Review: SKULL AND BONES offers a mediocre pirate ship simulation

Ubisoft’s Skull and bones has finally been released after about a decade of development. Gamers are heading to the Indian Ocean to enjoy some pirate-themed fun and I gave it a try too. Ubisoft was kind enough to provide me with two codexes to review (PC and Xbox), and you can read my honest opinions below. If you want to try out the game for yourself, you can grab a copy for Luna, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series .

Enter the dangerous world of Skull and Bones, a cooperative open world pirate action RPG, to become the most infamous pirate king!

Engage in thrilling naval battles, build a variety of unique ships, and forge unlikely alliances as you overcome the odds and wreak havoc on the seas. Become part of an immersive, open world that introduces new challenges and features every season.

Skull and bones it was a pretty hyped game. It’s been in development for about a decade, and fans were excited to see a spiritual successor to it Assassin’s creed 4 black flag. Unfortunately, the game appears to have failed and Ubisoft isn’t helping their case. Calling it a AAAA game is nothing short of ridiculous. But let’s dive more into the actual game.

I’ll start with the good things about Skull and bones. First and foremost, the sound design team seems to have done a fantastic job. Graphically the game looks decent. It’s not the worst, but it’s not as good as other recent video games. On PC it’s nice to see that the system requirements aren’t too crazy. I mean the minimum specs allow for a 4th gen i7 or a Ryzen 5 1600 which are both very old and the recommended specs go up to an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600 which are solid, affordable CPUs. The GPUs aren’t that bad either.

Another plus in my book is the setting. We will go to the Indian Ocean which seems to be less explored by pirate media. Personally I like this change of scenery. Furthermore, Skull and bones it offers cross-play and cross-progression which I’m a big believer in. The last plus is that the naval combat is pretty good. You have a variety of cannons you can use and so you have to learn how they all work together, but once you do that you’ll be blowing up enemies and merchants in no time.

Unfortunately, Skull and bones he has many disappointments. First, it feels like the team has put all their time and energy into naval combat since that’s the core of the game, but then literally everything else is an afterthought. The story is extremely clunky and almost non-existent. There may not even be any land portions in the game. It’s pretty bad. The land portion of the game simply lets you deal with traders, stakes, crafting, etc.

Near the beginning of the game you can create a character (a terrible experience I’ll talk about later) but by the end there’s no reason to. Your character is only there so you can interact with NPCs in small hub areas. There’s no combat, there are no meaningful choices to make, heck, you can’t even swim! After creating your character, you get picked up by a couple of NPCs who suddenly decide that you would make a good captain. You are given no motivation to do anything in this game and that is its greatest folly. Ultimately, the only reason to play Skull and bones it’s because you want to play a pirate ship (not a pirate) and play with fairly good (note: not great) naval combat. This is supposed to be a live service game with seasons and everything. If players aren’t given incredible reasons to return to the game, it will die very quickly.

Unfortunately, there is still more I want to discuss. One of those NPCs who picks you up early on has some of the worst voice acting he’s ever heard. They seem too focused on defining their character’s accent and there is no room for any inflection, emotion, etc. Additionally, we’ll revisit character creation. At first I thought it was cute that it was a puddle on a wreck. However, you can only see from the neck up and can only turn your head about 45 degrees. This means you can’t see 100% of the different hairstyles well and you can’t even see most of the tattoo options. Thankfully, you can eventually go to a Vanity Atelier to change things up and get the full 360 treatment, but it’s still frustrating to have to get to that point in the game.

When speaking to an NPC, you’re typically given two dialogue options to choose from for your mute character, and they’re usually both extreme. Often one will seem like you are the bigger ass kisser while the other will seem like you are the bigger tool. This really adds to the feeling that they didn’t really want to include a story or earthly elements. Also, while walking, you don’t feel well. It feels awkward and even though you can stop entering movements, your character will continue for about 3 more steps. I do not feel well. I know games like to have a certain level of momentum and I even went there Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (another Ubisoft game) and there is some dynamic physics, but it’s only 1 step more and feels much smoother.

The game allows 3-player cooperative mode. If you do this, only one of you will actually have to do the work of any mission you undertake together. There are times when it’s been fun to team up with my wife, but I feel like she doesn’t do much unless we’re doing PvP or advanced gameplay.

Another problem I have is resource gathering. You have to find a node and then play a little minigame to collect resources. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s possible that someone else will go and collect resources leaving the nodes empty. If there are a fair number of players at once, it will be very difficult to actually get the resources you need. Not a great idea for a live service game if you ask me.

If that wasn’t enough, the boarding party is a joke. I thought, “what could be more piratey than sending a boarding party to another ship to take it over.” Maybe I wasn’t wrong, but I was disappointed by how boring it was. You aim as if you were going to shoot the enemy ship and instead press a different button. If you are close enough then you will launch grappling hooks which will hopefully hit the other ship. If it connects, you’ll simply receive a message letting you know that you’ve looted various items and that’s it. This would have been the perfect way to incorporate your character into some action or have some sort of minigame.

I want to take a second to mention a major issue my wife had with the Xbox Series X|S version of the game. She switched from Quality to Performance in hopes that everything would feel smoother and the game froze our Xbox. We had to do a force restart by holding down the Xbox’s power button and then I had network issues that prevented me from playing until I restarted via the controller. I’m not sure if this is widespread, but it’s worth mentioning.

At the end of the day, Skull and bones seems like a mediocre game where you can take on the role of a pirate ship, not a pirate. There’s very little to bring players back and I don’t know if I’ll upload it. I think I’d rather buy Black Flag and play it. The fact that Skull and bones it’s been in development for 10 years and it really makes me question what took so long?