Skull and Bones has finally hit the shores after over a decade under development, having been through many uncertainties and delays. Ubisoft delivers on some of its promises of a swashbuckling open-world RPG with MMO characteristics, but it’s quite far from the concept of a “AAAA,” as Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently labeled it. The slow-paced gameplay and an unavoidable lackluster sensation in regards to land exploration and combat result in a game that isn’t quite the treasure trove that many players would be hoping for.
Pirate Template
Even if you have not attentively followed this game or even participated in the open beta, it’s not hard to picture the idea powering Skull and Bones. Far from original or intricate, the meat and bones of this adventure are the fetch quests and pillaging under a guise of pirate companionship and cannon firing. Lingering memories of Sid Meier’s Pirates! suddenly emerge, with the appeal of boarding ships and looting them after thrilling sword fights hard to resist. However, Skull and Bones has so much more to offer and yet forgets about elements as crucial as this one, forsaking melee combat and the inherent excitement in exchange for brief cutscenes with lifeless buccaneers raising crates of wine.
Your saga starts after a disastrous battle as your ship turns into wreckage, with our blank slate of an avatar beaten down, staring at their reflection on a puddle. This is where you get to customize your looks in a very limited way, but the game ignores the fact that it will ask you for some body options such as weight and tattoos, which you have no way of seeing until later in the first hub town. A small detail it may be, but a proof as any that there are some oversights of varying importance to be found along the way.
But as the storyline unfolds, an underwhelming feeling starts to creep in. The long hours of sailing and discovering uncharted territory intertwined with mandatory loot collecting, both on sea and land, the latter via a basic timing mini-game, mimicking a template that can be seen in a myriad of other games, mostly MMOs, but with a pirate setting. The islands and the waves look terrific, some sights are breathtaking, strongly contrasting with most of the dummy-like NPCs sailing along with you or that you’ll meet throughout the adventure. It’s a game of contrasts in that regard, characters needing a lot more attention than they were given, even your supposedly important first-mates.
When you are sailing in first-person, your hands on the ship’s wheel, the atmosphere is there and for a moment you feel like the ragged captain of this band of misfits. When your sailors start their amazingly synced shanty as you are sailing to your next objective with the wind blowing on your face, the immersion hits peak levels. But soon after you are reminded of the game’s flaws and limitations, the lack of crew management options or even the ability to walk on deck, the chore that some of the quests represent – even with the presence of ports for fast travel – and how the reward for doing something is doing something very similar right after.
Progress is slow, the first hours are far from exciting and just set you up with a better ship and weapons. To unlock the more advanced options, you have to search for blueprints and gather materials to craft them, just as you would do in any other RPG. And then you’re off to the job board, eager NPCs, or other places to trigger quests that will take you into the high seas, charting your way to the marker on the map or close. Often, you get to choose the peaceful way of bartering or the vicious way of shooting and pillaging everything and everyone. This is a good but obvious choice, different approaches that may be suitable to this or that player.
Sailing the Seas of War
The feeling of controlling a large boat against the wind and the strong waves is an accomplished one, and surely the highlight of the game. It’s wonderful to see how the seas go from calm to untamed, the beautiful sunsets and the night skies giving the whole picture a soothing atmosphere, with rain and storm emphasizing the sense of danger. Navigating against the elements of nature takes its toll on speed and control, even visibility, something that becomes all the more important during combat and often plays a crucial role on the outcome.
Skull and Bones does put a clever spin on naval warfare, with the weapon choice corresponding to the position you are relative to your enemies. You can set up different cannon types into your ship varying on damage, range, and reload time, and the way you navigate in combat is going to have all the significance. However, it doesn’t feel physically accurate, as your cannonballs don’t make a dent through the sails, when in reality they would either make large holes or take them out entirely; the torn sails you see are the result of the overall ship health system and not the works of your aim, plus there wasn’t any noticeable change in maneuverability and speed after being severely damage by enemy fire.
When the enemy ship’s defenses are down, you can either sink it or approach it for boarding, something that may reward you with additional loot and weapons, along with a sense of disappointment. It was already patent that you can’t walk on deck, but you will now realize that you don’t have melee combat as well. No swashbuckling combat, no brawls for control of a ship, nothing but a brief cutscene where your ugly – in the literal sense of the word – crew salvages what’s left of the enemy boat; you’re a pirate captain that can’t even swim on shallow waters or order your crew members around. When you’re out on the sea, Skull and Bones isn’t just putting you at the wheel of the ship; you are the ship, and this is a naval combat game that just happens to feature a bit of walking when you reach some cities, and not even in all of them.
The crew boarding itself is clunky, randomly working as you approach the ship, with your grappling ropes failing to trigger sometimes, often trespassing the ship with odd visual results. Between zooming to shoot and timing the boarding, you can only do so much and the result is a mess that can have nefarious consequences when fighting stronger ships.
Sometimes you can choose to plunder cities, which is when you are thrust into this naval arena of sorts, fighting incoming ships as well as attacking the settlement, with increasing rewards as you go. You can call for help to other players in these cases and a few other special co-op missions, which is when the game is at its best – sailing and fighting within a group is a good feeling and allows you to momentarily forget about the severe limitations elsewhere, from the lack of land activities apart from the occasional treasure hunt by following map clues (and a bright ray of light showing the exact location), or the constant grind for better gear that quickly becomes repetitive.
Get your ship destroyed and your valuable cargo will be left floating on that location, waiting for you or other player to grab it. Die a second time and it will be gone forever, Dark Souls style.
Waves of Sunk Potential
Instead of proudly championing the risky lifestyle of bravery and mischief on the high seas, Skull and Bones cuts corners where it shouldn’t and fails to be the game that fans of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag were expecting it to be. Unlike Ubisoft’s own Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora that successfully used the tried-and-tested template from Far Cry and other open-world action games but made it exciting and enjoyable, this one sticks to the basics and doesn’t venture any deeper than shallow waters, playing it safe and ignoring aspects that would make it a resounding hit, a game to make Sea of Thieves crawl back into its pirate den.
It’s not without its charms when a fleet is sailing in synchrony, crashing waves and plundering merchant ships or other players. There’s some excitement to be had, but the drawback is that quite a bit of monotony and visible limitation will be found amidst these moments. There is potential and room for improvements however; Skull and Bones seems to be the type of game that will receive a host of content in the coming years, so hopefully we’ll see significant enhancements to turn it into a remarkable seafaring adventure.
Score: 6.5/10
Pros:
- Sailing against stormy weather can be fun
- Combat is exciting, especially with more players around
Cons:
- MMO aspect feels tacked on
- No way to manage crew members
- No land or boarding combat
- Characters are fairly ugly
Skull and Bones review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.