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Inspired by the popular naval combat of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones promised a thrilling pirate adventure when its trailer first debuted in 2017. However, its eventual release in 2024, after nearly seven years of development, raised concerns about potential development struggles. Further fueling skepticism, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot defended the game’s $70 price tag by labeling it a “4A” title. Does Skull and Bones live up to this lofty claim, or does it leave players wanting more? Let’s dive in and explore.

Sailing the High Seas: Exploration and Combat

Skull and Bones casts you as a nameless pirate in the late 17th century, navigating the waters of East Africa and Southeast Asia. Your goal is to amass wealth and infamy, rising through the ranks to become a notorious pirate king. The game boasts a vast open world, filled with detailed islands and hidden secrets, including buried treasure.

Skull and Bones Treasure Hunting

Locating these treasures requires deciphering treasure maps and following cryptic clues. The game doesn’t explicitly mark treasure locations, forcing you to rely on map markings, landmarks, and environmental cues. This treasure-hunting mechanic adds a challenging and time-consuming element to exploration. While the hunt itself is engaging, the rewards often feel underwhelming.

Skull and Bones Ship Combat

A standout feature is the dynamic weather system, which significantly impacts gameplay. Wind direction affects ship speed and maneuverability. Sailing with the wind increases speed, while heading into it slows you down considerably. Crosswinds can push your ship off course, adding another layer of complexity to navigation. Navigating storms becomes even more treacherous, as you battle towering waves and reduced visibility. This constant awareness of wind and obstacles, even in calm waters, adds a realistic feel to sailing and creates tense and satisfying pursuits.

The ship controls are well-designed and offer depth. You can switch between different camera perspectives, zoom in and out while aiming, and even control individual cannon fire for precise shots.

Skull and Bones Ship Customization

Skull and Bones also features a robust weapon system. Similar to other MMORPGs, the game offers a wide array of weapons with varying stats, special abilities, and levels. While there’s no weapon upgrading system, crafting requires blueprints and gathering materials. Acquiring powerful weapons, like the coveted “purple” tier Bombards or Mortars, necessitates a dedicated search, mirroring the treasure-hunting mechanic.

Skull and Bones Crafting

While lacking groundbreaking innovation, Skull and Bones‘ emphasis on exploration and discovery provides a solid 15-20 hours of gameplay.

Troubled Waters: Narrative and Depth

Skull and Bones Story

As an MMORPG, Skull and Bones‘ lack of a compelling narrative isn’t entirely surprising. However, the story falls short even in its basic function of guiding the player. The narrative revolves around conflicts between pirate factions, with missions primarily focused on plundering and sinking enemy ships. This repetitive loop continues until you encounter the game’s boss, but even this confrontation offers little change in gameplay, essentially boiling down to defeating a higher-health enemy.

Skull and Bones Repetitive Gameplay

Defeating the boss marks only the halfway point, with the same formula repeated for the remainder of the game. This makes the main storyline increasingly tedious. The narrative is so inconsequential that its removal wouldn’t significantly impact the overall experience. Dialogue choices are presented throughout the game, but they are entirely linear and have no meaningful impact on the story. They function as simple true/false questions, with different dialogue lines leading to the same outcome.

Skull and Bones Dialogue Choices

Another significant issue is the lack of content and depth in existing mechanics. While you can set foot on islands to trade and search for treasure, interaction is limited to basic movement and interacting with NPCs and objects. There are no minigames or engaging activities to enjoy with other players on land. Island activities revolve solely around trading and accepting/completing quests.

Skull and Bones Limited Island Exploration

Movement on islands is restricted to small areas, with much of the terrain blocked by invisible walls. Ironically, this limited exploration prevents players from spending excessive time navigating empty, uninteresting maps. Furthermore, your pirate character, ironically, cannot swim, rendering vast portions of the map, including oceans and rivers, inaccessible while on land.

Skull and Bones Swimming

Skull and Bones‘ MMORPG model implies ongoing content updates and improvements post-launch. Ubisoft has already announced a development roadmap for the next year. While this is a positive sign for players invested in the game’s model, the current content offering feels sparse. Cooperative activities are limited, primarily revolving around hunting powerful bosses, raiding encampments, or participating in deathmatches.

Skull and Bones Multiplayer Activities

While these activities offer decent drop rates for good equipment, the lack of variety diminishes replayability. Most “Helm” activities, focused on trading and delivering goods, are unlocked late in the game and primarily involve traversing the map to deliver cargo. While you can be intercepted by other players or NPCs, the ability to store and retrieve cargo at destinations negates much of the risk. Ultimately, most activities feel like glorified fetch quests with occasional combat encounters.

Skull and Bones offers a visually impressive and mechanically sound naval combat experience, but its shallow narrative, repetitive gameplay, and limited content hold it back from reaching its full potential. While future updates may address some of these shortcomings, the current state of the game leaves much to be desired.