AC4 is great, I'm enjoying it. However the series as a whole is getting pumped dry. They'll find something else to run with to keep the series going, but it won't be long before a series reboot or something.
If you played assassins creed 3, then its kind of strange as the story was kind of brought to a close! *SPOILER ALERT do not read if you don't want the plot spoiled* But HELLO?! all the major characters are dead! where are they going to go with the story? I kind of want to play it just to see how they write themselves out of the corner that they backed into at the end of the last Assassins Creed game!
I said it before and I'll say it again they figured out how to make an awesome pirates game and are using the AC name to promote it. Its hard to just say here's some pirates. Easier for them to say "Well you're an assassin and there's pirates."
Maybe the Animus picks up some cross interference with ancestoral memories of another Assassin that the AC4 guy. Like while playing the intented memory, you randomly end up playing blurbs of this other memory throughout. As a precursor to say AC6.
Who knows.
The pirate parts put me in the mind of if Sid Meier decided to do another Pirates game in 2013 (loved the original).
Well,sorry guys, but they are going to keep exploring places year after year, until we stop buying their games. But why would we stop buying them? They are so fun to play. Just look at Black Flag for example. I mean, let's not lie pt ourselves here folks. They have been probably the most experimenting devs out there. At least they are not like EA and Activision who keep shoving same stuff up our throats every year.
I've liked all games so far (except for the DS/iOS/PSP ones), but the series has definitely changed but it's gonna become stuck soon. It's gonna become stagnant. Why? Because they plan to launch a game every year. This affects quality, I'm sure.
That said, I still think the franchise is still good at the moment.