Ubisoft has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat. We have a AAA open world pirate game coming out in about a week with absolutely no hype behind it. Skull and Bones first began development in 2013, and was announced in 2017. As with anything that has this turbulent of a development cycle, hype has slowly faded. Other details, like the game being online only, have helped make the game lose its luster as well.
But I’ve read a few previews that have made it seem like there is some fun to be had here, so with Ubisoft offering an open beta for a few days, I thought it’d be worthwhile to see if this could be a post-hype sleeper. Like many, I really enjoyed the pirate elements of Assasin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, so I am someone who at least has the potential to enjoy this game.
Sadly, and I guess expectedly, Skull and Bones just doesn’t have it. I only spent two hours with it, and I’m just not seeing how this one could have any staying power.
This is It?
It doesn’t take long to realize that Skull and Bones just doesn’t have much to it. The ship element of Black Flag was only one element of the game. It was an important one, but there were plenty of other things to mix things up. With Skull and Bones, this is it. It is only ship combat. Boarding enemy ships is only a cutscene, and without that mix of on foot combat, things get stale very fast. You shoot your weapons, which then recharge, so you either wait, or try and turn your ship to use a different weapon. You can brace when enemies are about to shoot to limit damage as well.
You could still build a case for that core combat being fun, if a bit simple, but as someone playing by themself, I quickly found myself biting off a bit more than I could chew in many of my early encounters. It seems clear to me that the game is encouraging you to party up with others. They definitely don’t want the game to be too easy for parties of three or four with this being online, so I understand why. But as someone who really doesn’t want to try and find random people to play with, some of these fights felt pretty annoying. Fighting 4-5 ships alone with my weak starter ship in some early missions was not particularly fun.
In one encounter I happened to be fighting with someone else who was probably doing the same mission as me, but without voice chatting with each other, we actually ended up getting in each others way a few times as we tried to battle the four ship party we were taking on. These are ships after all, they don’t move fast, and it’s not easy to get out of someone’s way once you get in their way. Without coordination and communication, playing with other random seafarers wasn’t all that much fun for me. If I had a few buddies who wanted to play this, it might enhance things slightly, but I’m also not sold enough on the core gameplay to believe it would truly make the game fun. In the end, there just isn’t much depth to this combat, and it really needed more with it being so focused on just one thing.
The only other gameplay activity you can do is mine resources, which is all done from your ship. It definitely feels weird to pull up to some trees and then all of a sudden have them in your cargo. This doesn’t really add any extra enjoyment or variety to the experience.
With these two gameplay elements, the loop seems pretty simple, mine some resources, fight some ships for money and other resources, and you can upgrade your ship and weapons. I can see how this would be pretty rewarding. Everyone loves upgrading their armor in looter shooters, but having your own giant ship with a customized appearance seems even more appealing than that. But the stuff that gets you there just did not seem fun enough for me for it to be worth it.
Bad Graphics and Glitches
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t even try to draw you in with anything besides that core gameplay either. The story is absolutely non-existent, and I felt annoyed that the game makes you get through about 45 minutes of story and tutorial preamble before getting to the “good” stuff. Despite that long intro and tutorial, there were several things in combat that I didn’t fully understand, like what the conditions are for being able to board enemy ships, and several other things I just figured out myself without getting a real explanation. Skull and Bones onboarding leaves a lot to be desired in pretty much every way possible.
The graphics are a mixed bag. There is some decent lighting, and the water looks pretty good, but I thought a lot of the environments looked blocky and ugly. Character models are OK, but there are a few rough ones. I also ran across a glitch that forced me to restart my game, as all my interface options randomly went away (pictured). I also kept getting error messages from the text chat (I played on Xbox), which could be an issue if you are crossplaying with someone on a PC. I didn’t think it was a great sign that I had run into these bugs after only a few hours of playtime.
In the end, I think the requirements to really enjoy Skull and Bones are going to be far too specific for most people to get much out of it. You need to REALLY have loved the ship combat from Black Flag. You can’t have just liked it, you need to have truly loved it. And unless you are really good, you need to either be willing to find random people to play with, or ideally have some friends that feel strongly about Black Flag’s ship combat as well. Once again, that strikes me as unlikely for most people.
Sadly, the online nature of this one means it will need an active player base to be fun and to stick around, and from the bit I played, I just don’t see that happening here. The CEO of Ubisoft called this a “AAAA” game just today, and I think even if you like this game, that is an absolutely laughable assertion. While there is no harm in giving this open beta a shot on your own, with all the great games already out in 2024, I don’t think most people need to bother.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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