Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag Freedom Cry DLC Review

 

One of people's biggest complaints with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag was that I rarely actually cared about Edward's story as I sailed across the Caribbean. Well, some people are happy to say that the Freedom Cry DLC tells the emotional story of Adewale, Edward Kenway's one-time first mate, as it dives into some heavy, powerful themes of slavery and the true price of freedom. Adewale's life is very different from that of any other AC protagonist, which makes his journey quite refreshing.

But ironically, the thing people liked most about Black Flag – the sheer freedom of exploration – is nowhere to be found in Adewale's journey. Instead, Freedom Cry disappointingly uses the series' mission tropes as a crutch, and even goes as far as to roll back on some of the improvements that Black Flag proper made. Adewale's mission to liberate the slaves of Port-au-Prince while attempting to spark a revolution is as engrossing a tale as the series has seen since Ezio's trilogy.

The first DLC expansion for Ubisoft's pirate adventure, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag -- Freedom Cry is a four-plus hour adventure featuring a new assassin character, Edward Kenway's first mate, Adewale. Experiencing the new sights and sounds of Port-au-Prince was great, as the city has a unique feel compared to the main hubs of Black Flag. Sure, the villain is a two-dimensionally evil governor who revels in the misery of his subjects, but that made me want to throw a wrench in his plans all the more.

Freedom Cry wisely integrates its story themes with the actual gameplay. Most of the sidequests and diversions you'll stumble across involve saving the life of another human being. As people watched their resistance movement slowly grow, they kept expecting the number to eventually come into play in some sort of massive revolution mission where they overthrow the island's corrupt leaders. Sadly, the men and women you save only seem to exist to help you unlock character upgrades at predetermined intervals. I quickly realized that I wasn't saving them for the upgrades -- the players were saving them for themselves.

Despite Freedom Cry's much-improved story and dense setting, it still stumbles over the problems that have plagued the series since its beginning, and even some that seemed to have fixed. Black Flag managed to combat the fatigue of Assassin’s Creed’s repetitive tail-and-stab missions by allowing us to freely explore a massive world and create our own adventures. But Freedom Cry's relatively compact map confines us to the main story. There are few distractions in the world, and it only took me an extra hour to see most of what the West Indies has to offer.

Some people really did enjoy their time in this Assassin's Creed short. Adewale's weapon of choice, a massive machete, lends itself to the heavy, violent tones of the story. And the score is particularly impressive, as it effectively hops between epic battle themes and Haitian folk music that really help make Port-au-Prince feel like a lived-in world.