Review | Skull & Bones

Ahoy there mate!

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke February 19, 2024Last Updated: February 19, 2024

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Nearly 11 years ago, publisher Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, another game in their long running stealth franchise.

In a surprise twist back then, there was more to do than simply assassinating templars, diving off high vantage points into haystacks and hiding in bushes. Perhaps unwittingly, the development team also made it a rather in depth pirate game, with a ship to manage and upgrade, huge nautical battles to take part in and of course all the land-based assassin stuff fans would have expected.

In short, it was genuinely rather good, and personally, I started to hate all the land based missions entirely, wanting to spend my entire time at sea.

Ubisoft, ever one to sniff out a potential new franchise, quickly decided to develop a standalone pirate game, and in 2017, announced Skull and Bones. Initially dubbed as a “Sea of Thieves killer” (lol), the development of the game has been anything but smooth but has finally arrived at port as a a live service pirate MMO-lite after six delays.

After such a turbulent development, lasting at least 10 years over clearly very choppy seas, one important question remains – is it any good?

Outcast

Skull and Bones eases you in to the game with a decent tutorial in ship-to-ship nautical combat before you come up against a massive fleet that puts an end to your ship and crew. Waking up in a makeshift dhow , you’ll create your character from a rather lacklustre selection of faces and hairstyles, scavenge supplies, explore some shipwrecks and fend off some sharks before setting off to pirate sanctuary Saint-Anne, to begin your journey of redemption as you aim to rule the seas as a Pirate Kingpin.

Any comparisons you may have thought you should have with the long-running Sea of Thieves should end right here – this is not a pirate simulator, and while you do have a character to play with and dress up, it’s ultimately not the focus. Sea of Thieves is all about the fantasy of playing as a pirate, this is more of a pirate ship Arrr-PG than anything else, and you primarily play as your ship most of the time. Initially, this feels weird, but it does start to make sense the more you play.

Once you arrive at Saint-Anne, you’ll begin taking on many, many quests – building your first ship, your first set of tools to harvest resources, your first set of hull-pulverising cannons. All of the on-foot sections take place in many of the 620sq km open worlds “hubs” – ports and visually unique locations where players can explore, but with a limited move set and some very janky animation. They usually contain a variety of NPCs from which you can buy resources and blueprints, the latter of which is very useful when it comes to upgrading your gear, but functionally, they’re all the same. All ports can be fast travelled between, if you’ve got the silver to pay for it.

A Tale of Two Pirates

There is a story of sorts to get out of the way, weaving a tale of two pirate “Kingpins” that focus on two different ‘sides’ of the large open world. First, there’s John Scurlock, a typical raspy pirate who will use you to save his own skin at the first opportunity. Then there’s the Admiral Rahma, who you’ll encounter later on, who has her own agenda.

There’s not much meat on the bone here, and while it’s all voice-acted well enough, you’ll find yourself mashing the A button to skip the conversations and get down to questing sooner rather than later. Playing through these NPC campaigns is useful however, because it’s a great way to unlock items and importantly, large amounts of “infamy”.

Skull and Bones is also genuinely great fun to play in co-op, and includes a trading mechanic, allowing you to gift most resources to friends who were just getting started, so they can get going a little easier. Progress however, is locked to the group leader only, but you will still get all the silver and Infamy earned through playing any missions in their world. You’ll see other players fairly often across the world, but you can’t be attacked by them unless you choose to engage in PVP activities.

Infamous

Infamy is key in Skull and Bones in order to access better gear, ships and loot. The game, being live-service, will tease you with high-level blue prints and builds from the get go, but you won’t be able to equip or purchase anything unless you have a high enough level of ‘Infamy’. With rankings from Outcast, which is where you start all the way to Pirate Kingpin, Infamy can be earned in various amounts – from just sailing your ship around the Indian ocean, sinking other ships, completing raids on ports, forts and lumberyards, and of course, completing quests from various NPCs.

Your ship, which is what Skull and Bones is ultimately focused on, has a power rank, which you can raise by equipping better gear to increase your overall power level. It can actually get quite complicated – some ships are better at taking a pounding and providing healing to your fleet in co-op, others are built for speed and attack power and if you want to build or have anything of worth, you’ll need to craft it.

What this means of course, is that a lot of your time in Skull and Bones will be focused on gathering the resources you need to build something. From harvesting resources from the land, sinking ships that may be carrying what you need on the many trade routes throughout the map, there is a LOT of live service busywork to contend with. This may not be for everyone, and it can get very time-consuming. And yet, I found the grind to bigger, better and more powerful to be weirdly compelling, taking great pleasure in successfully attacking a high-level Dutch fort just so I could get my hands on a couple of Torsion springs.

Combat

Aside from sailing around harvesting and breaking into shipwrecks, one of your main activities will be nautical combat, and this is one of the games strengths, particularly in co-operative play. It is frequently tense, engaging and rewarding to navigate your ship, attack en-masse with your fleet and outwit and out-manoeuvre larger more powerful vessels.

Doing all of that in a hurricane, the sea swelling, with waves bigger than the largest Galleon is one of the highlights, and is genuinely so much fun to experience. There are a variety of activities to undertake beyond ship VS ship, including fights against legendary sea monsters and taking on very well defended forts and outposts, which results in a wave-based, loot focused plundering session.

There is a surprising variety of weaponry one can build and employ, from incredibly accurate longshot cannons and ballista, to air-strike enabling mortar cannons and even devastating torpedoes. There are also a variety of furniture items you can build that all provide various perks, truly allowing you to build the kind of ship you want. Adjusting and tweaking that build across your fleet of ships is very engaging, and seeing that firepower be deployed against your enemies never got old.

Another key part of combat is maintaining your crew stamina – it can be deployed to trim the sails and push for maximum speed (if the wind is with you) or for ramming enemy vessels. It can also be used to brace against incoming attacks – absorbing some of the damage you would have taken from incoming fire. Balancing all of this while concentrating on hitting the enemy is a delightful dance.

Black Market & The Endgame

Again, being live service, there of course has to be a bevy of end-game activities to contend with once you’ve reached the Kingpin rank. The Black Market is introduced to you early on, initially tasking you with collecting sugar cane and plant produce to turn into white rum and opium. As the end-game becomes the focus, you’ll find plenty of PVP and PVPVE activities get introduced, enabling you take over outposts and produce end game currency passively, duking it out with other players for the ultimate prize.

There are more than few glitches to contend with here – I’ve had many Death Mark lifted notifications appear, over and over, presumably suggesting I was being hunted, but then I wasn’t. I’ve been disconnected on more than a few occasions, and in my initial early game, my cloud save was overridden when swapping between my Xbox and my PC, causing me to lose around 5 hours of progress.

When the open world, co-op and PVP come together though, it can get very entertaining indeed. I question how long I’ll find the endgame engaging, and I suspect that for me at least, it’ll last as long as I have good friends to play with. The busywork is very, very real, and I suspect you’ll know whether you’re into that or not.

Piratical Performance

Skull and Bones can at times look quite nice, and other times look decidedly old. The on-ship action, which is where you’ll spend the majority of playtime is a very atmospheric and an often pretty affair. On foot, it’s a different story, with robotic, dead-eyed NPC characters to interact with ad nauseum, and some awful janky animations and controls. Perhaps a symptom of it’s 10 year development, the game is at least pretty well optimised.

I’ve been playing Skull and Bones across several devices – on PC, the game supports my Ultrawide monitor with ease, and my 4090 is pushing everything to max settings with no perceived issues whatsoever. On my Xbox Series X, the game supports both a quality and 60fps Performance mode. I chose the later, because I value my frames over my graphics, okay? It’s definitely a softer presentation, but it seemed to hold up well enough, even in some crazy action.

Cast-off

Despite some bizarre design choices, and a very upfront and often horrific grind, I really like Skull and Bones.

I feel conflicted even typing that, because like many that may have been looking forward to the idea of an expanded Black Flag-like game, so much of this game is designed to be completely different to it’s original inspiration. And yet, despite my genuine hatred of most grindy games, I’ve relished building the next big thing, taking on the next big challenge, and teaming up with friends.

It may not be the “AAAA” game Ubisoft touted, but with a solid enough foundation, a decently planned bevy of seasonal content ahead of it, and the uniqueness of making the ship and gear the focus, it may be finally on the right course after all.