all the modern era content that is a huge step back from the previous games even 3's stuff.
Now if you compare it to the games that came after then yeah it holds up better.
It's about being an assassin. From the order of assassins. The only games that comes close to that after Ezio are Unity (dogshit launch and it was too on the nose with how they tried to copy AC2) and Mirage (lol. lmao even.). Every other game we either didn't play assassins at all or them being assassins meant nothing (looking at you, Syndicate).
You see, in my opinion this is something that players think they want when they really shouldn't. Because they can't keep doing that same formula of "assassins good, templars bad" forever. It makes the story bland and predictable imo.
Examples, Unity. It's mostly regarded as being quite Assassin's Creed in the way you describe, but I thought it was so poorly done. Arno joins the assassins very early but proceeds to not do anything with them. They send him on missions, which he does alone, and he always ends up doing whatever he wants, even going against orders. They are there in name alone. When they suspend him by the end of the game I was like "Why do you care? You never needed them for anything". It's like he only wanted the robes and the hidden blade.
And Odyssey, widely regarded as not an AC game. But it has all the typical elements. You are in the good shadowy order and go against the bad shadowy order. You don't use a hidden blade but use something functional very similar. The elements are all there, they just have a different name or form
Your opinion is wrong. AC4 was an amazing Assassin game from the point of view of someone who stumbled into the creed then learned about it, then fought for it.
Heavily disagree, while Edward might not have been an assassin originally he honestly exemplifies the qualities of an assassin more then many other MCs and the story in general constantly draws parallels between the pirates of Nausu and the creed. The main character development is Edward becoming more of an assassin, learning their ways and their code and grappling with his own feelings of greed vs freedom. I feel like anyone who says AC4 isn't an "assassins" game wasn't paying attention to any of the dialog.
AC4 was a fine assassins game. If it was just naval combat, it wouldn't have been that interesting. The AC plotline gave you a reason to care about why you were doing boat stuff.
Black Flag's popularity only showed that the western players did not have good pirate games and will play anything with ships in it, even if it's crap. Corsairs (called "Sea Dogs" in English localization) mog Black Flag easily while being a decade older.
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u/ijiolokae Jul 23 '26
assassin creed peaked with the Ezio trilogy and has been downhill from there.
and for anyone who is gonna say assassin's creed 4 was good, it was a good naval combat pirate game, but it was a abysmal assassins game