DLC #114 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag - Freedom Cry

Freedom Cry, the Single Player expansion pack offering from Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag, adds 6 additional trophies to the full list, and focuses around the side-story of Edward Kenway's sidekick, Adewale, a black pirate who's goal is to liberate black slaves from the isles of Port-au-Prince, a end the reign of tyrant Pierre de Fayet, all within a new world for the player to explore, albeit of a much smaller scale.

The list itself is very vanilla. There is a string of 9 new story missions specific to the expansion, complete with their own optional objectives, and full completion of these to 100% will award the singular gold trophy, "His Full Attention", which tops off the package. You will also be awarded a trophy for just merely reaching the end of the story.

As with the main game, the story missions are very standard, and none of the optional objectives will create any difficulty barriers, leading to a completion time of around 3-4 hours for the story alone. This timescale goes by the assumption there's no requirement to replay any missions in order to achieve any of the optional objectives, so it's advised to complete the optional objectives as you go along.

Trophies are also awarded for the liberation of slaves, which is the other big part of this expansion, aside from the new story arc. The "Seeds of independence" trophy, awarded for liberating 500 slaves will ensure you explore enough of this new feature, and slaves can be liberated through a series of randomly generated activities throughout the map. These will range from smaller activities, which liberate less slaves, such as freeing them from a cage, or disrupting a slavers auction, to larger activities, which liberate greater numbers of slaves, such as ridding plantations of slaver influence, or hijacking a slavers ship.

It is important to note that, there is a requirement to liberate at least 350 slaves as part of the progression throughout the main story, and you won't be able to accept specific missions as a consequence of not meeting this minimum requirement, so this is actually mandatory to full completion, at least up to a certain point anyway. There is a clean-up operation required to reach 500, but all you need to do is stick to the larger activities, where you can liberate larger numbers of slaves at once, and you'll reach the target number in no time.

Overall, this package should only take a handful of hours to complete. Somewhere within the region of 5-7 is a fair estimate, and the ever easy gameplay of Assassin's Creed Single Player adventures will help you on the way to an easy 100%.

Platinum #87 - Assassin's Creed IV : Black Flag

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

If there's one series that almost, always, produces an easy Platinum, Assassin's Creed is the banker.

Black Flag sees you take control of Edward Kenway, directly connected as the Father of Haytham Kenway in Assassin's Creed 3, in search of an observatory that the Templars are also seeking to be able to control the visions of World Leaders, and use these visions to gain vital insight into how to achieve world power.

The time era is the pirate-influenced Caribbean, so there's a big focus on ship-based combat and exploration, as well as the introduction of underwater sections for the first time in an Assassin's Creed game.

The trophy list is, for the most part, very par for the course for an Assassin's Creed title.

The "Saw That One Coming..." trophy, awarded for completing Sequence 13, and thus, the end of the game, is a permanent fixture for the Assassin's Creed series, and follows a ton of trophies for natural progression through the game's story arc. This also includes a small handful of trophies for the commonly occurring present day sequences too, combining to account for around a third of the entire list.

The story, in length, is roughly around 10-15 hours for a single run, but may also involve covering some previous ground in order to complete the optional objectives for every mission. In some previous Assassin Creed titles, I have given a mention to the full synchoronisation trophy that usually accompanies these lists, which is to achieve 100% of the main story constraints for every single main story sequence, and whilst this also does exist here in the form of the "By The Book" trophy, there are only 2/3 additional objectives in the entire game that are anywhere close to some sort of challenge, so this serves mostly as a tick-box exercise, rather than an additional challenge.

Despite there also being a ton of side activities to participate in and complete, and to which there are individual trophies awarded for the completion of a few of these, which is also normal when comparing to previous Assassin's Creed titles, you don't have to complete 100% of what the game has to offer, and this is a huge game, often filled with very repetitive side content, so it's good to see the trophy list doesn't require you to do absolutely everything, which also helps bring the overall Platinum difficulty rating down a touch.

That's not to say there aren't a few of these trophies that will require some degree of work though.

The "Destroyer" trophy, awarded for Fully upgrading the Jackdaw, is one of these trophies, and probably the most time consuming extra-curricular activity outside the main story which awards a trophy. 

To fully upgrade the Jackdaw, which is the inherited ship that Edward Kenway picks up during the main story, you'll need a combination of both materials and money in order to craft and purchase the upgrades. These resources can be obtained in a few ways, either through looting warehouses or boarding enemy ships and pillaging their stock, but the level of resources required for every single upgrade will take some degree of grinding, especially for metal, which seems to be in much greater need than the other materials. You can also purchase the raw materials from general stores, but given the fact you'll also need the money to buy upgrades, this is a very counter-productive exercise, and the most effective method of accruing resources is to target strong enemy ships, which you'll be able to do once you start to upgrade the Jackdaw. It might take a while to get to this point, but stronger vessels contain greater quantities of resources, and will help you achieve this trophy faster.

Another thing to point out is the fact that, for some specific upgrades, you'll need to obtain the blueprint before you can craft it, which is gained through finding the relevant treasure map that reveals it's location, then locating and digging it up based on what the treasure map tells you, which only extends the grind. You'll more than likely end up boarding alot of enemy ships in order to gather the required resources, and the reales (money) equates to a hefty sum, which will also take time to accumulate.

The same also goes for the "FTFY" trophy, awarded for Fully upgrading your hideout, which becomes available towards the end of the game. Along with the reales required for fully upgrading the Jackdaw, as explained above, you'll need a further 90,000 reales in order to purchase every upgrade for the secret hideout, so the total number of reales required for these trophies quickly accumulates towards a very large sum.

The biggest issue with reales is the fact there doesn't seem to be a sure fire way of quickly accumulating them. The game gives you options, whether it be looting treasure chests within the various cities/islands/underwater caverns, gambling or completing fleet missions, but these can be slow burners and the pay-off never seems worth the time. You can earn big money from sinking the 4 legendary ships, which also awards a trophy, at 20,000 reales each, but these are limited to just the 4, and the random events where you can raid high value escorted ships at 10,000 reales a time just don't seem to occur often enough. This means you're stuck with your chosen method of grinding out the reales, and mine was scouring the entire map for buried treasure via treasure maps mostly (4,000 reales per map), and this makes the game go from a bit grindy to really grindy.

As far as the Single Player portion of this game goes, a steep grind for resources/reales is about challenging as it gets. The core gameplay mechanics have never changed, and the combat and parkour is so easy to understand, it never provides a genuine challenge. For as long as Assassin's Creed games are built this way, they'll usually have low scoring Platinum difficulty ratings for this very reason.

The list does also focus it's attention onto the online Multiplayer, with a small handful of trophies awarded through competing within the online portion of the game.

The "Committed To The Cause" trophy, awarded for Reaching level 55 in Multiplayer, is only the second time (since Brotherhood), an Assassin's Creed title has required a significant leveling venture to trigger the Platinum trophy (Revelations did also include a leveling trophy, but this was only up to level 20). This is a very standard progressive trophy, with 526,000 exp required to reach level 55, and experience points are earned through achieving kills and staying hidden, where applicable to victory. You can also earn good experience through completing a range of different in-game challenges which can be viewed within the online menus, so you can plan ahead of matches which challenges you want to strive towards. These are often tiered by bronze, silver and gold, with greater amounts of experience awarded for each tier, so it's sensible to target easier challenges and unlock each tier in order to maximise experience point gain effectively.

There are also some game modes that are way more lucrative for experience compared to others. These include Manhunt and Wanted as personal choices, but quicker leveling progression will still rely on an element of skill due to the fact "better" kills are rewarded with more experience than wreckless kills, in true Assassin's Creed fashion.

Reaching level 55 took me just over 22 hours, which is reasonable compared to most online leveling trophies I've achieved throughout the past, and if you get into a decent rhythm of tracking and completing challenges and performing high-scoring kills during matches, you can often walk away from a game with a good accumulation of experience, which will allow you to reach the end goal quicker. To suggest it's the hardest trophy in the list is somewhat overstating the meaning of the word  "hardest", but it is the most time consuming, and the online environment against other players will at least test your skills more than the turgid Single Player AI will.

The rest of the Multiplayer trophies, of which there are 4, are very easy, and can be earned as you progress through the leveling venture.

Assassin's Creed games don't generally tend to be very challenging, and Black Flag does not provide an exception to the rule. The re-introduction of a heavy-ish online leveling venture, along with some post-game grinding within the Single Player portion of the game, does just about enough to bring it below the mid-range of difficulty though, but this game is pretty much purely all about the time-commitment required. With everything taken into account, it'll take somewhere in the region of 40-50 hours to complete the list.

There are very few genuine challenges involved, and the gameplay is the same old Assassin's Creed formula of hand-holding and user-friendly controls, which makes it even easier. If you're willing to put the time in, this is an easy win.

Notable Trophies - 

Saw That One Coming... - Complete memory sequence 13
Destroyer - Fully upgrade the Jackdaw
FTFY - Fully upgrade your hideout
Committed To The Cause - Reach level 55 in Multiplayer

Hardest Trophy -

Committed To The Cause
Reach level 55 in Multiplayer