>>13998923
What's good:
>Naval combat
You can board ships, fight the crew and take the vessel for yourself to add it to your fleet, or you can sink ships and plunder their cargo for yourself. There are also "legendary ships" that serve as "boss battles", but I hesitate to call them boss battles because they're so reliant on ship upgrades that it's practically impossible to beat them without investing in your ship, which to me is less a boss battle and more of an equipment check. Still, they're pretty nice to look at, I guess.
>Music
Game has pretty decent music, everything from the Deus Ex-esque down-tempo sneaking music to the sea shanties is pretty good.
>Wolfpack Unleashed
This is a co-operative multiplayer mode in which you must work with a group of three other players to kill contracted NPC targets. It's a timed survival type mode in which "quality" kills are required to fill a progress bar that will then reward the group with more time. There are various, albeit simplistic, enemy types that behave in certain ways, and the player is tasked with getting a high score by completing challenge objectives and coordinating with his teammates. If you can get a group of people to play this mode with you, it can be fun, but ironically this co-op mode is best played alone for an optimal experience.
What's bad:
>Story
It's about a group of Saturday Morning Cartoon villains who want to acquire a piece of technology that will allow them to read the minds of every known man and also reveal unknown secrets about the nature of reality. Your character initially works with these villains for some vague and selfish reason, but then eventually has a change of heart and decides to help the antagonists in order to prevent such a dangerous device from coming into the wrong hands
>Melee combat
It's the same watered down Batman-esque combat from III; the best thing about it is that it's functional, and the worst thing about it is that it's far too easy and simplistic to act as a game's foundation. The main character has virtually no weaknesses; He can block incoming attacks automatically, he can instantly kill a foe with a single button press, he has no stamina or status ailments that could prevent the player from just spamming attack, he can run and climb infinitely, and he has a small arsenal of weapons with which he can kill enemies in a variety of ways. It's not challenging, it's a power fantasy for people who are too lazy to git gud at anything that's mechanically challenging.
>Stealth
The stealth is fundamentally broken. Although the game makes an effort to provide some opportunity to stealth certain segments of some missions, this is a hollow gesture that is done in vain because the stealth system is flawed. Firstly, the AI is very simplistic, so there are many missing features that one would expect a decent stealth game to have; Guards have very small range of detection; the guard patterns are very simplistic and easy to read; they will notice dead bodies but immediately forget about them after a small cooldown period; they will not attempt to fill posts that were held by guards that get dispatched; and perhaps most damning is that stealth is undercut by the character's ability to murder everything in sight with ease. The levels do not facilitate stealth, they were not designed for it, the player is not punished for not playing stealthily, and the game gives a pittance of an incentive in the form of small monetary bonuses. It tries to rip elements from MGS and Hitman but fails miserably.
Things I am indifferent about:
>Collectibles
There are a shit ton of collectibles to find in this game, both in the ocean and in the populated cities. Treasure chests, ancient artifacts, crafting items, and other items litter the environment. Have fun, I guess. These things seem like a chore to me, and they're purely optional.
>Item Upgrades and the Personal Fleet minigame
You can acquire a number of different items to decorate your character, your ship, and your hideout. Things like different cosmetic changes, different weapons, different outfits, and the like. You must either complete challenges or missions, find crafting materials, or simply purchase these things in order to acquire them. It's a pointless side objective in the same vein as the previously mentioned collectibles. The minigame is a 2D real time strategy game that will pit a fleet of your ships against an opponent's. It plays like an RPG; you wait for your ship to be ready, then give it a command and watch it play out. If you win, you are rewarded with money and crafting items.
TL;DR
Naval combat is fun, the music is pretty good, and I say give the Wolfpack mode a try, but everything else is so much fodder.