Skull and Bones review. A victim of great promises

Before its release, Skull and Bones has come a long way in 10 years, having gone through several development restarts. Initially, the game was planned as a supplement for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, but gradually the concept changed in favor of a multiplayer game. After showing the final vision of the game, it was hard to find a person who liked the service concept of the game. The head of Ubisoft jumped into the last car of the skepticism train with the words about AAAA game with a price tag of $70 (in our case, 1299 UAH for PC and 2299 UAH for PS5). But despite all the scandals and exaggerated promises, we’re going to tell you what Skull and Bones actually turned out to be.

Not Assassin’s Creed

To begin with, it is worthwhile to understand what Skull and Bones is not. This is not Assassin’s Creed. And it’s not a third-person action game in which the character runs, jumps, fights with enemies with swords or quietly cuts them out while hiding in a pile of palm leaves. Skull and Bones is a game about a ship.

The closest game to it is Sea of Thieves by Xbox. But even its concept is different. The whole basic gameplay of Rare’s game is built on a team of live players and their communication. In Skull and Bones, one ship is designed exclusively for one player, and the ship’s crew is generally a function that executes orders at the touch of a button. Although sometimes they also need to be fed to regain strength. However, all success depends solely on the player’s skill.

Our long journey to become the greatest pirate begins with a shipwreck that results from an epic battle with the Company’s fleet. After regaining consciousness on the wreckage, we create a character in a rather stylish editor, after which we are picked up by the surviving crew members. After a short training in the basic mechanics of the game, we set off from the starting location to the approximate region of the Seychelles and Maldives with an important letter for the local manager.

The game doesn’t have a conventional story campaign. But our ascent through the hierarchy is accompanied by a branch of tasks for Scarlock, the main pirate of the region. He has his own affairs with local tribes and groups, trying to find his own approach with each of them and, of course, with the greatest benefit for himself. In order to prove his loyalty, at first he has to play the role of a «businessman». Over time, raising our reputation, we are entrusted with more serious matters, gradually revealing and teaching new features of the game.

Progress is unstoppable

In the world of pirates, reputation is the measure of everything. The game does not have a general character level system, but our reputation as a pirate grows with all our activities. Each new level of reputation opens up the possibility of making a new ship and weapons or equipment for it. But in order to make something new, you still need to find and purchase the drawings of the necessary equipment.

Ships have their own separate level. The basic level, which is used to create a ship, depends on its size. By installing new weapons, defense, and equipment that gives passive bonuses, the ship’s level increases, which adds health points and hold capacity.

You can also hunt down a shark, crocodile, or even a hippo. This can even be done with a cannon from a large ship, but the skin of the animal killed in this way will not be of the best quality, so it is better to take a small boat and arm yourself with a spear.

The main source of reputation and resources are contracts, which are essentially secondary quests. They can be completely different, from collecting food to support the base to tracking down and killing traitors of a tribe. In addition to monetary and reputational gratitude, we will be rewarded with cosmetic items, resources, blueprints, or anything else of value in the game.

After reaching a certain level of reputation, Investigations are opened. This activity begins with eavesdropping on a conversation about an event or person. After that, by searching and comparing clues, we move through the story, at the end of which a reward awaits. In the later stages of the game, Smuggling will open. This is a separate large mode in which we directly compete with other players. For some tasks in this mode, fast movement does not even work. That is, contraband must be delivered from one end of the map to the other in person. And in order not to get bored, we can be attacked by other players as well.

PvP in Skull and Bones is optional, which in my opinion is the right decision, because not everyone likes to fight with other players. For PvP, there are separate activities that can be instantly joined by an on-screen notification. For example, a treasure hunt. One player has a map with the location of the treasure, and the other players have to take possession of the map. The first to find the treasure is the winner. At the same time, all participants in the race are marked on the map and can freely attack each other.

Cooperative activities work the same way. When notified, we join in to complete the mission together. You can also play the entire game in classic cooperative mode without any additional conventions.

Plundering merchant or even warships is also a righteous cause, and even plundering forts is encouraged. But it’s better to be prepared for this activity, because a quick raid on single merchant ships can turn into a massacre of 4-6 ships.

On boarding

The combat system is simple at the core, but has a lot of nuances. The ships are divided into classes according to their characteristics, such as tank, support, and damage. Weapons around the perimeter of the ship are divided into sectors: sides, bow, and stern. The guns have a small viewing angle, which is actually necessary to use during combat. After firing from the onboard weapon, you can quickly change the angle and fire from the bow of the ship. And so on in a circle.

Guns come in different types and with different properties. Some fire far, others have a large area of effect, and others are explosive and can easily set an enemy ship on fire. Each gun fires separately, which allows for better control over their reloading and targeted fire. And it is needed here because the enemies have weaknesses that, if destroyed, deprive them of certain functionality and even combat capabilities.

If you die, all non-basic cargo remains at the place of death. For a small fee, you can be revived immediately in the sea near the crash site, as if repairing the ship. In this case, the maximum health will be slightly reduced. Each time the ship will recover less and less, and this will be reflected even in its appearance. If we die for the last time, we will recover at the nearest pier and sometimes we will have to swim a long way to get the abandoned cargo.

As for the comparison with Black Flag, which is heard at every turn, as I mentioned at the beginning, Skull and Bones is a game of a different genre with different emphases. Some of the mechanics that are present in Assassin’s Creed IV will only be annoying in Skull and Bones. This includes boarding with a full-fledged combat system. The boarding itself is optional, but it gives you bonus loot, so it’s better not to neglect it especially in the early stages of the game. I’ve had cases where I’ve boarded three enemies in a row with a difference of a few seconds. And it was very important to do it quickly before the other ship called for help or turned around to fire several volleys in my direction. Stretching out a routine activity, which is boarding, will only lead to unnecessary irritation after a few hours of playing and the desire to banally destroy enemy ships.

As for the character’s combat system, it’s pointless to make it only for boarding, because it’s months of work that players will miss. And if you expand it with full-fledged combat missions, raids, etc., it will distract from the ships and make the game overloaded with mechanics. We’re not underestimating NFS because you can’t get out of the car and walk around the city like in GTA or kick the enemy’s ass after a lost race.

But while the gameplay of these games is at different poles in terms of concept and emphasis, the story component is indeed comparable. And in Skull and Bones, I would like to see the story in a more traditional form. Even if it was linear, but with good staging, cutscenes, and plot twists with betrayal and unexpected allies. There are not many games about romanticized piracy, and piracy in general, and even fewer plot-driven ones.

The most annoying are the minor inconveniences. For example, to simply restore a ship after a few crashes, you need to first land ashore, then return to the ship, and only then will a menu appear with repair functions, cargo distribution, and more. It would be nice to immediately dock only for repairs and customization, without going ashore.

Another annoying thing is that when you change ships, the game gives you only two options to choose from: move everything to a new ship or to a storage facility. And when we change a large ship for an even bigger one, it’s not a problem, but when we need a small schooner to get to hard-to-reach places, then problems arise. It would be more convenient to leave all the cargo separately for each ship. But as I understand it, technically, the hold is a single space for all ships, the size of which depends on the chosen vessel.

Overall, the user experience is positive. Any item that requires resources to create can be assigned as a task to monitor what exactly is needed, in what quantity, and even where to look for it. To split a stack of a large amount of resources or goods, you don’t have to wait with the button held down until the counter scrolls a hundred or so circles to the desired amount. Everything here works like a three-digit combination lock, that is, you need to choose from 0 to 9, which greatly simplifies the whole procedure. What’s more, you can choose between the minimum and maximum number of items with the press of a button. And there are a lot of such positive little things in the game.

After the production hell and several re-launches of the concept, Skull and Bones turned out to be a good game for fans of the pirate theme. In many ways, the game fell victim to the studio’s promises, which led to high expectations of players and their more picky attitude to almost every element of the game. However, there are also real problems, such as the general lack of polish in the game, and some routine moments, such as repairing a ship in the port, could be realized with fewer actions.

The game has a full 8-hour trial version. That’s more than enough time to decide whether you like the game and whether it’s worth the 1300 UAH on PC or 2300 UAH on console.