Developing a game based on the naval combat of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag was a no-brainer back in the day. If you played Black Flag, you know how much fun the naval combat was, so when Ubisoft announced a new IP based on that combat system, a lot of gamers got hyped. Fast forward to today, where Skull and Bones finally hit the market but due to a lot of delays, has to compete with games like Sea of Thieves. Is this pirate game worth all the delays or was it better to cancel it? Time to find out!
A pirate life for me?
I’ve spent a lot of hours with Skull and Bones since its release to get a better idea of what the game has to offer. As a live-service game, Skull and Bones needs time to show you everything that it has in store but sadly, it didn’t captivate my attention that long, which isn’t a good sign for a live-service game, and neither is its high price tag, to be honest. When I thought of Skull and Bones, I thought of it being a realistic pirate simulator where I got to live the life of a pirate and its crew, in reality, it’s more like a ship simulator where you pick up goods, deliver them somewhere and sink the occasional ship along the way. Far less thrilling than I anticipated. At first, I liked that it offered a different approach than its biggest competition Sea of Thieves but the pattern of the missions quickly offered too much of the same. Sure, it’s fun to manage and build the ship of your dreams and there are tons of options to do it but when the gameplay cycle rarely offers variation, it all becomes too much of doing the same all the time. That being said, underneath it all lies a fun game that never manages to shine bright, mainly due to some weird choices and technical hiccups.
A blast from the past
Skull and Bones is a game that was revealed 11 years ago and was meant to be released on the past generation of consoles and that certainly left its mark. It looks and plays like something that would run on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One instead of the more powerful consoles we have today. I think it’s a rare game where the quality of graphics offers a different experience depending on the mode you’re playing in. If you neglect the performance mode and switch to better visuals, you’ll see something worthy of the current generation consoles with a lot of details on the ships and the environments. Making your way to your next mission while taking in the sight is fun but the moment you need to battle with another ship, you’ll want to switch back to performance mode, making sure it all runs in a steady 60fps. Sadly, this performance mode comes with less impressive graphics and a painfully ugly sea… Graphics-wise this one disappoints and it blows my mind that all that time in development didn’t result in better visuals. It’s created on the Black Flag engine which isn’t sadly on par with the current generation.
The graphics aren’t the only thing that feels like something from the past, there are a couple of gameplay elements that made me wonder if I was playing a modern game or not. Take gathering resources for example. No need to go on land, just sail close to the resources and click the button to collect them. The same goes for boarding hostile ships, a click of the button will do the trick. Not the thrilling gameplay I was looking for. Both technically and gameplay-wise, Skull and Bones could have been so much more than it is now and it’s excruciating to compare it to Sea of Thieves, a comparison that’s natural to make. Compared to Rare’s pirate opus, Skull and Bones feels like an early beta version where some of the ideas made it to the final product without being changed at all.
It’s not all bad
But, it’s not all bad in Skull and Bones and there certainly are good things to mention. Since it focuses heavily on the ships instead of the pirates, you can create the ship of your dreams and change everything just how you like it. With a lot of different weapons, there’s room to experiment and see what fits your style the most. The level of detail in the cosmetics is pretty impressive and especially in graphics mode, those ships come to life and offer something unique. Spending time with my ship and improving it mission after mission certainly offered the most fun while playing and I’m glad it’s not a pay-to-win type of game. Sure, you can spend some money on cosmetics but those will never improve the stats of your ship to keep things fair. The flow of preparing my ship to face my enemies is something I certainly appreciated, especially when I had to try my luck against huge monsters, those fights gave me the feeling I was indeed playing a triple-A game.
It’s a shame moments like those are simply too rare and although it’s fun to create the ship of your dreams, after a while you’re just desperate for some variation in the gameplay. I think that’s the biggest problem with the game, the lack of variation. If we had different missions and if there was more to see on land besides a social hub, it might have been worth spending even more hours with the game. A huge letdown to be honest, because there certainly are fun parts as well but they never outshine the bad stuff.
Conclusion:
11 years in development couldn’t save Skull and Bones. This might have been an amazing game in the past generation but nowadays it competes with bigger and better players on the market and just falls short. Creating and managing your ship is fun but lacks variation and depth to keep you hooked for hours. It pains me to say that it’s all just extremely mediocre.
