I’ll begin this Skull and Bones review with two phrases.
101 hours.
And the quote “I considered deleting it from my console”.
Starting development in 2013, Skull and Bones began consideration as a spin-off to the successful Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. While development continued, the initial technology became “outdated”. Therefore it became an independent project which sat in Davey Jones’ locker for the same amount of time it took to make 4 Pirates of the Caribbean films. So what does a game that should bear so much treasure look like?
Eh.
I can admit there’s a good game in here somewhere. Hell I spent 101 hours in it. I also got the Platinum trophy for it. But that doesn’t take away from, or add to, the woes I had in Ubisoft’s latest title which is parts Black Flag and parts red flag which it parades about as a live service product.
While a review should be constructed as something like “personal opinion > where the game is from > story and mechanics” and then a deconstruction of it from there, I feel my narrative for this title is better fitted to the chaotic musings of my notes as I played through it.
“Why are the load screens so long?” and “why are there black loading screens?”. Look. This became bearable as I played. But the first portion of the game, and your experience between how the game hands over between on-ship versus on-foot, is laughable at best. Why is there a black screen handing these over? This becoming increasingly abhorrent when you recall that Black Flag in 2013 had you experiencing land, completing missions there and then swiftly moving you toward naval battle in the same step. It becomes even more glaring when you recall that Black Flag was just as quickly scaled for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One upon its release in 2013, meaning the widest audiences possible could experience it.
“For how long it took, why is it missing some of the features that made Black Flag so fun?”. I feel like I just spoke about this. But heck. The game provides a first-person, bird’s nest…person and third-person view of the ship. But you don’t have an option to see your Captain steering the ship. Considering this Captain is also an avatar you apply cosmetic changes too, it feels like a strange oversight. And why can’t I have the briefest of interactions with my crew? Even the ability to walk on-deck would have been appreciated! But it was squeezed out of the title somewhere in its decade long development. Along with the ability to swim! In this case, it isn’t even 2013 which called and wanted its game back. It was even earlier.
“On foot sections feel stiff and heavy”.
This is the company that made Assassin’s Creed. And yeah, yeah we can say it’s because a new studio took it on. But there is so much in this game which is inherently Ubisoft. So how do these on-foot sections feel so rubbery? I swear, at some points I thought my character would zip off the island locales you can “visit”. Cosmetic changes can influence the freshness of interacting in these locations. But in the very same breath, the sameness of the faces inhabiting them can take away from it.
“Escort missions…the laziest of GaaS” and ” A lot of the missions feel like fetch quests” are two sides of the same coin. And this will happen a lot, especially in the end game. While the game is about “becoming the ultimate pirate kingpin”, it lacks any real stakes in the end game. Especially when it’s about moving between different kind of “missions” to keep adding numbers to your kingpin status. The story, and the continued seasonal content, take away any kind of value “kingpin” has. Even more so when your role eventually becomes the courier of some coin for a pink hat you may want.
“Scaling in zones doesn’t make sense. One second you’re matched with your levels, then something 7 levels higher appears out of nowhere”. While this was SORT OF explained by the addition of the seasonal content, Raging Tides, it also wasn’t. All ships from this season are 10+ on berth. And because the game is a shared server, which includes crossplay, it will match MMR to the highest level players. Meaning if you’re a level 5 boat, you WILL encounter level 10’s at some stage due to MMR, with enemies driven by some kind of benign aggro-RNG system. It’s not fun, especially when you’re trying to explore in your lower levels.
“Fast Travel and respawning costing some in-game currency feels like a very Ubisoft thing to do”.
“It’s almost mobile games-like in a way”. This argument almost feels moot after the Dragon’s Dogma 2 debacle. But at the same time, with recent changes in the games economy with the 1.3 patch, it’s still just as valid. This charge is part of the end game grind. “How can we keep players engaged and grinding?”. Well they locked fast traveling behind silver, the in-game currency, which can be spent quickly in game. Once you have the Helm running, silver becomes high demand for running distilleries to earn another in-game currency (Pieces of Eight). Add to this any resource costs for crafting, you can spend 100,000 silver just as quickly as you can sink a bottle of rum (if it was cheekily mixed with a saucy cola).
POSITIVES.
“Split mission load with teammates is good”. When “crewed up”, your drop quality and quantity increases, and crew level lacks any real influence over encounters. Meaning the level 12 member who can access a level 13 bounty, can bring their level 5 and 8 crewmates along for that. And if they manage to succeed, then drops from this mission will increase for crewmembers involved. A small, but necessary, win for Skull and Bones.
“The coziness of collecting is nice; Ubisoft cozy game?”. This was talking to a strange pattern I started finding. When you weren’t engaging in battle, and simply following the sort of “set path” the game had for you, there was a sense of coziness to it. Just enjoying the going back and forth, resource management and market-driven sales, gave me a sort of mindfulness at the 80 hour mark. Though to be fair, I may have just lost the plot at this point.
“The map is very Ubisoft; A lot of markers with no intuition and/or guidance”. While they can explain what they KIND OF do, for the most part markers are just that. Yes, you could get away with “well that’s how pirates would do it!”. But…BUT. I just spoke about the fact this is an Ubisoft game. These things used to mean something. Yet, like the muchness of modern Ubisoft titles, the map tows the very same line. So have fun zooming in and out so you can actually tell what you’re trying to look at, and what you’re trying to do.
“Hub quick skips are nice”. In the end game, you’ll have more hubs to interact with at two major locations. And thankfully you can just hold a button once there to go to it instantly. This time-save is small, but meaningful, in the meaningless end game that entails. I don’t know, I just thought it was a nice thought to have.
“On the one hand, I had done what I could. On the other, I was on the cusp of completing its season pass within 100 hours. For a GaaS title this spoke both highly, and lowly, of Skull and Bones.”
Maybe it was the completionist in me. I just had to finish it all. And when I did I was free. I don’t think I’ll go back to Skull and Bones. I can acknowledge a game was there. And some fun was had. But when you had Black Flag, and Sea Of Thieves on its way, it felt like that 10 years at sea was more than enough to sink the good ship it could have been. And ultimately this spits on the idea that this game, Skull and Bones, was a quadruple-A title as promised. It was barely even an A in the end.
We'll need a treasure map to find the other 3 A's for the title...
AAAA it is not, as Skull and Bones flails on the surface while other titles sail by. Even if the game was finally released to allow Ubisoft to make use of tax cuts within the Singapore market, I'd ask them to pay those back simply because they never delivered on the product promised.
And for the 101 hours I ultimately gave it.
