Skull And Bones Hit With Overwhelmingly Negative Player Reviews

thegamer.com:

Skull & Bones is seemingly failing to impress players, as it's hit with overwhelmingly negative reviews on Metacritic. At the time of writing, it sits at 2.8 out of 10 on PC, and it isn't faring much better on console.

It's also being unfavourably compared to Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, as many feel that Skull & Bones isn't much of an improvement, even though the former launched ten years prior. In some areas, players say they prefer Black Flag, suggesting that Skull & Bones doesn't quite live up to the game it was born from.

Even without directly comparing it to Black Flag, other players have found Skull & Bones' offerings disappointing. In another thread, players complain about the ship boarding mechanics - or lack thereof, since we don't see the actual boarding take place.

These feelings are reflected in the reviews on Metacritic. Here, 72 percent of them are negative across all platforms. Its best user score comes from the Xbox community, who have rated it a 4.6 out of 10. Critic reviews are slightly better, although not by much, as the game sits at an overall score of 64, pointing to mixed or average reviews.

That isn't to say that Skull & Bones hasn't found its own player base, however. Some argue that it gets better the more you play, and encourage naysayers to stick with it a little longer before writing it off completely. Others say that it's a great naval game in its own right, even if it's not the pirate simulator some were expecting.

We don't know how the game has performed in terms of sales right now, so we only have this chatter online to go on. It could go either way, with Skull & Bones having more than ten years of hype behind it, but being brought down by initial disappointment and criticism of its $70 price tag. Infamously, Ubisoft's CEO defended this, describing Skull & Bones as a "quadruple-A game". We'll have to wait and see if this means it enjoys quad-A success - whatever that looks like.