Door Dash on the High Seas.
When it comes to a particular theme or era, especially one pulled from our own history, Pirates have been a solid go-to for film, literature, and video games. From the likes of Risen 2: Dark Waters to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to even the questionable Pirates of the Caribbean games, there is something about the appeal of taking to the high seas and taking part in a bit of piracy.
While Black Flag is notably the inspiration for Skull and Bones, Rare’s Sea of Thieves is another name to throw into that ring; an online pirate experience that features in-depth sailing, enjoying combat both on and off the ship, and a world that is begging to explore. Skull and Bones, which has been in development hell for around a decade, not to mention having developmental support from nearly a dozen Ubisoft studios, only features a slim fraction of the content present across both Black Flag and Sea of Thieves. Skull and Bones can at times be great, but it rarely remains a consistently engaging time. It also doesn’t help that you’ll feel more like a delivery guy than a pirate, and that is the game’s biggest sin.
Skull and Bones begins well enough. You get to experience the thrill of a powerful ship as you attempt to decimate your foe. The limited scope of the game’s open moments forces you into a small arena, but the sensation of combat in this moment is well-crafted and as your ship is destroyed, the proceeding rags to riches story has a certain appeal to it. Granted, the story that is tied to your desire to be a pirate kingpin isn’t always great due to a very small cast of characters that I honestly couldn’t remember a single name of. Most missions revolve around you leaving and returning to Saint Anne, talking with the pirate lord there and taking his compliments that you are doing a good job, and then being tasked with menial duties like tracking down a lost cargo shipment or destroying one of his many foes. Sure, there are side quests to take on, and pirate hunts to tackle, but Skull and Bones is more concerned with your ship than anything you personally accomplish as a pirate. In fact, Skull and Bones is more intent on conveying that you are your ship and not your customized pirate stand-in.
When you arrive at Saint Anne, your first order of business is to look the part. You get a few pirate clothes to replace your worn-out rags and eventually a blueprint to craft your first ship. As you track down other vendors on various islands, and level up your pirate status, you'll gain access to craft more ships as well as the gold to then purchase more items. There is a live-service model of another currency to purchase other threads, but honestly, few outfits really spoke to me, and I rarely toyed around with much of it, especially as your role as your pirate feels underbaked and largely pointless. It also doesn’t help that your character model is simply not great with little options at making anyone even remotely good-looking.
Where Skull and Bones finds its appeal is tending to your ship and increasing its power. While it’s a bit off-putting to have power levels ala Destiny applied to various components and weapons, it allows the leveling system to indicate just how powerful your ship is as you continue to level it up. You can use a spyglass to view other ships to gauge their power, as well as what they are holding, but as long as you tend to the narrative, you rarely will find vastly stronger foes unless you stay out during the late hours, often seeing high-level ships roaming about.
Still, nurturing your ship along as you track down parts, blueprints, and more allows for a goal to be accomplished. It’s a solid hook, especially as tracking down resources and blueprints is easy as it will let you know where you can find them or what trade routes they occupy. However, the gathering of resources is both exciting and dreadfully boring. Most of the higher-tier resources you'll find are as you sink other ships. This is where it can be rather engaging, especially for those on troubled seas.
Where the game's resource gathering stumbles is through a mini-game that will prompt you as you sail near trees, shipwrecks, and more. This has you pressing a button in time as your ship, and not your pirate, then harvests the resources. While I get that this mini-game is designed around keeping your ship moving, I feel that sending your crew out to these land masses or shipwrecks, or even yourself for that matter, would have made the procurement of them to feel vastly more satisfying. Hell, you are visiting a ton of nearby islands, so why not have us collect them there? As it stands, it's further noticeable that Skull and Bones’ main character is your boat and not your pirate.
Other ways to find resources are through various settlements and small encampments where you can get out to stretch your legs. However, these areas just tend to feel like a living-menu you are running around in. Given there is no combat or on-foot harvesting, any time you are actively playing as your pirate feels like you are just running around talking to people and rarely feeling like a pirate. Some settlements are only accessible as a shop or a means to plunder them, as you look at vast settlements that are just for show. Plundering results in combatting several waves of ships coming to their defense. Sometimes you'll also need to destroy watchtowers, but as long as you are tending to your health, these encounters are a breeze.
The few locations you'll visit on foot often feel rinsed and repeated across the Indian Ocean. Each island has a storage hole for excess inventory, a quest giver, and the same basic shops where each shopkeeper has any of three animations across the entire game. And given that each character model looks exceedingly last generation, it highlights a point that while parts of this game can look better than Black Flag, its inspired sibling from 11 years ago, it can't hold a candle to that game's presentation, especially in animations and item detail.
These areas all blend into one another and feel like an afterthought more than genuine and intentional. They feel just as lifeless as the dead eyes of each NPC. It almost feels like there was meant to be more to these locations and was either held back for future updates or its content shelves in favor of getting the game out the door. This is a game where you can see its potential, but it stumbles at every opportunity.
Despite its presentation and half-baked systems, combat and exploration are where Skull and Bones at least excel well enough to make the moment-to-moment encounters and traversing the open sea to be engaging. Battles against evenly-matched foes can be tense affairs especially as you are waiting for your healing abilities to leave their cooldown. Using your wealth of combat options to lay into another ship is rather fun, even if, at least in 2024, I would have preferred to see real-time damage to the ships rather than seeing the efforts of your attacks only once their health bar depletes. Sure, sails will show withering, but you are not treading water below decks on a few low shots.
The action can have a very cinematic appeal when you are often surrounded, blasting your cannons to any of four different quadrants around your ship. Each weapon then has a cool down and if you can keep a ship in view of two of your available quadrants, moving your ship slightly left or right can have you alternating between shots as you wait for their cooldowns to expire. Cannon shots have a solid weight to them and depending on whether you are using long-distance guns or a shot-gun-like peppering of your rapid-fire cannons, there is a lot to enjoy when taking part in skirmishes, especially as you start to encounter more challenging foes or are doing battle in an intense storm.
While combat is Skull and Bones’ best quality, I do wish there was more to do on your boat. Your pirate is always behind the wheel and every action is handled by a crew that is already on auto-pilot. You are not barking orders or tending to the damage on your ship, and while you can take in a few different views of your vessel, these viewpoints feel more designed around seeing your customization than granting any level of immersion. I adored controlling my boat in Black Flag, here, I simply find a moderate amount of enjoyment in maneuvering my boat around.
Combat largely begins when you open fire on an enemy vessel. If you are up to no good in certain areas of the game, you’ll start to build up a GTA-style wanted meter that will have your foes attack first and ask questions never. It’s also easy to be in combat with a single ship and have your battle rage across the sea, pulling in more opposition as you find yourself outnumbered. And while you can cause an enemy craft to sink to the bottom of Davy Jones’ locker, you can also storm their deck and earn extra spoils. While Black Flag allowed you to physically do that, more than a decade ago, Skull and Bones has this taking place through a single cutscene, one that is repeated over and over again, often with so little reward for it that it’s pointless to pull off.
Whether it is through combat or exploration, the speed of your boat is handled through a multi-segmented circle. The first few segments are a slow pace that you’ll often use to navigate thin straightaways or tight turns around small islands. This is indicated by a white color per segment. However, as you push past that to the green segments, this is when your ship picks up speed and uses the stamina of your crew, something that can be addressed with the food you can cook. However, the speed of pulling up and down your sails to control this pacing can feel sluggish, especially in battle as you desperately attempt to get moving again after cutting the sails to make a sharp turn.
Once you wrap up the story, you’ll then want to really dig into building up your ship and taking on the bounty hunts that start to get progressively harder. You’ll also track down an additional series of quests that have you taking on daily missions as well as an opium and rum business that can have you earning pieces of eight to then spend on some higher-tier cosmetics and parts for your ship. Pieces of eight can also be earned in hostile takeover events that you’ll find around the map, an activity that is certainly more fun to do with friends as it is a PvPvE scenario. There are also legendary heists that are fairly enjoyable as you’ll track down a ship that is carrying a reward and you’ll then need to sink it. Add in sea monsters to take on and specific locations around the map for true PvP and there is a decent amount to take for what is currently offered for endgame content. Whether you stick it out to get there; however, is up to you.
Visually, Skull and Bones is a mixed bag of some decent-looking locations to sail around to and a host of technical annoyances that come from such a long-winded development. Details as you are sailing towards any island constantly pop-in with shadows and objects appearing the closer you get. Character models look ripped from the worst of last generation with dead eyes and bland and outdated animations. While the water looks fine enough, this is a result of the Anvil Engine and not actually the result of much else. Skull and Bones feels and looks the part of a game that started development a decade ago and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up to really take advantage of looking even remotely modern.
Skull and Bones was a game that I wasn’t ready to believe existed before I had it in my hands. The often delayed pirate adventure felt like a game that was destined to be canceled, to never see the light of day. While Ubisoft has labeled this experience as gaming’s first AAAA release, it’s simply something I just don’t see. Black Flag and Sea of Thieves by themselves grant far more compelling reasons to become a pirate with combat, exploration, and strong fundamentals in becoming an actual pirate. Here, Skull and Bones wants you to be a ship and nothing more. The act of being a pirate feels absent from this adventure as you never amount to being much more than a Door Dash driver on the open seas. Yes, there is fun to be had here with solid combat and a decent co-op-fueled endgame, but the world structured around Skull and Bones is lifeless, bland, and uninspired, destined to be one adventure long forgotten.
Developer - Ubisoft Singapore + Ubisoft Supported Development Studios. Publisher - Ubisoft. Released - February 16th, 2024. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code for the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.