Yo-ho-ho, should’ve just took the bottle of rum

Skull & Bones is a weird one, it’s been in development for over a decade and has undergone more than one direction swap in that time. It was originally pitched to take advantage of the amazing ship and pirating from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag which was amazing in itself. So surely a game that took to focusing on just the pirating aspects, searching for booty and coming off ships for treasure and wood was destined to be awesome right?… right?

Look, there have been a lot of jokes about this game thus far, I mean if you listen to our ZTGD Podcast (and if you aren’t why not, new episodes, every Monday) you might hear my infamous sound clip regarding the securing of the resource wood in the game. But jokes aside, Skull & Bones has some redeeming features to it; I can tell you right now though that the story is definitely NOT one of them. But even though there is some fun to be had on the Indian Ocean, I just don’t know if this game can find the one piece to success.

MSRP: $69.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99

So just what is the experience in Skull & Bones you ask? Well, players will begin by being shipwrecked and creating their very own captain. Not going to lie friends all of the choices here are fugly, I don’t know if that is historical accurate or not but whether you are a female or male pirate you are going to look like you were smacked by a back of flaming doubloons. And don’t want a beard because the hair looks like it’s being added on by a child using one of the ‘Wooly Willy” toys. You know the ones; it had the metal shavings and the magnet stick that you could move it around to make hair… yea that’s how it looks in this “AAAA” game. Get Jim’d Yves, this is NOT a quadruple-A game in any universe. Graphics alone are pretty underwhelming, things like player ships and some of the bigger towns look decent but other graphics up close just seem muddy and something akin to the Xbox 360 days.

But after creating your playable pirate players will take command of a little garbage scow ship where they will learn the basics about harvesting resources, hunting for animals and the like. The only time players will com- be allowed to exit their ship is when they dock at ports. Here they will NPS who will give missions and requests that will require would-be pirates to sail the seas to complete. Once players make it to the first main town of Saint-Anne they should be ready to build a real ship, this island is where players can find the crafting vendors for weapons, ships and tools; all of which will require players to grind for the resources in order to create. Oh, in case you didn’t know Skull & Bones is a live-service game that is to be played all the time and will be expanded with up to 4 planned seasons.

In Saint-Anne is where players will begin the narrative, oh man where to start. So basically, players will run fetch and destroy missions for a pirate kingpin and help him wage war with a rival faction, this is followed up by running fetch and destroy missions for a admiral who has turned away from her govt and wants to build a free pirate nation. Wash, rinse, repeat; there is nothing groundbreaking and even really interesting about this “story” and its merely just an excuse to give players a reason to sail ships and shoot other ships. One of the big things that sets Skull & Bones apart from the other big online only pirate game is the fact that its focus is more on PvE than PvP. While there are PvP events to be found in Skull & Bones, I can’t tell you if they are fun or how it works because every time it popped up on the map and I tried to join the match never started. So, the few of us who sailed to this spot just kind of sat around and shot some fireworks into the sky as we wasted time.

It’s a shame too because the combat is the one area where Skull & Bones shines. The early game is slow but once players are able to build some of the beefier ships that lean towards either DPS, Tank or Support things start to really get interesting. On top of the buffs that these ships do to damage or even damage mitigation players can build furniture that can help tweak their play styles further. Ships are limited to slots for these furniture pieces but they can buff mortar attacks, or add fire or poison damage to attacks as well. And of course, there is a plethora of cannon choices, ones that can fire at a longer range, a shotgun blast like cannon and even a flamethrower weapon that sit enemies on fire.

Putting all these tools together and plundering ships is a lot of fun. Fights can be especially thrilling when going against multiple ships, and if you add in the dynamic wind and weather system things can get crazy really quickly. Almost all of my favorite moment come from fights that I had during a raging storm, the rain, lighting strikes and thrashing waves made for a tense fight as I tried to line up cannon shots while my ship is rocked by the storm. In these moments Skull & Bones shines brightly, and all the negative stuff like its grind, long release schedule, repetitive events and missions, lackluster narrative and poor graphics just melt away. In those moments this is the pirate game that we all wanted and had hoped this would be. But then players end up victorious in that fight and the moment passes and now you have to sail for what feels like forever to get to the next objective and all the issues come running back. This is the cycle of playing Skull & Bones.

Skull & Bones isn’t a horrible game at all, but its not the game that we wanted. I mean all they had to do was just remove the assassin’s vs templar story from what they had with Black Flag and let us be pirates. I don’t know, I am just a black guy with a laptop and a big mouth; I am certain that game development is more difficult than all that. Skull & Bones offers some fun and often times thrilling combat, but the downtime and story in-between all that is just not interesting. This game is going to end up being another victim of chasing that ole dragon which is live service game success. Its not for every game, and hopefully, prayerfully developers will stop trying to attain this high and just set this fad out to sea.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.