Skull and Bones

Skull & Bones exists in the space between GaaS and MMO-lite at launch. There’s fun to be had, as long as you recognize that this is a looter shooter more than a pirate game.

The world is indeed wide enough for Skull and Bones and the increasingly few pirate games out there. But be careful. It won't let you get comfy. And after a long time in production, there's still work to do before Skull and Bones is feature complete.

Ubisoft has offered a decent base for an online pirate game, perhaps without a lot of variety yet, but it still has atmosphere and depth in terms of upgrading ships, building new ships, as well as trading and, of course, combat.

Skull and Bones is a solid pirating adventure that has its moment but is often weighed down by a sluggish grind and outdated quest design.

Skull and Bones is visually beautiful, and the frantic pace of its ship-to-ship battles can potentially provide intense PVP and PVE thrills. However, as a result of its turbulent, decade-long development cycle and the game's resulting "identity crisis", its high points end up getting lost in a sea of mediocrity.

Skull and Bones isn’t the successor to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag that many seem to want, and it isn’t many of things Ubisoft itself said it would be at various points in its storied history, but the seafaring RPG we ultimately got is still surprisingly good. Sailing around the Indian Ocean firing cannons, mortars, and giant ballista at your foes is a fun time, the RPG mechanics and cooperative buildcrafting is as deep as the ocean with plenty of awesome gadgets to grind for, and the economy simulator is impressively in-depth. It doesn’t quite fulfill the promise of a decade-long cruise to port yet either, with a thin endgame, almost no story to speak of, and general instability that sometimes makes the adventure feel like a rough draft. But here’s hoping some of those shortcomings can be washed away by the waves of content already planned to come in an ambitious live-service roadmap that’s fast approaching. For now, its maiden voyage is a good start.

Combining moody and gratifying ship-on-ship combat with shallow live service trappings, Skull and Bones is great within the claustrophobic parameters of what market forces allow it to be.

Skull and Bones is the unfinished framework of a great pirate open world that still needs a lot more content.

As a whole, Skull and Bones is a very fun game, one that I genuinely couldn’t put down once the battles began. But that fun is uneven at best. Despite its long development cycle, the live-service element that is felt deeply throughout the game isn’t microtransactions. It’s emptiness.

For a niche audience, Skull & Bones may be a GOTY contender. But for everyone else, it’s hard to imagine the appeal. Skull & Bones is a grind-heavy game with not a lot of payoff, unless your idea of payoff is being asked to grind some more. You’d think that a game that spent 11 years in development would have more than just one idea repeated ad nauseam, but the evidence here suggests that’s really all there is.

Despite being in development for so many years, Skull & Bones offers fewer gameplay mechanics than the naval battles of past Assassin's Creed games. Yes, it does what it claims to do, but the turbulent development process unfortunately prevents it from getting any sympathy votes.

Despite its shortcomings, Skull and Bones does boast stunning visuals and a few moments of thrilling naval warfare—the first time you encounter them. However, its lack of depth in gameplay mechanics and story left much to be desired. Even though it continues to evolve with a trove of promised content updates, I’m not entirely sure if I want to return to its turbulent waters. Personally, not being able to roam about my own ship or disembark on islands felt incredibly frustrating and limiting. Skull and Bones isn’t necessarily a bad game; it’s just not great. It feels like lots of pieces of rope strung together with loose knots, hastily fashioned and thrown together to show that they had a working net. Unfortunately, I don’t think that net is strong enough to be worth the $70 fish they’re trying to catch.

Skull and Bones has well-built fundamentals, but lacks the follow-through to deliver on the potential of its fun naval combat and earnest commitment to the pirate fantasy.

We got kind of a simplified version of a pirate game, with limited options on what to do outside your ship. Maybe some of these things will be fixed and improved in future updates, but for now, all that remains is to explore the vast map and strengthen your ship as much as possible.

Skull and Bones has tight ship play and immersive naval exploration,making it a memorable addition to the pirate genre catalog. While certain gameplay mechanics didn’t pan out well, and the characters largely fell flat, the pirate fantasy on the high seas is still very much alive and well in Skull and Bones.

I believe that the AAAA description, envisioned by Ubisoft's boss, will become a meme associated only with Skull and Bones. This game is so shallow on many fronts that I doubt even long-term growth will be able to help it.

Its ship combat is weak, and for all intents and purposes the on-foot gameplay is nonexistent. What little story the game has is threadbare at best, and it gives the player no good reason to slog through the grind. It is saddening, as the game could've been something great, especially since there aren't a ton of pirate games out there. However, there isn't much about Skull and Bones that I will remember a year from now.

I have to wonder what happened to this project over its lengthy development cycle that took it from a promising spin-off of one of Ubisoft’s most beloved games to what will undoubtedly be remembered as one of 2024’s more underwhelming big-budget releases. It’s not entirely disposable, but it’s far from the treasure it promised to be.

Skull and Bones is simply uninspired and tells a boring story, yet is relatively fun in its moment-to-moment gameplay.

Playing Skull and Bones is like taking a really long boat ride. Sure, it gets exciting at times, but most of the time you’re just going through the motions, raising those numbers and wondering why you are even playing a game that’s clearly inferior to the game it was based on.

After a long voyage on a rough sea, Skull and Bones has reached a safe harbour. It's not the disaster many were expecting, but it doesn't offer an outstanding experience either. There are positive and genuinely enjoyable aspects, such as the combat or the artistic direction, but these are swallowed up by the swamp of live-service elements and the time it demands from players.

Skull and Bones turns the Golden Age of Piracy, one of the most exciting periods in history, into a mundane and plodding experience.