Chris Brosky

All UBI had to do was take the code from Black Flag and make it better. That's it!! Instead they did the opposite. They created a stripped down version of Black Flag and introduced terrible game play elements that make the game feel like a soul-sucking 8 hour shift cleaning sewer clogs underneath a Chipotle or Taco Bell. They added a 'Stamina Bar' for the SHIP that requires you to constantly feed it so that you don't slow down to crawl speed. Think about that...they made the ship subject to physical fatigue as if it were a living creature. It's ridiculous. And to make matters even worse, they apparently wrote an algorithm into the game where whichever direction you point your ship, that is is where the wind will come from 99% of the time, making your ship go EVEN SLOWER. Whoever thought a 'stamina bar' was a good idea for a non-living object (the ship) should be shot and then fired. Ships don't get tired!! You either have wind in your sails, or you don't. The stamina bar and the constant headwinds have ruined the game for me. l have played the beta version and played the release version everyday since its release and I can't do it anymore. The game is just one long boring slog trying to get from here to there on a massive map while battling a non-sensical stamina bar and weather systems that always have you going into the wind even when you change course. Another thing I find totally unacceptable is that fact that when you become a Kingpin, there are zero benefits associated with the rank other than being able to buy blueprints for higher end items and ships. As the KINGPIN in a smuggling operation, I should have a fleet of minions who I can pay to go pick up all the Pieces of Eight at my manufactories. I shouldn't have to sail all over the damn map fighting a stamina bar and the joy-killing headwinds every few hours. Overall, this game is just painful to play for a long period of time. The longer you play, the more irritated you will become by how slow and monotonous the game is. UBI apparently wanted to make this game both a sim and an arcade shooter. Well, you can't have it both ways. I'm guessing the vast majority of players want an arcade-style game like Black Flag, not a painful stripped down hybrid. PRO: Grapics are beautiful, combat is intuitive and fun. CONS: Stamina bar, constant headwinds, no benefits to being a Kingpin, no boarding ships, no hand-to-hand combat, no exploring islands, no ability to buy high-end items such as precision drills, no ability to permanently turn off shanty songs, no ability to turn off the stamina bar, and on and on. This game is an absolute nightmare from a UX perspective. Not recommended in its current state!!