Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Buccaneer Edition
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag launched in Europe in 2013, first for Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, and then for PlayStation 4, when the system came out. In Europe five versions were made available: The Black Chest Edition, The Buccaneer Edition, The Skull Edition, the Special Edition and of course the regular version. This article is about the Buccaneer Edition for PlayStation 4.
First things first: the thing that took me by surprise right away is the enormous size of this collector’s edition. This is the biggest one yet for the series, and much bigger than I expected.
The box itself looks really nice. It’s made of sturdy paper that is made to look like wood, as if it were a wooden treasure chest. They even added a transparent layer that gives it a bit of a rough structure, so it also feels somewhat like a wooden surface. Nice.
After removing the lid this is what you will see: the box is divided into two compartments.
By far the most room is reserved for an Edward Kenway statue, that you have to put together yourself. This is the reason for the size of the box.
It took some effort to put it all together, but I have to say, they didn’t take the cheap route with this statue. First of all, it’s gigantic! After assembly it measures 46 centimeters in height! That’s almost half a meter! But it’s also very detailed: the wood has a relief texture, the flag looks quite real, all the details on Edward’s suit are there.
The character has a dynamic pose, one foot on a rope (that you have to bind to the mast yourself), one hand holding the rope and the other raising his sword above his head. This is a high quality statue.
On to the other items.
An artbook. The pages look a little ruffled but there is a lot of different art in it. Weapons, characters, environments. Especially the artworks of the environments always look awesome with Assassin’s Creed games.
A soundtrack CD. An actual CD, which is nice. And there are a lot of tracks on it too, no less than 27. Not too shabby.
Lastly, some envelope with two art cards, or lithographs as the game calls them. They’re made of thick paper, so they feel quite nice.
The game comes in the regular case, except this one says ‘not to be sold separately’.
You also get some downloadable content with it. These are the Aveline missions that are exclusive to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, along with some other content such as a character skin, weapons and three extra single player missions.
I have to say, this is a very good collector’s edition, even for Assassin’s Creed standards. Everything that is included is of high quality and quantity. And it all comes for a very reasonable price (around 100, though I was able to get it for 90). There’s really almost nothing too complain about here, at least nothing significant. Certainly a great start for collector’s editions for the next generation.
