Skull and Bones Review – Under the Flag of Mediocrity

The path of the pirate online event Skull and Bones has been a long one indeed. However, any development must come to an end at some point, so now we have for you a review of the latest AAAA game from Ubisoft. The following paragraphs will tell you how successful it is, what it succeeds in, and what its weaknesses are.

• Platform: PC (review), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
• Publication date: February 16, 2024
• Manufacturer: Ubisoft Singapore
• Genre: Online action
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: yes (online)
• Data for download: 65 GB
• Price: 60 EUR / 1530 CZK (Uplay)

Your pirate has a hard life here.

The story in Skull and Bones starts with a spectacular battle in which you defeat dozens of ships, after which another bunch of ships appear on the scene and show you what’s going on. If this is what today’s developers think a triple-A game looks like, we’re living in very sad times. But once you get past that “fun” bit, you’ll get to see your character being saved by a pair of outcasts he temporarily bonds with.

But as is often the case in games, your hero in Skull and Bones certainly doesn’t want to stay at the bottom of the food chain for long, so you get to work and work your way up from nothing, with just a crew of three to captaining a pirate ship in the storyline, which you sail around the ocean on and carry out spectacular naval operations. Well, it’s not that spectacular, because the storyline is generally above average, and not something that would make anyone sit on their ass.

But the truth is that you actually sail the seas on your own ship, which you have full control over. The ship you have at your disposal primarily determines how far you are in your rank and, more importantly, how far you are in the story. Koráby Studio decided to continue working on recipes, without which almost nothing can be done. The more of a pest your hero is, the more interesting the cake you can bake in Skull and Bones. The offer at the shipyards, like the range of possibilities in other workshops, is closely tied to your fame and the recipes you have access to. The journey is incredibly long and tedious due to the chosen format.

Without development you won’t get far

However, Skull and Bones requires consistent ship upgrades. Changing cannons, ballistas, bows, and other factors determines its level and effective combat effectiveness in battles. The sea here is full of ships, as in most not very successful online games, whose endurance scales quite purposefully. In practice, this means that if you can destroy one tier two ship in no time, then a ship of the same level standing next to it is already a problem, because although it looks identical to the cook number one, they both have different characteristics, or at least react differently to the cannonballs fired from your creations.

So it’s important to constantly upgrade everything on your ship. It’s the only way to have a reasonable experience sailing the ocean. In fact, level scaling taught me this when I was transporting a friendly ship in Skull and Bones. There were three ships in my path that I would normally have slaughtered. However, their combat effectiveness was 100% higher than anything my crew had ever encountered, both in terms of endurance and weapon power. So I was blown to bits, and I could either return to port or, for a few coins, “spawn” a few meters away and have them send me back to the bottom of the sea.

While traveling at sea, you may encounter different factions. However, they always have a great memory. So even if you sunk their ship a few seconds ago, they usually forget about it after a while. And I’m not talking about their reaction to you burning their cities. To loot them in Skull and Bones, you need to sail to one of them and loot it. In short, you just drop into it from the spot. Sometimes cities and fortresses are left undefended. However, when they have it, you have to destroy the towers and then slowly loot the city from your ship, standing still and waiting for it to finish.

Yes, it sounds weird, but it’s true. While your team is collecting loot, “waves” of enemies come at you from different directions, trying to stop you from doing what you’re doing. The concept is interesting, but the handling, like most of the factors you’ll encounter during the game, isn’t exactly polished, with enemies appearing unnaturally out of the air and then running right into your guns. I even had one where no one showed up and I went through all the “phases” waiting.

I was kind of hoping Skull & Bones would pick up steam over time, so I looted and rummaged through what it had to offer. But even with the other activities, I don’t think the creators crafted them in a way that made me want to spend time with them. For example, the smuggling may have felt like a novel concept, but it quickly degenerated into boredom due to the studio’s approach to ship discovery and the aforementioned balancing of their powers. The weirdest part was when level 10 ships appeared right outside the base and started drowning level 3 players who were leaving the protected area.

Only mountains bring a good sea

The ocean voyage itself in Skull and Bones is an incredibly stereotypical event with constantly repetitive tasks, which of course may be due to the chosen theme. It’s hard to effectively populate the game world, but here the stereotypical factor is emphasized by the need to constantly repeat the process of collecting various materials, as well as the fact that the creators teleport various ships practically in front of your face. Because of this, encounters feel incredibly artificial, which makes those who have had the opportunity to play Sea of ​​​​Thieves wonder why Ubisoft went down this path. It can be done in other ways. But you have to offer players something extra. Like places they can visit.

And even in this regard, the French giant failed to distinguish itself significantly. Unlike Sea of ​​​​Thieves, you do not have islands to land on, but tiny corridors that require loading to visit. What you usually get after loading is not even worth talking about and will make you wonder more than once how plural it really is. It, as a consequence, or interaction with your ship is not a great miracle. In short, you stand at the helm and shoot. If any of you were planning to walk on the deck, you are out of luck. Mining is carried out in a frankly ridiculous way, as if cut from long-forgotten online games, where QTE was still something of a “discovery”.

But if we go back to why you’ll actually be going through loading screens, it’s primarily because you’ll be collecting various quests on the islands in Skull and Bones, talking to smugglers, and most of all, buying raw materials to complete some quests and expand your ship. In my opinion, the economy here works pretty well. However, the same can’t be said for how the traders work.

Each of us, playing MMORPG, has had the experience of somehow unknowingly selling something to a merchant. And whoever says that this is not so, constantly “shoots” such items. In a number of games, the creators think about this and offer those who have had such an accident the opportunity to buy back the sold materials and things. A logical development, isn’t it? But you won’t find anything like this in Skull and Bones, which for some, of course, won’t be a problem, personally, as a stable seller, I faced the fact that I got a little out of control. In addition, I believe that online formats should take this factor into account. But this is only one of the countless disadvantages that you will have to deal with during the game.

If you are strong and have the stamina to put up with some of the previously mentioned shortcomings, you will eventually be able to “build” a new world. That is, a stage that should be the climax of the evening during the performance of Skull and Bones. However, it is also not exactly flashy. While PvP can be interesting, various events in the game world are also good, or the production of your own goods and subsequent smuggling associated with a special currency pushes you to further “pressure” of one or another activity. But overall there is nothing that could not be found in a fairly similar form elsewhere, which makes it obvious that this production completely lacks its own identity.

If it’s an adventure under a pirate flag, it’s not in Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones is clearly a game that hasn’t gone to plan. For that reason, Ubisoft has delivered a strange concoction that, at least in my opinion, doesn’t quite work. The combat works well and the ships look good at first glance, but other than that, it’s a stinking mess whose chances of actually appealing to a wider audience are about as high as trying to take over a fortress with a launch boat. In short, there are enough cracks to make this boat sink as soon as it leaves the bay.

The biggest flaw I find in the case is the mediocre execution of the game world you rush through. At first glance, everything looks nice, but the overall emptiness quickly becomes boring. Island visits are dull, lackluster, and weighed down by a loading screen that looks completely ridiculous compared to the space the game then presents you with. Likewise, this part is not immune to the stereotypes you encounter throughout most of the gameplay.

The aforementioned visuals of the ships are nice, but the scaling of the levels often makes you wonder why a small barge can outlast a battleship. Skull and Bones looks ridiculous in this regard compared to Sea of ​​Thieves. And I’m not even talking about how mining works here. Who at Ubisoft thought of putting that in a QTE? I hate to say it, but this game is far from a AAAA game. Maybe it will be successful like Sea of ​​Thieves, but I don’t really believe in it. So unless you’re a big fan of pirate sandbox arcades, avoid them if possible.