Skull and Bones review: Playing at pirates without a full deck

The coincidence of two buccaneering sims going head to head was not lost on those of us who played both early versions in LA all those years ago. The comparisons were endlessly rolled out in our coverage but there seemed room for both games in the market.

But here’s where the stories diverge. Sea of Thieves launched to mixed reviews a mere eight months later, its grog-happy, treasure-tastic brand of pandemonium proving hugely entertaining but limited in scope.

Meanwhile, Skull and Bones sank without trace, occasionally glimpsed beneath the water as Ubisoft rebooted and rebooted the project unconvincingly. It never quite hit bottom, though, because seven years after the game first surfaced, here comes the end product. And it’s … fine.

It bears some resemblance to the 2017 original – which appeared to be mostly ship combat – but has absorbed or perhaps been tainted by typical Ubisoft influences that permeate its open-world games. You know the drill – huge maps full of icons, buckets of side-quests, deep customisation, a boatload of microtransactions and endless resource-mining for countless upgrades. You can play much of the early storyline in solo mode but sooner or later you’ll want to team up with other players for the bigger rewards.

Where Sea of Thieves started small and took years to get big, Skull and Bones sets sail on its maiden voyages crammed to the gunwales with stuff – not all of it terribly exciting.

You play a novice pirate washed up on an Indian Ocean island lorded over by a scoundrel kingpin. Naturally, your task consists of building your reputation by raiding ships, sinking rivals, plundering booty and completing fetch quests. Would it surprise you to learn you gradually acquire more powerful ships and weapons, forged by traders from your plunder?

All of these predictable stratagems function as narrative scaffolding for the best bits of Skull and Bones, which focus on the intense naval battles between nimble ships. The pirate vessels can pirouette around each other as they catch wind in their sails or pivot 180 degrees in a flash. But the tactical battle is won by managing your ship’s positioning to fire your best cannons, switching to another side as you wait for the slow reloads.

These skirmishes can be thrilling, the crafts pitching and yawing in the heaving seas as the air rings with noise from the weapons and the crews.

The comedown from these battles can be heavy, though. Skull and Bones might lead you to think there’s an abundance of islands to explore on foot but it flatters to deceive. Despite teasing you with beautiful locations – extensions of what is unquestionably an attractive ocean setting – most landing spots consist of a few square metres of beach and a couple of non-player characters offering quests. You’re mostly a sailor not a soldier nor an adventurer.

So in between those often-exhilarating ship-to-ship scuffles, Skull and Bones forces you to spend considerable time sailing between locations – a dull experience compared to that in Sea of Thieves –listening to bland plot exposition or sorting through your inventory to divine what to upgrade next.

Despite all that, you can see the foundations of a promising live-service game here. Much as Sea of Thieves took a while to hoist its masts to full sail, Skull and Bones may eventually vindicate itself. Ubisoft would do well to slough away some of the cruft, zero in on the naval warfare and inject more life into its scenic but largely empty outposts.