Skull and Bones is out in the wild, and after playing the beta, I must say my hopes had been raised that maybe it could make a little more impact than I first thought. While there is a lot of content in the game, I am still unsure how I feel about it, and that might just be the first of its problems.
Like the Beta, the game begins with me controlling a large warship; I felt powerful as I defeated multiple foes and learned the basics of ship and sea combat. Sinking the French ships and hearing the screams made me feel powerful. The feeling of power is short-lived as soon there is a monstrous fleet of unstoppable French Warships cresting the horizon. After sinking a few, the tide turns, and the only option left is to flee. Fate had different ideas for my crew and me, as I was quickly overwhelmed. The well-placed cannon fire sent my ship to Davey Jones’s locker, and I was left to float away on a board as the horizon slowly faded to black.
The next thing I knew, I was being dragged out of the sea by a tiny ship and two of my crew. As I am dragged on board, I see my reflection in the water, which turns into the character-building screen. A vast choice ranging from hundreds of designs to approximately ten prebuilds. A selection of eyes, hair, tattoos, and scars are among the options, and you can spend as much or as little time sifting through this. I made my decisions fast and moved on to the first mission. This opening area is set up as an introductory tutorial and revolves around a few fetch quests that give a basic familiarity with the game’s systems, and then I was sent on my way to the main island of Sainte Anne and gained access to the wider world.
Upon my arrival at Sainte Anne, I explored the small island and discovered the various vendors, persons, and the main quest-giver in his chambers. I moved around the island, speaking with the blacksmith, shipwright, and other vendors, and completing their missions allowed me to purchase my first ship, a small sloop. It was a good enough vessel to start the main quest, but far from the Warship I had witnessed at the beginning of my journey. That ship would be one of my ultimate goals, but first, I needed to prove myself to the overseer of Sainte Anne. It began with a simple quest: head to another port, deliver some items, and return them. I was congratulated and told I had the makings of a Pirate King, a goal of all pirates from the sound of it. I was soon given more quests, not only by this man but by many of the vendors on the island. I was quickly heaped in silver and could purchase more items and upgrade my ship.
After a dizzying first few hours, I felt like I had progressed, and things were looking up. Unfortunately, this feeling quickly faded as the vendor’s quests became stale, the mission level scales became too high, and the main quests perpetually became too similar; I was soon bored. Seeking something different, I explored Sainte Anne’s darker corners. I soon discovered the black market, completed the access missions, and gained the ability to be a conveyor of contraband. I thought this was the path to more tremendous success and a reprieve from the boredom. After completing the first few missions, I could now hunt other vessels for rum supplies, and I began my travel over the far reaches of the map. The map opened further, revealing more settlements and the opportunities spread to more regions. I was, unfortunately, still slowly levelling, and this mission had level barriers. I soon found myself needing to take on more basic missions to enhance my level so that I could become the necessary threat to run booze and drugs amongst the islands.
This is where I began to think this RPG was not for me. The levels were becoming more challenging to acquire, and the travel soon burned up my days. After hours spent on small gratification and little progress, I was left disheartened and wanting something more. I left the game for a few days and returned when the first premium battle pass had unlocked. Having the Ultimate pack, I was granted access to the pass and an upswing in the game participation. There was more to do and more reasons to do it. This was still a short-lived adventure, as progress on the battle pass was slow, and the unlocks, although exciting at first, soon became just more in-game items that no longer held my interest. There were missions to complete and more ship battles to look forward to. However, I was still level-locked and needed help to complete them. Finding in-game people to join took a lot of work. Where the crews in the Beta seemed more than happy to join up, I was now finding no one would join or allow me to join them. My invites were met with no response, and I was now joyless and lonely. Ultimately, I decided to leave the game and play other things instead.
Some aspects of the game still held my favour, even if it disappointed me. I enjoyed the combat in the game; even though it looks basic, and much of it can be, there are still many items at play; like other RPGs, your character build affects battles. Instead of a human character, it is your ship build that changes the aspects of battle; you can have DPS, Tanks, and Sniper builds. This makes for interesting choices when looking at upgrading or purchasing other vessels for your fleet. I liked the visuals, but I saw little difference when switching between performance and quality visual options. I also liked the music and the shanties when they were being sung on the ship.
The dislikes of the game did outweigh the positives. Unfortunately, the story was soft and not enjoyable. I never felt like my mute captain had much of a stake. Events were slow-moving, and while they were described to me as detrimental and meant to be world-building, they mostly consisted of sinking a ship or grabbing some items and, on rare occasions, destroying a fort. Ultimately, they lead nowhere fast, and I soon lost interest in them. The alternate options for missions from vendors were exhaustingly the same. The black market missions started as fun and became time-consuming adventures with no real consequences. The harvesting of items was weird, and there was no personal gain when completing tasks. The differences in the quality and performance modes were seemingly nonexistent until you were performing quick time events, where it began to feel laggy in quality mode. The lack of access to warehouse items when at vendors meant that you often stopped at vendors multiple times to switch loads from the warehouse to your ship, making it a tedious task.
It feels like the game lost direction between the long development cycle and the team not knowing what it ultimately wanted Skull & Bones to be. There are so many better pirating games on the market that Skull and Bones will get lost in the sea of them. If you want to enjoy a pirate game, I’d look at Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Sea of Thieves or one of the countless other titles to get your pirating fulfilment.
(Review code provided to Explosion Network.
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