Skull and Bones Review: "This Boat Is Visibly Sinking"
The next seafaring video game adventure pilots its craft into the wild blue yonder, but there are stormy skies ahead. Ubisoft’s infamously delayed has finally released, with its own unsteady abstractions on playable piracy, and much of it boils down to boats and boat accessories. It's often an admittedly unique multiplayer-oriented experience with some idiosyncratic combat, but frequently falters in terms of immersion, awash in fetch quest loops and routines which struggle to fulfill the pirate power fantasy.
It's certainly not the first game to experiment with gameplay and perspective in the pirate mold. PC classic famously compartmentalized these tropes into an addictive, cohesive blend of simulation and economic strategy on an explorable map. There’s also the contemporary sleeper-hit-that-could – whose broader games-as-a-service qualities Ubisoft most seeks to emulate here – and, of course, the lovely open-world sandbox of, a development jumping-off point to whom owes its very existence, and definitely a high-water mark in contemporary pirate gaming.
Skull and Bones is a bare bones pirate experience.
Piracy proved such a strong hook that games couldn’t get away from them for a spell, inserting maritime modules in regular entries regardless of any era-specific themes. In these titles, players recruited shipmates and equipped upgrades, steering their vessel towards gold and danger, or just indulging in extended exploration of the map's borders. takes this accessible base, but forms it around a persistently-online ship combat game. The end result can be entertaining at times, but it’s never fully elegant, and there’s rarely the feeling of true adventure. Much of it boils down to busywork, chasing down dozens of items and crafting materials, coast to bloody coast.
Initiating a new campaign activates a short story introduction, triggering a crash course in naval combat before the player is shipwrecked and left for dead. Remnant sailors rescue them, beseeching them to
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