If you love pirates and have played a lot of Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, you will like this game. We spent some time in last weekend’s beta preview event and have a few thoughts to share. Is Skull and Bones worth your while? Find out in our beta preview below!
Skull & Bones is a tactical action game from Ubisoft Singapore that revolves around piracy and naval combat. The action takes place in an open world, with a 3rd person view. The player controls a customizable pirate captain, can sail the Indian Ocean in the single-player campaign, or play with up to 5 other players (as allies or enemies) in battles in Contested Waters. As in any sailing game, wind direction can be used as a combat advantage. During the game, you can collect additional sloops, frigates, and brigantines; ships may have weapons such as mortars, cannons, and missiles. Ships can be boarded by brute force.
In Skull and Bones, you are the captain of your ship. You and your crew sail the seas searching for treasure… and fights. You aim to become the best pirate, ruler of the seven seas, commander of trade routes, and destroyer of enemies. The project is multiplayer, and Ubisoft plans to actively develop it and add new content, as it did for the Rainbow Six Siege game.
Since the game’s announcement in 2017, Skull and Bones has changed focus several times, from purely multiplayer to an arcade-style pirate sim to something closer to an open-world AC: Black Flag where multiplayer works as a backdrop to missions.
I assumed the game was canceled entirely. Ubisoft’s pirate game has been delayed and delayed and delayed, so imagine my face when the official release date for Skull and Bones was confirmed at The Game Awards. It was shock, disbelief, and, frankly, skepticism.
For a game that’s been nearly a decade in the making, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones is not fun to play. Like many others, I managed to play the closed beta version, and although I came with low hopes, I liked the game. Still, I will say immediately that you should expect something you could imagine during the entire development and divide these expectations in half.
The combat in this game feels a little clunky and slow. When AC4 came out ten years ago, it was fun, but now it’s 2023, and we prefer to play faster, smoother combat, and more logically – at least I do. But you’ll love this game if you like the repetitive, arcade-style sinking of ships.
1. Plot
The whole game begins with us being thrown out to sea on a ship without an interface and without explanations of what and where to press. It is assumed that only people interested in the project will play, and such people have at least played Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, which means they will not be lost, so we will not further find fault that they are not explaining much to us. The only goal of the entry is to defeat enemy ships, where an armada of ships eventually appears, and a sinking cut scene is launched.
After choosing us, the surviving crew members picked us up and gave us command of a small ship, offering to sail between the islands with the survivors and get them resources.
The ultimate goal of the training will be to penetrate a battleship and search for information about the location of the pirate city of Sainte Anne. We will also find a letter that we decide to deliver to the local pirate leader in the same city.
We go to Sainte Anne, and after running back and forth with passing the quest, we are asked to create our first ship. The creation process is not complicated and requires a drawing and resources. Fortunately, everything was provided to us as part of the training quest. Then, according to the same scheme, both cannons and cannonballs for them are created.
Everything created is sent and installed on the ship, and we receive the first serious quest, the purpose of which is to attack and sink two gatherer ships (a weak mob, it seemed to the touch that they had no weapons at all) and this is where the introduction ends, and we are released into the open world.
2. Gameplay
Before describing what you can do to entertain yourself, I would like to talk about management: It’s not oaky, and players don’t have to strain too hard to get into a sharp bend while sailing along some steep delta, but it’s not exactly arcade-like either. The ship feels almost the same as in Assassin’s Creed.
Yes, for the sake of MMOs, they simplified it slightly, adding the mechanics of stamina, which is spent on the so-called sprint while walking on water, or on maintaining protection from incoming damage during combat. The guns fire one by one, each shot is a separate mouse click. Perhaps this is customizable on higher classes of ships, because later in the story, at the end of my 6-hour adventure (exactly 6 hours were allowed to play as part of the closed beta), I had a chance to sail on a brig on which melee guns were installed, which fired a salvo with the whole side together.
Otherwise, I didn’t notice a strong difference with the same assassin, but it all feels very different, it seems similar, but it seems like everything is completely different.
There is also a treatment system, the essence of which is the use of repair kits, which instantly restore some of the damage to the ship (the amount of treatment depends on the class of the repair kit and the one-minute cooldown until the next possible use also depends on it).
In addition to the main storyline of tasks, there are additional quests in the city and adjacent settlements, which repeat regular activities and add tasks such as delivering cargo from one point to another. In the open world, you can entertain yourself with the following activities:
Looting settlements
In addition to our city, in the district, we have factions whose representatives are mobs and have their factories, settlements, and fortifications. You can raid each of them alone or call random players for help and plunder it. The looting process is incredibly simple; you must stay in the area while the timer runs and the progress bar fills up. During this, the island defenses will try to repel your ship, and combat mobs of the attacked faction will swim into the activity area. Mobs in the area stopped the looting process, so they had to be destroyed for the process to continue. After a successful raid, all participants receive their share of the loot, and the raid’s target goes on cooldown.
Classic for MMO “quality” on mobs
Nobody forbids the player to genocide mobs in the surrounding area. Given the gameplay, this activity is very exciting in the first couple of games. The main thing is not to get carried away and not attract too much attention from the faction being exterminated. Otherwise, a warship (or several) may arrive, which the player will not be able to cope with. After destroying a ship, you can collect loot, often silver and cores, but depending on the class of the ship the player is attacking, crafting resources, trade resources, and consumables in the form of first aid kits and food drop out.
Shoot from cannons at the red dots of the enemy ship, sink it or board it, loot it, and move on. You can also loot coastal settlements, looting their belongings to get rich and gain reputation. Reputation also strengthens you, as higher levels of Infamy give you access to new ships and weapons. Each of these will need to be unlocked separately, and after collecting resources, create them.
Finding treasures using maps
Sometimes, from enemy ships, you can knock out a treasure map that shows the location of a chest with valuables, in general, nothing complicated. We sail to that place and find the treasure there.
Search and collection of resources
Probably the most ambivalent feeling I had was about the collection of resources because the mechanics of collection are very similar to the mechanics of the exact search for resources in World of Sea Battle (another MMO about ships in the open world). The mechanics are simple: swim up to where the resource is located (illuminated with a special glow/shine or moths), stop, and begin the collection process. During the collection process, you must pass several skill checks to determine the amount of resources collected.
PvP
It’s probably worth mentioning PvP battles, but I’ll be honest: in 6 hours, I never fought against players. None of the players (including me) showed aggression towards each other, actively helped fight mobs, or participated in activities.
But I can tell you whether there is a paradise for pirates after an unsuccessful trip to sea. I’ll say right away – he doesn’t exist. After sinking, all the loot on the ship falls out and begins to float on the sea for some time, and there are two options for restoring the ship:
- In the sea, not far from the place of death – this paid option for resurrection will return you to the waves not far from the place where the ship was sunk, highlighting the place of death to allow you to swim and pick up your goods if someone else has not already stolen it. Also, with this option, the maximum strength of the ship is reduced (works like radiation in Fallout), and to restore it, you need to either pay for repairs to a shipwright in settlements or use an analog of a repair kit – a restoration kit.
- In the nearest settlement, the option is free, but it can take you quite far from the place of the last battle. It’s free, but you’ll still have to repair the ship.
The game also has world activities, such as a golden fleet or a legendary ship sailing through our area. Unfortunately, it was not possible to participate in such activities because while rushing towards them with all sails, the players completed them.
If we talk about quests, they are not the most fun either. Most of them are optional quests, leading to the same problem I mentioned earlier about how tedious it is to go from point A to B. Either one of the three possible activities is to sink certain enemy ships, find a certain resource (or take it away), deliver A to B, and finally capture outposts. The bounty quests are a little more difficult, but it start to play once you get the hang of the NPC combat. Almost every time, it’s the same thing.
There is also the opportunity to become a merchant in the game. Buying in one place and selling at a better price in another settlement doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s not that fun. But in reality, it’s much easier just to loot, because most merchants have a very limited amount of goods and just sell for a random amount.
In addition, when selling goods there are labels with high/low prices, so I can assume that the game will have its own economy, the prices which players will regulate according to the mechanism of supply and demand. But this is no longer uncommon in MMO projects; traders will find something to do in the game.
Also you can also control a huge fleet. However, as a pirate, you must manage your inventory a lot, constantly transferring the loot to your warehouse and processing it to improve your ship or weapons or simply selling it and making a profit.
3. Visual component
I played Ultra and got a stable 100+ frames at Full HD resolution. The picture itself is very pleasing to the eye. Sometimes, it is very blurry, but after an hour of playing, you don’t notice it.
In my opinion, the picture has always been very difficult to find fault with in Ubisoft games, especially after the recent Avatar. Their artists always try to convey the atmosphere through their visual style, and they do it very well. But what you can find fault with is that the quality of the textures and the entire environment, especially noticeable in cities, seems to be straight out of 2017-18. However, this is logical because it was then that the development of this game began.
Opinion about the test
First, I would like to tell you what is missing in the game; again, this is my view and my expectations from it after almost ten years of development.
- More interactivity with your avatar. All our interaction with the avatar is running around the hub, buying and selling goods, taking/turning in quests and participating in dialogues. And the ship seems to be the main character of the whole game.
- The following follows from the previous one: more detailed boarding. At the moment, boarding an enemy ship is a 10-second animation where you end up transferring the enemy ship’s loot to yourself. That’s all. I would like a full-fledged boarding, not like in Assassin’s Creed of course, but at least like in parodies of pirate games, where you, as the captain, directly participate in it.
And in general, everything else from the expected wishes is present; there is enough content to start the game, given the MMO genre, where the basis of the basics is the same type of quests and grind. If we compare the game among games of a similar theme, then Skull and Bones will be among them. Unfortunately, there are few offers in this type of game setting on the market today. Sea of Thieves has a huge focus on team and interaction. Yes, it’s a pleasure to play, but when the difficulties of selecting a team begin, the desire slowly fades away.
Skull and Bones will suit players who love the theme of pirate life and sailing ships but don’t expect anything supernatural.
If you like a game where you are the ship, Skull and Bones is quite good and addictive. The progression seems good, the looting is fun, sailing around the sea has a sort of nice vibe to it, it’s all oddly fun and relaxing and just enjoyable to do, and the combat is pretty good. I think the game is decent, and I’ve gone from thinking, “I’ll never buy it, even for $10,” to considering buying it at launch. Yes, by the end of the session, I certainly had questions about whether it would be interesting for me after 10 – 15 hours, but it’s too early to talk about it. So we’ll wait and see how this all ends.
