So, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones finally got a closed beta and I did get a chance to play the game. After a couple of hours of playtime, I have quite a lot to say about Skull and Bones, and the unfortunate part about that is that most of what I have to say is negative. Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones is a very boring and very uninspired game.
I know that most of you know by now the fiasco that was this game’s development cycle but I’ll just rehash it quickly. Skull and Bones was delayed about six times and even moved studios and this is pretty much the product we’re gonna get at this point.
Skull and Bones was originally supposed to be some sort of DLC for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, which is still to this day one of the best Assassin’s Creed games to ever release. Of course, hearing that it’s technically building off the backbone of Black Flag should be encouraging, right?
Right??
That’s just not the case here. Skull and Bones has been through a lot of delays, push backs, and problems and it seems like the game is unfortunately just not up to par with what it was promising to be.
The Story
The story in Skull and Bones is basically that you play as a shipwrecked pirate who must make a name for themself in the golden age of piracy. It’s a pretty basic premise, but you have to basically explore the open seas, plunder other ships, and do pirate stuff.
So, I mean, it sounds pretty good. For a premise anyways. But in execution? It is a flawed story for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the story is boring. That’s going to be a theme in this review, as you’ll see later on. But I mean it when I say that this story is boring. The dialogue also does not help in any sense of the way.
The story’s pacing is also strange and it feels like an afterthought slapped onto a game. Almost like stories in MMOs where you just play missions and don’t really care too much about the story quality. But those games are usually free to play and not you know… almost $100…
The dialogue is very silly in this game. It feels like someone who knows nothing about how pirates talk trying to make an edgier, bad version of Pirates of the Caribbean. It consisted of a lot of cinge-inducing insults being slung your way followed by some very generic and unmemorable talking. I eventually just started skipping ahead of the dialogue because I couldn’t stand to keep just standing there.
Most of the storyline exists as a background element to your go and get this type of missions. Now, I’m sure this game design story combination worked maybe a few years ago, but nowadays? It’s just boring and doesn’t really hold much merit as a proper game design.
The Gameplay and Mechanics
If you’re anticipating Assassin’s Creed Black Flag levels of ship combat, I will have to advise you to not expect that. Unfortunately, the ship combat in this game is very arcade-like and not something I would personally expect from a AAA title. Now mind you, I had no expectations of negative or positive gameplay going into this beta. I wasn’t very caught up on Skull and Bones before because it wasn’t really that interesting to me, but I was willing to give it a shot. Those who watch my channel know that I like to try out a lot of games I wouldn’t think to play on a normal basis.
Thing is, I was really bored with the gameplay in Skull and Bones. I was expecting something more fun with more strategic ship combat, but it was very bland to say the least. The ship combat is done through weapons you acquire at the blacksmith in an area called Sainte Anne and you can upgrade and add new weapons. When you’re at sea and attacking other ships, you lock in and just kinda fire. There’s no way for you to line up shots like you can in Black Flag.
At a certain point in the destruction of the enemy ship, you can press a button when prompted to board the ship. Now, I was thinking that maybe we’ll actually board the ship and engage in some more hand-to-hand swashbuckling combat, but that was also unfortunately nonexistent in this game. There’s a sort of animation that plays out that doesn’t really show any combat, just your crew taking loot. But that’s it. It’s an animation that plays out and you can’t really control any of what’s happening in it.
Harvesting resources like wood, iron, and other items requires you to go to certain locations and then press a button to harvest. After that, you have a quick-time event where you can harvest the resources but there is no animation that plays out, no crew member goes to get the stuff, and you certainly don’t get to disembark your ship to harvest resources either.
There are plenty of islands, but if the island isn’t tailored to allow you to dock your ship somewhere, you can’t explore the island. Additionally, you can’t exit your ship whenever you want because you have to go to certain locations that allow you to disembark at the shore. Honestly, that’s pretty ridiculous for a game that’s supposed to be about pirates, since pirates aren’t just on boats or at least just sailing all day.
There are some areas I suppose where you can land and move around, but only if the game prompts you to go there. You can’t arbitrarily pick and choose this part.
The ship steering is very hard to work with. It’s not a smooth experience where you can enjoy the ship combat at the very least. The ship steering is rough, and for a game that requires you to be in a ship the entire time basically, that’s not very encouraging nor enticing for me to play through. It makes the actual exploring a literal drag to get through.
You can also switch from first to third person when steering your ship, but I found that first person wasn’t very easy.
There are hostile predators like sharks in the water, but you can kill them with spears. This mostly affects you when you’re on the smaller dhow than on a big ship.
The way you make money is through accepting and completing contracts and from selling items you’ve looted throughout the world. You can then use that money for ship upgrades, clothing, ship weapons and more.
The gameplay was honestly the most disappointing element of this game for me. Story and dialogue and graphics aside, the gameplay was very disappointing for what I expected it to be like. But I guess I can’t be too shocked, because this game has been stuck in what can only be described as development hell for years.
I think it’s a really massive miss for Ubisoft. They had the backbone of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag to work off of, and that game was an absolutely fantastic pirate simulator with assassin flair thrown into it. All they realistically needed to do was remove the Assassin’s Creed stuff and stick with the pirate stuff and then they’ve made an excellent pirate-based follow up to Black Flag.
It’s also a bit jarring after playing so many Ubisoft games myself where all of them are just structured around the same gameplay loop, design, and look. I wouldn’t mind as much if the gameplay was exciting or enticing like in Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Far Cry, but it wasn’t. So, I got a game that basically looks like all the other Ubisoft games without any of the fun of any of the other Ubisoft games.
The Visuals and Graphics
Visually-speaking, this game isn’t too bad. The water looks nice, but what’s weird is that there aren’t really any waves or anything like that to make the game a bit more exciting to navigate through. The vibrance is nice as well and the Sainte Anne island does look pretty cool. But that’s about where all of this nice stuff ends at.
The animations are stiff and clunky and there’s basically no life in the face of any of the characters. The lip syncing is nonexistent as well and it just looks really awkward. Ubisoft doesn’t really use motion capture for lip syncing anymore, but it’s not really this bad in other recent releases of theirs. Let’s put it at this, when the lip syncing is about on par with the original Watch Dogs game, there’s a problem because that game was released in 2014 and this game is set to release in 2024.
For the most part, the way the characters are animated and designed just makes them feel devoid of life. Some of the more interesting games or at least good games I’ve played put some level of effort into making their NPCs and extra characters look life-like, but Skull and Bones simply did not.
There were also some sea shanties when you boarded a bigger ship of yours, which was pretty neat. That was something I liked in black flag a lot.
Ultimately, there’s not much else I can say about the visuals, but to summarize my thoughts, Skull and Bones is incredibly disappointingly boring. It’s basically a ship simulator, not a pirate simulator. And in essence, there are just better pirate games out there anyone can play that are much more exciting and much more interesting.
Honestly though, I’m not really all that surprised that this is the way this game turned out. I’m sure some people out there loved it, but for me, this game was very boring. I just couldn’t play for many hours and I found myself very tired of the gameplay very quickly. In all fairness, there are just more games and better games worth my time out there. And if I wanna be a pirate I’ll just go play Black Flag.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
