Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Nothing
There are too many Dutchmen. Six warships are actively engaging me, firing mortars, shooting torpedoes, and peppering my ship with all sorts of cannonballs. On the horizon, I count 13 more enemy ships. I’ve already plundered a load of documents from this unassuming coastal wood depot, so my duty to the rebellious cause is fulfilled. But I got greedy. I wanted more. I’m a pirate, damn it! Now it’s time to pay the price. My defenses are breached, the crew is exhausted, my ship is somehow burning down around me while simultaneously filling with water. I called for help from other players, but no one came. A final thunderous salvo sends me to a watery grave.
I’m back immediately. For the price of a few silver coins, I respawn nearby and wait for my notoriety with the Dutch to return to neutral. Then I effortlessly sail past a dozen warships and retrieve my loot right where I went down, conveniently marked on my HUD. Skull and Bones’ arcade-like approach to pirate life is full of ship-to-ship action like this… and nothing more.
Most of my time with the Xbox version of Skull and Bones has been spent trying to get a better ship. You start small, with a ship ranked 2 or 3 on a scale of 11. Your rank is an aggregate based on your ship’s equipment, including weapons, armor, and “furniture,” which are items that provide various buffs and special effects. (I had a modified forge on my ship that repaired damage over time, for example.) You get the good stuff as rewards for completing missions, as loot from defeated ships, and mainly through crafting. That means you have to find blueprints and resources to take them to various vendors in the two main seaports. At best, it can be exciting. I was so thrilled when I finally got my hands on a hard-to-find resource or when a random vendor had a blueprint for cannons of the next tier because it represented a whole new level of enemies to fight against. It provides a very tangible sense of progress and can happen quickly. The reason you get attached to new ships and ship upgrades is that the naval battles are the star of the show. A plethora of weapon and ship configurations allow you to experiment with everything from long guns to mortars to rockets and torpedoes. Mechanically, everything feels just right. You can fire off amazing shots with mediocre accuracy, navigate tight channels and open seas effortlessly, and suffer very little consequence for failure. The lack of collision damage means you can smash and rub against things when you need to make a tight turn or divert your eyes from the helm to focus on combat without worrying about running aground.
Skull and Bones exists to put you on a ship, sail you into the ocean, and blow things up. I don’t think superficial baggage or attempts to make it more like other AAA games would help. I don’t need a narrative compulsion to sink big boats with my big cannons. I’m glad there are no platforms or puzzles or any other generic action-adventure mechanics that are often stuffed into such games. The content is thin but focused. The pace can be slow but never tedious. When you cruise along the coast and spam the “shanty sing” button, it seems like Skull and Bones is more of a mood than a game.
At World’s End
Unfortunately, the open ocean vibes don’t last long enough to bridge the complete lack of other things. An endgame path opens up around a smuggling system called The Helm, which tasks players with producing illegal goods like rum and opium and then delivering them to various customers. The catch is that these deliveries are always raided by an endless flood of wild pirates, and you can’t use the fast travel system for shortcuts. Sounds good in theory but quickly gets very old. It feels particularly sluggish after the brisk campaign, which includes a variety of challenges from plundering fortresses to hunting ghost ships.
PvP and PvE are also absent in this endgame, at least in my experience. There are few situations where you even engage in PvP, all tied to the same cargo smuggling mechanic. And the PvE events require the participation of strangers (unless you’re lucky and have friends who aren’t playing Helldivers 2 at the moment). Often, your fellow players won’t respond. This puts a big, fat blockade on endgame progress because certain resources can only be obtained through high-level raids that you simply can’t handle alone.
The big question now is support. Will Ubisoft’s roadmap for this game provide the kind of high-quality support needed to flesh it out and turn it into a lasting success? Only time will tell.
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