Skull and Bones: Ubisoft’s pirate adventure is more red flag than Black Flag

Skull and Bones MSRP $70.00 Score Details Pros

Exciting naval combat
Good variety of ships
Top-notch visuals and performance

Cons

Mundane tasks
Mechanics don’t feel fully fleshed out
Uncompelling late-game activities
Weak narrative and characters

Skull and Bones is Ubisoft’s long-awaited massively multiplayer online (MMO), open-world adventure game set during the Golden Age of Piracy. “Long-awaited” is an understatement, given that it’s been delayed numerous times throughout its decade-long development cycle. Now, we’re finally in the homestretch, past its conceptualization as a follow-up to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and numerous changes,

All Skull and Bones beta rewards
Surprise! Ubisoft delays Skull and Bones yet again
The long-delayed Skull and Bones loses its 2022 release date

Touted by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot as a “quadruple-A title” and with a dozen studios appearing in the opening credits,Skull and Bones’ maiden voyage has all the pomp that you can imagine. Yet,this journey may as well be its last. After playing theSkull and Bones open beta and the launch build, I can say that this might be one of the most disappointing major releases in recent memory.

That’s not to say that the long-delayed Skull and Bones is a disaster. Naval battles are thrilling, and it’s a visual spectacle with standout ship designs, settlements, and visual effects that are masterfully rendered to create a cinematic experience. Everything else, though, comes with a caveat. A slew of questionable design decisions sink what could have been a great pirate game into another weak live-service game in a sea full of them.

Lords of the high seas

Skull and Bones’ story begins when my ship is sunk by a hostile fleet. Landless (and rudderless), I’m told of Sainte-Anne, a pirate haven where I can start anew. It’s there where I meet John Scurlock, the kingpin of Sainte-Anne. It’s a fun concept, but one Skull and Bones doesn’t capitalize on. Instead, it fumbles the idea of