Main features

Skull and Bones, developed and published by Ubisoft, was released on February 13, 2024, and is available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and Series X, and PlayStation 5.

It is an adventure and exploration game at high seas, focused on naval combat mechanics and looting, with a simple and sometimes scarce story, but with interesting gameplay that can entertain the player for a good amount of time. 



Great promises

Skull and Bones debuted with great promises of a game filled with intense combat, focusing on great maritime explorations, and a good story. However, what we have in practice is a bit different and somewhat less exciting.

Starting with the game's story, at first, it seems to be quite interesting, as in the first cinematic, we see that we are part of a pirate crew that is surrounded by a British squadron, a situation in which we are defeated and survive the shipwreck, being rescued by two people adrift at sea.

That said, as the initial plot unfolds, our goal becomes to locate Sainte-Anne, the pirates' paradise, and begin our adventure to become the most powerful and ruthless of all seas.

The curious part of this whole story is that a few minutes later we already locate this city, meaning all the hype generated by the game that the pirates' paradise is an almost mystical place full of promises is actually the initial city where we start our journey, with a very small ship and no crew, doing collection and exploration missions to start building a larger ship.

It was a detail that, for me, was quite frustrating, of course, we expect to start from scratch and build our empire gradually, but naming a city "pirates' paradise" and having access in a few minutes of gameplay is somewhat incongruent.



The peculiarities of gameplay

Regarding the gameplay of Skull and Bones, here we have a point that, during my experience, was quite negative.

When we play a pirate-themed game, we expect exploration worthy of countless hours, docking our ship on some remote island, looting and killing everything in sight, drinking and celebrating, then moving on to the next adventure, and so on.

Here, we practically live confined within the ship, disembarking only in cities, many called "safe zones," and within shipwrecks, which require crowbars to be accessed, being separated by levels, for example: a slightly smaller ship requires a level one crowbar to explore it, while a larger ship requires the tool at a higher level, be it two, three, and so on.

Another detail is that in the collection missions I mentioned, as it is not possible to get off the ship anywhere, we either collect the items floating in the water or park the ship on the island's coast and collect items from trees or ground, all from inside the boat, through mechanics resembling quick time events.

I understand that the developers want to bring a different and innovative experience, however, the attempt in Skull and Bones was not very successful, given that we have references of pirate games that were great landmarks for their times, such as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, by Ubisoft itself, and Sea of Thieves, which still seems to be reigning alone in this segment today.

Skull and Bones begins to gain a bit more personality and become more interesting from the moment we build our first real boat, as from that moment on, we can sail further, faster, and have a true experience of naval combat, since part of the construction involves cannons.

The game's combat is, by far, its most interesting and attractive feature, although we don't have much of a sense of cannon shot impact, the combat is still quite fun, although repetitive and takes some time to get tired of it, a very interesting part of the combat is that when we leave enemy ships with little life, we can approach and intercept them, a moment in which, in theory, we would board and face the rest of the enemies in hand-to-hand combat, however, in practice, what happens is just a cinematic of this situation I just described, and as soon as it ends, the game appears again with the ship already destroyed and in flames. Pretty frustrating, right ?!

There is a resource system in the game that is exclusively used for crafting items and improvements for the ship, in addition to having chests and a stylist that allows changing the character's physical appearance and clothes (bought with in-game money or real money).

Skull and Bones, in general, is fun, but it lacks a lot for it to even be a competitor to its rivals, the game has its charm, has very beautiful graphics, and a spectacular soundtrack, but it falls short in gameplay.



A promising future projection

The release of Skull and Bones was undoubtedly very important because we can see that the game has immense potential, it just wasn't well utilized, but I believe it is a great opportunity to listen to the community that is forming around the game so that it truly becomes a pirate game of significant relevance.

The game, in a general context, is quite easy to adapt to, whether in controls, menu access, or item crafting, the points that aim to improve the quality of life for ship management, cargo, and reputation were very well done and also deserve positive recognition.

The game is localized in several languages, and as I always emphasize, for a game to improve and stay relevant, investing in accessibility for various languages is extremely important, as it generates a larger community and consequently provides more opportunities and ideas to fix defects and reinforce qualities.



A still limited, but fun project

My experience with Skull and Bones was good to a certain point, I missed a more complete and immersive combat and the story also left something to be desired, however, it is by no means a bad game, I just believe some improvements are necessary, but still, I had a lot of fun in the hours I played.

The game itself is not lightweight, but I felt it was well optimized, except for cities, where the frame rate drops due to the number of elements and players to be processed and rendered.



For this review, the game was experienced on PC, using the Ubisoft Connect platform. I would like to thank Ubisoft for providing the access key.