Assassin's Crreed Rogue is an , game set in an environment and played from a . Naval aspects from previous games return with the player controlling Shay's ship, the Morrigan. The Morrigan has a compared to Edward Kenway's Jackdaw from , allowing for river travel. New features include new ship-based equipment such as releasing an oil slick which can then be ignited, and the ability for enemies to board the Morrigan during ship-to-ship combat. The arctic environment also adds features to naval gameplay and exploration, as certain icebergs can be rammed with an . However, the underwater diving missions featured in Black Flag do not exist as swimming in the North Atlantic causes the player's health to rapidly deplete due to the frigid water, though Shay is able to swim in the more southerly waters of the 'river valley' area.
For combat, the game introduces a similar to the blowpipe from Black Flag, which allows the player to silently take out enemies at a distance. They can be outfitted with a variety of different projectiles, such as firecrackers. The player can also use it as a , which fires off shrapnel grenades and other loads. Hand-to-hand combat has been slightly altered, and now enemy attacks can be countered with timing, similar to the series of games. Enemy Assassins feature archetypes similar to previous games, using skills that players have been using throughout the series; they can hide in bushes, blend in with crowds, and perform air assassinations against the player. Poison gas can now be used as an environmental equipment, and Shay has a that can mitigate its effects, and Shay's Eagle Vision also takes elements from the multiplayer feature of the previous games that allowed them to track an enemy's position via a radar-like system, and even without it, Shay is able to detect enemy presence with the screen edges going red and is also able to accurately foresee when and from where his enemies will strike.
Side missions and activities return, with a number of them based on those of the previous games. Reflecting Shay's role as a Templar, the game introduces a new side mission: Assassin Interception. These mirror the Assassination side missions in previous games, in that Shay, after intercepting a messenger pigeon carrying an assassination contract, must prevent an innocent being assassinated by finding and killing Assassins hidden nearby.
