I played the original and found it repetitive and boring. AC 2 added depth that locked me in but characters with weak development and running across rooftops of cities that all looked the same didn't do it for me. From AC 2 until AC 4 I was bored and not impressed.



Thankfully, AC 4 is amazing. I've never been a huge fan of scaling and running across rooftops. Especially with AC's often times inaccurate free-run. AC 4 solved this problem for me by essentially taking the city running and replacing it with ocean running. Sailing your own customization ship through gorgeous open waters, plundering ships and discovering chests, gold fleets, forts to conquer and hidden objects turned a game where finding collectibles went from tedious to the most fun aspect.



The combat in every regard is great, as is the ability to sail. The controls are simple yet deep enough to always be fun.



The only complaints I have are the story and free running. The story is not really an AC story until about 2/3rds through the game but that is not to say the story is bad. In fact, I found this to be the most engaging and character driven story of the lot.



The largest drawback is the wonky free run system. I often found myself trying to scale up or jump off of things I did not intend. It was frustrating at times but never broke the game.



This is the only game in which finding all the extras has actually been fun for me and I found myself doing EVERYTHING in the game from following treasure maps to building my own trade fleet. YES! You can build and manage your own trade fleet and it is much more intuitive than managing trade or assassin's in previous games.



Great game.