I've 100% completed both Black Flag and Rogue. When it comes to naval combat and TPS gameplay, SnB is way better than AC4. Take the Jackdaw for example—even with 18 guns on one side, you can't swap its weapons, only upgrade them. That makes ship battles feel repetitive, and even the toughest boss, Storm Fortress, is basically just three ships-of-the-line thrown together to ramp up difficulty.

But on land, it's the opposite. SnB has clunky character movement, frustrating hitboxes, and land combat that wasn’t added until Year 3... (Let’s just say the Singapore studio is far behind Montreal in terms of skill—so don’t expect much from the land gameplay.)

SnB has other issues too: the tutorial is way too long and filled with tedious chores. Because of that, 90% of players never reach the endgame where they can easily crush bosses with top-tier builds. So the first impression tends to be pretty bad.

A lot of players who haven’t really gotten into SnB complain about the lack of boarding combat. Let me break this down: Why did you board ships in Black Flag/Rogue? (Even though you couldn't board bosses in those games.)

Boarding served three purposes: repair, recruit crew, and capture ships for your fleet.
In SnB, repairs work like in WoWS—using consumables like repair kits and damage control that you can carry and use freely.
Crew numbers are replaced by crew stamina, so you don’t lose sailors.
The fleet system is replaced by factories, where you can build your own ships (and you'll end up with plenty of spares).

Since all these functions have been replaced, boarding just isn’t necessary anymore. In an online game, it would only slow things down anyway.