I love a good pirate adventure. I love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (yes, even the bad ones), I've binged Black Sails twice, I've read Treasure Island more times than I can count, and I owe a portion of my life to One Piece. So Skull and Bones comes along and promises a pirate adventure bursting with potential - massive open seas to explore, exciting naval combat built on the foundations of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and a deep focus on ship-building. I was hooked on the concept but after completing the game's thin story and dipping into its barebones endgame, I was left more underwhelmed than impressed.

Skull and Bones takes place on the seas somewhere between the East Indies and Africa, around an archipelago of ports, hubs and settlements. You play as a custom-created pirate marooned after a shipwreck. Your first course of action is to start building your way back to the top of the pirate world, gathering a crew, building ships and arming them with weapons to battle rival factions.



On paper, this seems like such a great idea. Skull and Bones had all the potential to create an expansive, lore-rich world of piracy with warring factions vying for control of settlements, clashing ideals, and swash-buckling action. Unfortunately there's none of that to find in the game. Ubisoft takes a barebones approach to the game's pirate lore and delivers a shallow experience barely stitched together to accommodate its ultimate live service goals - and even then, the live service elements aren't great. What's disappointing is how little the story actually utilises established piracy lore. Like the aforementioned pirate adventures that I love, they create worlds filled to the brim with interesting world-building that's sorely missing from Skull and Bones.

After a while, the "story" becomes nothing more than a means to open up the world map and do basic fetch/transport quests or take down enemy ships for the umpteenth time.

What you're left with is a paperthin story with repeated quests that feel like ticking off checkboxes as it guides you towards the endgame loop (the exact same problems Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had). At least mission variety is a bit more varied in Skull and Bones, but not by much. You accept quests from less than a handful of NPCs who aren't very well-written. Each of them tend to babble on about conflicts, ambitions and dreams right before they sit back on their a** and tell you to do the dirty work for them anyway. After a while, the "story" becomes nothing more than a means to open up the world map and do basic fetch/transport quests or take down enemy ships for the umpteenth time.



The core gameplay loop of Skull and Bones is all about being on the sea and initiating combat with your ship, which is fine if it actually doubled down on this idea and stuck with it. Instead, the game has sections where you can go on land, either to settlements or ports, just for the sake of talking to NPCs, doing ship upgrades or finding buried treasure. You can customise your character with a variety of cosmetics which are admittedly pretty neat, though there's no real benefit to the on-foot gameplay. After a while, you're begging to just get back on your ship and do the exciting stuff.

Exciting is the right way to describe Skull and Bones' excellent naval combat. Instead of being a realistic simulator, combat takes an arcade-like approach. You start off with a little dingy before you can craft and begin upgrading your first ship. Each ship is tailored to a specific kind of playstyle, either for DPS, Tank or Support, though the two Tank ships you do unlock end up being the best in the game. You then gather materials and resources to craft different weapons, armour and decorations for your ship. Ship customisation is really fun and I loved tinkering the design of my ship down to the finest details, even going as far as naming them.



Once you're on the water, you can use your arsenal of weapons like cannons, ballistas and spears to initiate combat with enemy ships that often carry valuable cargo like crafting materials and resources. Controlling your ship during heated combat moments is surprisingly demanding as you have to hoist your sails at different levels to increase or decrease the speed of your ship in correlation to the wind's direction, take into account distance (as some weapons are only useful in close quarters), and steer against or with the tides. Weak points are highlighted in red on enemy vessels, giving you clear targets to hit.

There aren't any sword fights or third-person combat in the game which is a huge missed opportunity.

Naval combat is fast, fun and really engaging, even when the quests get tedious. It's a shame that certain cuts were made to the combat that made Black Flag's ship fights so great. For example, you can't board ships. You can throw out hooks to reel a ship in but the actual boarding and looting happens off-screen with a cutscene. There aren't any sword fights or third-person combat in the game which is a huge missed opportunity - especially since its biggest pirate game competitor, Sea of Thieves, offered it from the start - though I do hope that Ubisoft adds these features in later updates.



The best part of Skull and Bones is the immersion. Thanks to some great visuals and art direction, the world feels dangerous and vast. Ocean thunderstorms constantly roll over the open seas, wind kicks up waves that escalate in danger, and sailing into a the middle of a triggered ship battle feels exciting. Sadly, once that visual splendor and charm wears off, you can only pay attention to the game's shortcomings.

As mentioned before, Skull and Bones presents several land masses and islands that aren't explorable at all. You have stopping points that consist of small, curated sections of an island with linear corridors that often lead you to vendors or buried treasure, but that's about it. There's nothing worth exploring on the land sections outside of the game's main ports where you'll do most of your upgrading and resource management.



The designs of each port are grimey and feel lived in, but Ubisoft fails to litter these well-designed environments with compelling NPCs beyond more vendors. It also suffers the Destiny problem, where you're supposed to be a "rising pirate warlord" in this world - one of many rising pirate warlord players that you'll constantly run into. It takes away a bit of the immersion and doesn't make the world feel truly yours for the taking, like any great pirate story should tell.

Thanks to some great visuals and art direction, the world feels dangerous and vast.

Luckily, Skull and Bones delivers some pretty cool side content. A couple that stand out involve a sea monster that you have to hunt, while another involves tracking down a ghost ship. Normally you'd group up with other players (or send out a ping for others on the map to aid you) and tackle these dangerous missions which are the game's highlight. They're unique, challenging and offer a welcomed break from the usual ship-on-ship combat. However, that's only two interesting side quests in the entire game. Once you do them, they become basic world events that can be repeated for gathering resources. I wish Skull and Bones embraced this supernatural side of itself more because they ended up being the most memorable quests in the game.



As for the endgame, there's really not much to be found - at least not yet. Once you "roll credits" on the story, it transitions into the endgame grind. The game was already grindy enough but it's only amplified in the endgame. You're still doing the same quests - either plundering outposts or settlements, taking down high-level enemy vessels, or resource-gathering to craft all ten of the available ships - but the repetitive loop isn't nearly captivating enough to warrant sinking more hours into. Ubisoft can, of course, update the game and invest in building on its rocky foundations but as it stands, I recommend waiting until those updates are done.

On its technical merits, Skull and Bones boasts some good visuals overall along with a mostly steady framerate, only dipping during explosive combat sections. The sound design is great too - sea shanties really do all the heavy-lifting there - but the sound of gunfire, cannons exploding on the sea, ripping through ships and kicking up debris is immensely satisfying. Since the game requires a constant internet connection, though, prepare for frequent disconnects. It happened several times in my review period and reset entire quests that I was in the middle in or close to completing. It's an annoyance that all live service games have to deal with.



Skull and Bones has some redeeming qualities but they aren't enough to wholly recommend the game in its current state. The naval combat is fun, customising your ship can be addictive, and doing the aforementioned side activities is awesome, but this is hardly the pirate game you want to play right now with better alternatives on the market. Ubisoft still has a lot of work to do in order to make Skull and Bones worth its lofty AAA (sorry, "AAAA") price tag.

*PS5 Review code provided by Ubisoft