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Skull and Bones is finally coming out this month (or so we’re told), and this week’s open beta is UbisoftThe last best chance to convince us that the long-delayed pirate game is worth $60. I played a few hours today and I can’t say that I’m convinced, although I don’t rule out that it improves in the end.
It starts with typical Ubisoft early-game love: Before you graduate as a boat captain, generic pirate NPCs make you demonstrate that you understand complicated game systems, like pressing F to collect floating loot, and send you schlepping away. the feet between small islands in search. of an acacia to cut down. That task took me a while, because other players had already harvested all the nearby acacia forests, and I guess it takes a while for them to respawn. Yo ho yo ho, another stump for me.
Should logging in really be one of the first things you do in a pirate game? Probably not, but after acquiring wood and finally building a proper ship, I could focus on sinking NPC merchants to accumulate wealth and supplies, which is better.
The combat is simple and fun, although it is more like piloting a speedboat than captaining a 17th century ship. I guess somehow I didn’t manage to absorb any of the almost 30 The Skull and Bones trailers that Ubisoft has released over the past seven years, because I had imagined something slower and more dignified, like the capital ship battles of Fractured space (except in the ocean, obviously).
It’s easy to maneuver within cannon range with NPC traders and fishing boats, and firing shots doesn’t require great ballistic intuition. A crew resistance bar adds some friction, albeit in an artificial way: they basically get too tired to make the ship go fast.
The stamina system also leads to ridiculous complaints from the crew about being hungry, since cooked food gives them benefits – eat before you leave for adventures on the high seas, idiots! Their constant meowing and barking (they scream at everything they see, in case I haven’t noticed all the big ships around me) made me long for the soulful solitude of a solo session at Rare. sea of thieves.
At first I thought Ubisoft was making a grittier, bloodier counterpoint to Rare’s charming, whimsical pirate game, but Skull and Bones isn’t really gritty and bloody. It’s cheesy and unnatural. After building my first ship, I was shown a celebration animation in which my character aggressively clapped for the carpenter like a wine-drunk adult trying to get a baby’s reaction. He reminded me of those TikTokers who pose as NPCs, or those fake mobile game ads where the player becomes a level 99 boss. I can’t imagine sticking to this world.
Perhaps the real fun of Skull and Bones comes from teaming up with other players, forming a mini fleet, and fighting other groups. None of the players I came across wanted to join. I took random shots at a few, but at our level, PvP seemed pointless: my cannonballs lacked enthusiasm when it came to damaging the players’ ships, and hull repairs are too easy for them to feel threatened. (It’s like using a health pack in a shooting game.) I enjoyed pointlessly ramming players trying to navigate towards the main settlement, spinning them around just to annoy. Sometimes you have to create your own fun.
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If Skull and Bones improves with larger, better-armed ships on the open sea, there is a PvPvE complete ending where you can take over manufacturers and set up your own trade routes, which sounds great; we will tell in our review.
Until now, I feel a renewed desire for simple but exciting adventures. and mishaps of Sea of Thieves, which emphasizes simulation and player agency (aka the freedom of one individual to cause big problems for everyone else) over the structured progression of Skull and Bones, where I do routine missions to unlock ship and weapon plans and collect the materials to build them.
I’ll give Skull and Bones one thing… I want to have this peg-legged cat on my boat:
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