Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (mild spoilers)
Oof. If you haven't played this one, you've probably, at the very least, heard people praise the pirate sections but criticize the actual Assassin's Creed-style gameplay. This is all true, but unfortunately you can't reliably separate the two and just focus on the piratical portions of the game, as many aspects of the ship-to-ship combat - special missions, unlockables and upgrades - are locked behind the condition of completing story missions. So we're talking many hours of janky platforming, half-baked stealth and interminable tail/eavesdrop missions before, during and after the actually enjoyable parts of the game. For a game that's something like 20-30hrs long even without focusing too much on side activities, that's a lot of crap to wade through.
But yes, as in ACIII and Rogue, the arcade ship combat is still great fun, and the sense of achievement you get from starting off preying upon schooners and gunboats, until you're finally powerful enough to take on Men O'War and the Legendary Ship Battles (the latter being genuinely very tough), is immense. It's just a shame this is mixed in with the AC game's horrible handling of multi-faction combat (enjoy being repeatedly struck by undefendable blows because the game couldn't detect whether an NPC was aiming at you or a crewmate) and awkward relationship with any surface more complicated than a blank rock face (masts and rigging are a nightmare to navigate at high speeds). Other side content - taking forts, stealing from supply warehouses, searching sunken wrecks, and harpooning - is a pleasant change of pace but these activities lack the depth to remain worthwhile beyond their initial novelty value. And the less said about the usual collectible-hunting and viewpoint sync-ing the better.
I wasn't as awed by the story and characters as others seem to have been. There are strands of story threads that just start to get interesting, only for the game yank you back to another unfinished plot point about some other side character from two hours ago, randomly jump forward in time five years, or decide this would be a good time for another cinematic walking trip in their super-meta Abstergo Entertainment. It seems as we're meant to get a sense of the Age of Piracy's highs and eventual low as all the major players are taken out and their "Pirate Republic" collapses, but none of this is reflected in the game world. You can sail up and down the map taking over Forts, sinking Ships of the Line and assaulting treature convoys, but the only feedback you get from this is your wanted level (which is wiped out by boarding any random ship and using the "Lower Wanted Level" option). It reminded me of the Pirates! remake from 2004, which had the colonial powers and pirates conquering or raiding rival settlements, and featured a reputation system for the different European factions - all this stuff was mostly ephemeral, but it did contribute to the sense of your actions having some weight to them, rather than just a checklist for Uplay points.
The DLC is barely worth mentioning - the Aveline missions are about 30m-1hr long linear climbing/fighting sequences, whilst Freedom Cry is a mini-expansion with a new map area and activities based around liberating plantations and slave ships rather than plundering. It also featured some new music tracks that get irritating quite fast and do not mesh well with the other sound effects (I found out later that it was done by Olivier Deriviere, who's usually pretty good). The new islands were quite pretty but featured too many gentle banks and sloping surfaces, which the game's combat system can't interact with very well. About 4-5hrs long depending on how much side-content you can be bothered with.
I was using TXAA for AA, which looks quite good in motion but unfortunately degrades the quality of still images.
Freedom Cry DLC and Aveline Missions