Review of “Skull and Bones” – under the flag of mediocrity

The journey of the Skull and Bones online pirate event 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 she is, what she excels at and what her 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)
• Download data: 65 GB
• Price: 60 EUR / 1530 CZK (Uplay)

Life is not easy here for your pirate

The story in Skull and Bones begins with a spectacular battle in which you manage to defeat dozens of ships, after which another bunch of ships appear on the scene and show you what it’s all about. If this is what current developers think the entrance to an AAA game looks like, then we live in very sad times. But once you finish this “fun” segment, you can watch as your character is rescued by a pair of outcasts who he temporarily bonds with.

But, as is often the case in games, your character in Skull and Bones definitely doesn’t want to stay at the bottom of the food chain for long, so you get to work and rise up from nobody, with just a crew of three to a captain as part of the storyline a pirate ship in which you sail the ocean and conduct spectacular naval operations. Well, it’s not that spectacular because the plot as a whole is just above average and not something that would make anyone sit on their butt.

But the truth is that you really are sailing the seas in your own ship, which you are completely in control of. What kind of ship you have at your disposal primarily determines how far you are in your rank and, more importantly, how far you are in history. Studio Koráby decided to continue working on recipes, without which almost nothing can be done. The more pest your hero is, the more interesting the cake you can make in Skull and Bones. Shipyard offerings, like other workshops’ offerings, are closely tied to your fame and the recipes you have access to. The journey is incredibly long and tiring due to the chosen format.

You won’t go far without development

However, Skull and Bones requires consistent ship upgrades. The exchange of 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, the stamina of which is scaled quite purposefully. In practice, this means that if one ship of the second level can be destroyed in the shortest possible time, then a ship of the same level standing next to it is already a problem, since although it looks identical to the first, they both have different characteristics, or at least react differently to kernels released from your works.

Therefore, it is necessary to constantly improve everything on your ship. This is the only way to get reasonable pleasure from sailing on the ocean. Basically, level scaling taught me the moment I transported a friendly ship in Skull and Bones. There were three ships standing in my way, which under normal circumstances I would have greased for bread. However, their combat effectiveness was 100% higher than what my crew had encountered so far, both in terms of endurance and weapon power. So I was blown to pieces and could either return to port or, for a few coins, be “spawned” a few meters away from me and have them send me back to the seabed.

At sea during your travels you may encounter different factions. However, they always have an excellent memory. So even if you sank their ship a few seconds ago, they usually don’t remember it after a while. And I’m not talking about their reaction to you burning their cities. To get them in Skull and Bones, you need to swim up to one of them and rob it. In short, you just hit it from the spot. Sometimes cities and fortresses remain unprotected. However, once they have it, you will have to destroy the towers and then slowly loot the city from your ship while standing still and waiting for it to complete.

Yes, it sounds strange, 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 are doing. The concept is interesting, but its handling, like most of the factors you’ll encounter during the game, isn’t exactly polished, resulting in enemies appearing unnaturally from the air and then walking straight towards your guns. Once it even happened to me that no one came, and I went through all the “phases” of waiting.

I was hoping that Skull and Bones would gain momentum over time, so I started plundering and digging into what it had to offer. But even with the other activities, I don’t think the creators managed to craft them in a way that made me want to spend time with them. For example, such smuggling may have seemed like a novel concept, but it quickly degenerated into tedium due to the way the studio approached locating ships and the previously mentioned balancing of their powers. The biggest strange thing was when level 10 ships appeared right at the base point and began to dive level 3 players leaving the protected area.

A good sea only brings mountains

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

And even in this regard, the French giant failed to distinguish itself significantly. Unlike Sea of ​​Thieves, you don’t have islands to land on, but rather tiny corridors that require loading to visit. What you usually get after downloading isn’t even worth talking about and will leave you wondering more than once how plural it really is. She, as a consequence, or interaction with your ship is not a big miracle. In short, you stand at the controls and shoot. If any of you were planning on walking on deck, you’re out of luck. The extraction of raw materials is carried out in a frankly ridiculous way, as if cut out from long-forgotten online games, where QTE was still something of a “discovery”.

But going back to why you’ll actually be going through loading screens in the first place, it’s primarily because you’ll be collecting various quests on the islands in Skull and Bones, interacting with smugglers, and most of all, buying raw materials to complete some quests and extensions. your ship. In my opinion, the economy here is doing quite well. However, the same cannot be said about how traders work.

It has happened to each of us while playing an MMORPG that we somehow unknowingly sold something to a merchant. And whoever says that this is not so constantly “shoots” with such objects. In a number of games, the creators think about this and offer those involved in such an accident the opportunity to buy back the sold materials and things. Logical development, isn’t it? But you will not find anything like that in Skull and Bones, which for some, of course, will not be a problem; personally, as a stable seller, I was faced with the fact that it got a little out of control. Additionally, I believe that online formats should take this factor into account. But this is just one of the countless shortcomings that you will have to contend with while playing.

If you are strong and resilient enough to put up with some of the previously mentioned shortcomings, you will eventually be able to “build” a new world. That is, to the stage, which should become the highlight of the evening during the performance of Skull and Bones. However, it is also not entirely bright. While PvP can be fun, the various events in the game world are also not bad, or the production of your own goods and the subsequent smuggling associated with special currencies pushes further “pressure” of certain activities. But overall there’s nothing that can’t be found in fairly similar form elsewhere, making it obvious that this piece is completely lacking in its own identity.

If the adventure is under the pirate flag, then not in Skull and Bones

In Skull and Bones, it’s clear that development didn’t go according to plan. For this reason, Ubisoft presents us with a strange mixture that, at least in my opinion, doesn’t quite work. The combat system works well and the ships look good at first glance, but otherwise it’s a stinking shambles that has about as much chance of actually attracting a wider audience as trying to take over a fortress with a launch boat. In short, there are enough cracks for this boat to sink immediately after leaving the bay.

I consider the biggest drawback of the case to be the mediocre design of the game world through which you have to rush. At first glance, everything looks beautiful, but the general emptiness begins to get boring very quickly. Island visits are dull, lackluster, and weighed down by a loading screen that looks downright ridiculous compared to the space the game then presents you with. Likewise, this installment is no stranger to the stereotypes you encounter throughout most of the gameplay.

The already mentioned appearance of the ships is not bad, but due to the scaling of the levels you often wonder why a small barge can last longer than a battleship. “Skull and Bones” in this regard looks simply ridiculous compared to “Sea of ​​Thieves”. And I’m not even talking about how mining works here. Who at Ubisoft thought of putting this in a QTE? I hate to say it, but this game is far from a AAA game. Perhaps 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 themed arcade games, avoid them as much as possible.