Unfair comparison. Blackflag is an AAA game, Skull and Bones is an AAAA game.

*AC: Black Flag still remains a great game: The open world, towns, ship battles. And the main music theme & sea shanties.*

1:47 I'll have to disagree, maybe the textures and geometry on Black Flag are worse, but the animations and personality the characters convey are much better on Black Flag. Skull and Bones' characters move and sound like robots disguised as people.

AAA game vs AAAA game, AAA game wins

I don't even have any words for this its just sad seeing how games from over a decade ago are just genuinely better

The fact that these games can even be compared really says something

Hate to disagree but saying that the animations are somehow better in Skull and Bones than Black Flag is an insane statement and flat out wrong

wait, they took out the boarding and call it a AAAA game?! The Audacity of it is incredible.

When your parent call you a disappointment, remember that there's Skull and Bones.

Black Flag is years ahead of Skull and Bones despite having come out in 2013.

Don’t let people tell you it’s nostalgia. Games back then are better in almost every conceivable way

Ubisoft could've just copied and pasted AC Black Flag gameplay mechanics. Updated the graphics to be more modern and voilá! They could've got more sales than they've gotten with skull and bones.

"Cuts down on the tedium of jumping between ships during a boarding event" My guy that isn't tedium that is piracy that is the game that is the genre. Imagine a Call of Duty game where you don't shoot a gun because it's "tedious" and instead you just click player names in the same lobby

I'm sorry but I think the white foam effect ( 14:07 ) looks terrible. It's so blurry and looks more like magical dust. I prefer without it honestly.

Black flag is peak

It's not even a question. Screw the ever so slight increase in graphics and physics. You can actually be a PIRATE in Black Flag. You know...boarding ships, swashbuckling, getting into mischief in the towns(pirates aren't just pirates while on water). You won't get any of that in Skull and Bones, it's just a small piece of a much larger pie. The only thing Skull and Bones succeeded in was making me consider revisiting a class game in Black Flag.

I was hoping it was something like "Play as a normal pirate in Black Flag's world" but it's definitely not that.

Shouldn't a pirate game be "ARRR" instead of "AAAA"

7:19 "The design of the ships themselves along with how they handle does feel like a bit of a step up." I think that comparison must have been the hottest burn on the supposed AAAA-game in the whole video. That really got me chuckling. ;D 13:55 I think the shore wave simulation itself in easily on top-3 of all games, but the way they visualise and render it in-game is just horrendous. It would have been relatively easy to write a shader that dynamically created bubbles or even use pre-made textures to make it look better, but instead they use blurry white spots that represents nothing like sea foam, and makes otherwise good simulation to look like total crap.

how is it that now developing games is easier than ever but old games are still better?

Imagine how good will look ac4 with skull and bones technology

What were they thinking not having a good dueling mechanic with ship boarding? AAAA my a**.

What makes ACBF amazing are the mechanics, they remove all the great part of BF, the swords fight, flintlocks, ship boarding, walkable islands, sea shanties, they only gives us naval battle mechanic and called it a day. If they decide copy and paste AC Black Flag, alter the map and give it a new name, i would more than happy to play the game.

I'm not sure that I would play Skull and Bones even if it was free

Yea I’m gonna go replay black flag right now on PC

A pirate who is the protagonist of his own fear of leaving the ship

Black Flag is flat out a badass game, my favorite AC game to date.

Nah man, the facial animations compared to black flag are ****

Great comparison. Any chance of crew 2 vs crew motorfest in the future?

it is embarrassing how bad of a game Skull and bones is. I thought ubisoft couldn't do any worse but here they are.

The ships in S&B are way to fast. Those 17kn look more like 170...

1:42 the wrongest take Nick930 has ever made but I get it (Because of the graphics). There's no way anybody can tell me characters in S&B show more life and personality than AC4. Most people like AC4 for the excellent performance from the characters. Great comparison though

Black flag was for the 7th generation not 8th, It released after the release of NG consoles but it was in development for 7th generation, and its core and tech were all for 7th generation. the next generation was unity which is 10 times better than anygame Ubisoft releases these days, both graphic-wise and combat mechanic realism-wise.

After sinking about 20 hours into Skull and Bones, the water looks better but sailing and feeling the actual waves did FEEL better in BF in my opinion. The horrendous island vegetation pop in in Skull and Bones, 3 ft from the ship when sailing by, also severely hurt it's presentation and immersion.

Does anyone else feel like this video is a "lip service" apology to Ubisoft for how honestly critical he was in his last video? Felt kinda "sellout" to me...

Black Flag is the best ac game and one of the best games ever made 🙌🏻

Having put a good 20 hours in Skull and Bones, I uninstalled it and reinstalled Black Flag. Technically S&B is better, but it is a soulless live service experience.

Hi Nick930, nice direct comparison. I thought your Prince Of Persia documentary was this month so I want to apologize for that. I will wait until March to see your documentary on Prince Of Persia, can’t wait to see Jordan Mechner though.

Idk black flag still feels better for me, just hearing the wood of the ship making noise just feels real

I don't understand how hard it is, to do the same thing, but better. Take everything from black flag, build up to your new engine, then add whatever plans you had.

Wait PhysX is no longer supported? Does it not work at all? Should I be turning it off on my older games or is it better to run them with an older card? Nvidia has no direction about this issue….

Can you play Assassin's creed 4 on the ps5? And what features are unavailable ( I heard something about some features might be unavailable)

Edward depicts more life with his pinky alone. Compared to every single character in skull & bones.

Its sad to see that a game from decade a go is better that new games today. Skull and bone is Just fancy graphics, new animations and better design of the game. That's it. Black flag it still the king of the sea for me. The story, the gameplay, the animations, the way black flag make me felt like im a pirate is just awesome. Imagine i work in a cruise ship. And we went to nassau, and i automatically remember that in ac black flag. There is a place called nassau. And its just awesome..

Another awesome comparison. I’m glad I didn’t buy skull and bones and support Modern day Ubisoft, they went down hill bad.

Never played both but i heard that black flag has better gameplay. Graphics are worse but this is not a surprise compared to a game which just came out. Graphics are also not that important.

For me the sound design of AC Black Flag seemed way better, i dunno about the Skull & Bones, it sounds like the ship is more like 'Gliding" on the water compared to what you see and think would happen (like some crashes when certain bigger waves hit the ship but it doesnt happen, just smooth sailing)

Looking forward to the direct comparison between Helldivers vs Helldivers 2.

both games feel like there's a missing water sound hitting against the ship, feels a lot more silent than i would expect from such a huge vessel

Black Flag - Solo - Exploration with no barriers - character models are far better - Face animation better - Exploration under water - Ship gameplay way better - It's NOT online - Better story - Deep acting - customize the ship / improve the ship - improve the HQ S&B will never beat Sea of Thieves neither some indi pirate games who are more interesting than it. You can notice how lazy were the devs and won't care to improve the game, character models etc etc

i cant wait to see people modd skull an bones textures and stuff into ac black flag

Black flag was such an amazing game I played it at the age of 14/15 and was so immersed I stayed till 4 and woke up for school at 7 lmao, Still gotta say The Witcher 3 edges it, it's literally a perfect game, but I would put Black Flag as a solid 2nd favourite of mine

I feel you were too generous when talking about the improvements of skull and bones, To me at least some of those "improvements" appear to have done better in black flag

I was never a fan of that series but I really like your videos :D

I didn’t know Kermit was narrating videos now! 😮

My friend, this may just be your worst comparison yet. This over 20 minutes video boils down to only Skull and Bones having better graphics than AC Black Flag. There is nothing about logical aspects of piracy, physics or the in depth features of the two games. Skull and Bones has no boarding, no swimming, no melee combat. These are important aspects of piracy, which isn't about blowing other ships, but about capturing and selling their crews, taking their cargo. Pirates used their ship's weaponry to disable other ships in order to board and loot them, trying to minimize damage and settle things with their swords and guns at close range. In this aspect, Black Flag is vastly superior to anything in Skull and Bones, which is basically a glorified vehicular combat game rather than a piracy game. Then there's ship physics. Skull and Bones ships feel like they weigh less than the crew on them, bouncing on waves in manners that would throw the crew off the ship before encountering any other ship on the sea. Ships heel when steering like they are motorbikes and magically accelerate when ramming other ships. They have no weight, they don't behave physically correct. Black Flag's ship may not cut through waves in such a graphically impressive manner, but they behaved correctly, as ships of that size should. Another thing you compared incorrectly were the character animations. Both have terrible interactions with random NPCs, but in story cutscenes the two are not even close. Black Flag's characters move realistically, with unique motion captured animations, they move around, interact with the environment and with each other, and the lip syncronization during dialogues is decent, albeit graphically less detailed. This gives them personality, it makes them feel realistic. In Skull and Bones on the other hand, characters just stand around, moving based on the same generic animations every other NPC can use, there is barely any interaction with anything and lip syncing is all over the place. The only thing it has over Black Flag in animations is that they are more fluid. Skull and Bones' characters feel devoid of any personality and sterile. Every story cutscene feels like one of the cutscenes you would get when interacting with a random vendor NPC. Skull and Bones would've been a decent game if it was released at $20, made in Unity, by a small team of indie developers and not marketed like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Comparing it to Black Flag is like comparing Asphalt 9 and Forza Horizon 5. The shocking thing is that unlike those two, Black Flag and Skull and Bones were made by the same company on massive budgets.

Consider this: for a game that cost about as much to develop as The Last of Us Part II (or two GTA IV's); it has almost nothing going for it except for a singular game loop from a 10 year old entry in a separately-aging franchise, and a reasonably flashy presentation from the chase cam POV. I really hate to see this result, as much as I saw it coming, because developers are put to such hard work on projects like this which have absolutely no substance, and when the projects fail they are the first to get chopped off the payroll.

I’m surprised that he didn’t compare the ship combat

please make each screenshot atleast 2.5 seconds long when you show comparison images, so that that way then we can easily compare both by prssing left and right arrow keys

The ships in 4 behave like cars. I still prefer AC 3's naval levels

in Skull and Bones you have wind no matter where you go, your ship have stamina, you have cannon that can heal you.

The amount of Laziness in companies these days is crazy

Is there a black flag remaster?

Still wating for Tekken 8 vs Tekken 7, Nick.

I see one thing, that in 10 or more years nothing has changed. They pass off old stuff as new technology with specially inflated requirements and pretend that this is complex and professional work from the AAAA era of games for 70++++ bucks = all this is complete crap.

I like how you always come into these with an unbiased look. Its clear Ubisoft is tryna get all they can outta their engine so they don't have to put money into overhauling it. I've been at companies before where we had to use the duck taped engine to avoid 3rd party costs. Theres like one gate keeper engineer with all the tribal knowledge on why stuff isn't working, and everyone quits after a year haha.

It was nice we actually got a comparison between the two. A lot of other people are saying the game looks worse. It definitely has tons of improvements. Have to wait to see what else they add to make it worth the money.

i just want the water details in black flag its the only thing that caught my eyes

The absolutely hilarious (and also the most sad, because of what *could have been*) is that ship to ship combat is only PART of Black Flag, and yet is insanely better than S&B, where ship combat is literally the entire game. They somehow managed to make an entire game about only a part of a game over a decade old *worse*. That takes talent.

They should have made a black flag Remake and everybody would be Happy🤷

Black Flag was peak Assassin’s Creed. They haven’t made anything close since

Bruh Ubisoft should have scraped Skull and Bone and make Black Flag 2

So Skull & Bones is out now? I didnt even knew.

You should do more of this downgrade comparison like comparing the new suicide squad game to arkham knight series

i think we can all agree black flag tops this vs battle hence why i re downloaded it. A much better game to reexplore if u want to feel like a pirate

With a simple reshade mod black flag looks fantastic

@nick930 Expeditions vs Snowrunner soon?? 👀👀👀

They should have made AC Black Flag 2

Theyre evolving... Backwards

Very nice comparison even though I feel the graphics part could be left behind, as it is almost guaranteed that a 10 years old game would not hold its ground against a new game, graphically I mean.

Skull and Bones definitely has an experience on offer, some aspects are indeed better than expected but if I wanted to play a naval focused game I’d just play World of Warships for free. To pay full AAA…nay AAAA price for what’s on offer is just absurd. I’ll stick to the more complete and immersive pirate experience of Black Flag, hopefully Ubisoft can do the remake justice. Regardless thank you for this comparison and deep dive between the two games.

Ubisoft: Ahh yes, nothing more inmersive than a lvl 40 neon glowing giant monster on the sea

skull and bones looks like a mobile game.

after this comparison want t replay ac4 not SB, thats all about new era games

Imagine if Ubisoft could be like techland, CDPR, or HelloGames ( think they're the NMS devs atleast lol ) and could atleast manage to keep adding and overhauling their games to a higher level after release. It shouldn't HAVE to happen after launch like this but i feel like there's so much they could have done here that they could build on the bones of this game and turn it and their reputation around atleast a bit. Let me walk around my ship and play games, punish/reward my crew, etc. Let us choose crew to add after boarding ships like odyssey. I would love to walk over even after my crew does the hard part and just execute, strand, or convert people to my crew.

Excellent video

Skull and Bones really feels like a side-grade more than a true spiritual successor.

19:00 Where did they come from, where did they go? Where did they come from, musket firing squad

Arent the water and water effects from the game engine vs developer work? A ported black flag would negate all of the positive items he brings up

The wave foam particle effects in skull & bones look terrible.

SKULLS & BONES lobbies are literally GHOST RECON BREAKPOINT lobbies but with pirates 🏴‍☠️

There is no comparison. Black Flag is by far a better game than that stripped down mobile style warship game. lol at pirate ships shooting torpedoes 😂 what a disappointment skull and bones is

We already know who wins 💀

the funny thing is if Ubisoft just copied the whole AC4 into S&B and just changed the settings no one would complain, if S&B was another AC game like rogue, it would be awesome, even though rogue was hated at first, now everyone loves it.

they lost me when i heard they turned boarding into an animation, that was the best part, widdling ships down and finally scoring a board was amazing, imagina you did that then a small battle occurs when you actually have to fight another captian player on the seas, would of been awesome but nah even after improvements over 10 years they dont see what ppl want.

7:06 but making faster ship with Stam is a bs low

Skull and bones could have been cool if it didn't all revolve around being stuck on a pirate ship..... could have made it a lot like black flag where you can do land missions and naval side missions..

Black Flag was so underrated... I had so much fun playing the game.

I love how Ubisoft calls skull and bones a “Ubisoft original” but made a better pirate game 10 years before

"Are you interested in picking up skull and bones?" No, not at all