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Skull and Bones – A game where no one said “That’s a bad idea.”

I’ve been struggling with what game I wanted to review first. Should it be a game I love, that I hate? Something I recently played, or something I can put my nostalgia glasses on for? Well, I decided to go right down the middle with all of it.

Who thought crafting was a good idea?

So, to start, this is a game I remember being announced back in 2017, and recall all the rumors of its existence following Black Flag. I have always thought the pirate genre of games was shockingly lacking in entries. I mean, how can we not have more pirate fantasy games?!

Well in comes Skull and Bones, a game that wanted to be the first AAAA game, saying it wants to be THE pirate game. So, is it? No. In no way.

Between the awful ship design, microtransactions, season pass, and every other live service woe you can think of, there is a shell of a game. So, let’s dive into the good, and the bad.

My time investment

I ended up grabbing the platinum trophy for the game on my PS5, which took me about 58 hours of active playing.

The Good

This game does do some things right. It’s clear that someone at Ubisoft did some kind of research at some point in development. While many of the historical aspects of the game are extremely shallow, and have zero affect on gameplay, they are there. It’s obvious this game wasn’t intended to be 100% historically accurate, however it’s nice to see the game represent some small aspects of history.

The game can also be visually stunning. There where moments during my playtime that had me just sitting back and enjoying the views of the Indian Ocean.

The combat feels good as well, though I am not surprised by this. The team that worked on Black Flag, also worked on Skull and Bones, so they knew their stuff going into it.

Sadly, that’s about all I have for the good, so we have to get through the bad now.

The Bad

This game is not a pirate game. It is a live service, MMORPG, where your character is a ship. Now, not everyone will consider this a bad thing, but I personally do.

This game is mostly just whittling down the health bar of bosses with fantasy weapons that deal certain types of damage. It has world events, a storyline that wasn’t interesting, and everything else that many modern MMOs have. While it can be fun at times, it gets very boring and repetitive quickly.

Moving onto the ship design itself. It is awful. Many of the ships have their rudder above the water line, which would be terrible on a real ship. It feels like they didn’t want to copy real ship design, and come up with something new, but it just misses the mark. The Sloop looks more like a block of wood rather than a ship, while the Bedar looks far too nose heavy, and needs its ballast adjusted. The only ship that looks good is the Snow.

Ships also have classes, but most people are playing solo, so I only ever saw 2 being used, either Tank or DPS.

The gameplay loop itself is also very dry. You’re either harvesting some material, or attacking a ship/settlment/fort for the materials you need. At first it’s exciting, but then you realize it’s mostly just small cutscenes of your crew doing the thing, while you sit and wait.

Ubisoft forcing this game out, and forcing it to be this strange, always online MMO really hurt this game. I could see it working far better as a PvE Sea of Theives, where you invite some friends into a private server, everyone has their own ship, and you can adventure, and plunder together. Taking over larger vessels by hiding in a cove and attacking when the NPC least expects it. Or you can take the ship head on, but at a much higher difficulty and risk. So many ideas could’ve made this game amazing, but sadly, it seems Ubisoft higher ups just wanted a quick buck, or for the game to fizzle out quickly.

There are many more issues with the game, many of which have already been covered a million times, and I only want to share the things I haven’t seen discussed as much.

The Rating

Overall, I would give the game a 2/5. It wasnt buggy during my playtime, but it doesn’t feel like there’s any love in the game, just greed. I bought the game for around $20 (for a brand new Steelbook copy) , so I don’t feel scammed out of my money, but I don’t think it was 100% worth it either. Hopefully Majima will give me the pirate experience I am looking for.

How I plan to write, review, and score the games I play.

I wanted to start off by giving an overview of how I plan to review the games I play. More for myself to reference, so I can do my best to remain consistent in the things I talk about.

However, games are a subjective piece of media. So I can only do so much to remain 100% consistent in reviews, as my thoughts, opinions, and taste will likely change over time.

While I may sing the praises of a game, someone else could be hoping for its immediate downfall. This does not mean I am correct, and the other person is wrong, or vice versa. It only means we have differing tastes.

My goal with my reviews is to explain the things I like about a game, as well as don’t like about a game, and give it my personal score. If someone finds that their tastes align with mine, hopefully they will continue to read my reviews to see what I have to say.

When it comes to most things in games, I believe that it is subjective to the player. Some gamers might want the constant action and PvP of CoD, while others may want to sit back and deliver packages in Death Stranding. Because of this, all of my reviews will focus on my personal taste in games. If I love a specific game mechanic, I will say that I loved it, and do my best to remain subjective about it.

I also believe that there are some things that are objective facts in games. Glitches, bugs, crashes, lag, or any number of issues that can plaque a game are all objectively negative traits that can happen in a game. I want to bring attention to these as well, assuming I personally experience them myself.

I also want to ensure that I have put a good chunk of time into a game before reviewing it. I see it so often, where a reviewer gets paid to write a review early for a game, even though they barely played it for 2 hours. My goal is to always put a significant amount of time, or even finish the game, prior to writing a review.

Because of my desire to put in significant hours into a game prior to reviewing, I likely won’t be reviewing any new games right when they release. I find the practice disingenuous to begin with, so it may take time to have everything how I want it to be.

As far as ratings go, I think the best way to rate a game is with a 1-5 scale.

1 meaning the absolute worst experience, that is riddled with bugs and game crashes, while the game itself also isn’t fun.

2 would indicate that the core gameplay is bland and/or cookie cutter, and doesn’t bring anything new or engaging to the table. It can be fun, but needs something to spice it up.

3 is a good game. It may not be the most out of the box experience, but everything is fun, and engaging. It’s something that is worth the time and money spent playing.

4 is a great game, everything seems to come together in such an amazing way. It’s a game that should be played ASAP.

5 is reserved for the best of the best. very few games can get a perfect score, and that’s how it should be. This is a game that takes my breathe away and hits all the right notes, all the time.

To reiterate, this would all be extremely subjective to me. So, my 5/5 could be your 1/5, or any combination of numbers. That’s okay, everyone is allowed to have a different opinion when it comes to media.