Remakes as a Solution to the Crisis? Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Reviewed

Visually, there is very little to criticize about the Black Flag remake. Ubisoft has given its pirate world a thoroughly modern look. Alongside the exceptionally high level of detail—including the dense vegetation—the generally sharp textures also stand out. The lighting and effects are equally impressive, particularly the convincing water rendering. The action-adventure game also supports a range of modern technologies, including ray tracing.

As expected from a AAA game released in 2026, it supports several upscaling technologies as well as frame generation. As with the most recent entries in the series, the graphics menu offers an impressive number of options for tailoring the visuals to the user’s preferences and hardware. There is also an almost absurd number of presets, including dedicated modes for handhelds. The extensive explanations and occasional comparison images are another welcome addition, as is the VRAM usage indicator. The only minor annoyance is that, as in the previous entry, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, some changes require a restart.

There is also very little to criticize about Black Flag Resynced in terms of gameplay. The opening is varied and compelling, while quickly introducing the core mechanics. Overall, we would describe the gameplay as good, including the climbing, combat, and sailing systems. The controls are also generally intuitive and well designed, aside from the menu navigation, which often feels unusual by PC standards. Load times are relatively short, and we did not encounter any crashes during testing.

For performance measurements, the built-in benchmark is once again a good choice. It takes just over two minutes to complete and presents a variety of scenes and environments from both close-up and distant perspectives. Other developers could learn a thing or two from the extensive analysis provided at the end.

As long as ray tracing is disabled and the detail level is limited to High at 1080p, the remake is relatively undemanding on the GPU. Even the mobile GeForce RTX 5060 manages around 60 FPS. With maximum settings and full ray tracing enabled, however, a GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU is required to achieve comparable frame rates.

Naturally, the GPU requirements increase at higher resolutions. To play at 2,560 × 1,440 with the Ultra High preset, maximum ray tracing, and a target of 60 FPS, laptop users will ideally need a GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU. The requirements become considerably more manageable with DLSS set to Balanced, as shown in our table.

At UHD resolution, compromises are almost unavoidable, as even high-end GPUs reach their limits at maximum settings with ray tracing when upscaling is disabled. With DLSS set to Balanced, for example, the GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU and above achieve frame rates of around 60 FPS at 4K.

Even higher frame rates are possible with frame generation, which supports multipliers of up to 6x. In our tests, it sometimes doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled the frame rate.

With Black Flag Resynced, Ubisoft has delivered a good remake of the original Assassin’s Creed installment. It has plenty to offer on a technical level and creates an immersive pirate atmosphere. Its GPU requirements are neither low nor exceptionally high.

Since gaming benchmarks are very time-consuming and are sometimes delayed by activation restrictions, we can only present a limited number of results at the time of publication. More GPUs will follow.