Skull and Bones hasn’t had the smoothest of voyages – from its prolonged development cycle to lukewarm reviews at launch, an air of negativity has clung to Ubisoft’s seafaring sim, supercharged by a collective fatigue surrounding live service games. The publisher’s tone deaf claims of Skull and Bones being the first “AAAA” title, despite being derivative of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, didn’t exactly help its reputation either. However, with Skull and Bones Year 3 having recently weighed anchor, now seemed like a good time to hoist the game from the abyssal depths of my bountiful backlog and finally set sail.
My previous experience with the game was brief to say the very least, having dabbled with the Skull and Bones beta for less than an hour. Then, at launch, I barely had enough time to create my own pirate and watch the intro cutscene before turning my attention to other, more pressing new releases. Little did I know that this would cause some friction upon my return to the virtual high seas a couple of years later. For whatever reason, I was dumped into the game’s main hub area with no way to access the tutorial, meaning I had no real bearings or any context for what was happening.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too hard to wrap my head around where the game wanted me to go. Upon booting up the game a handy welcome screen will suggest various activities such as pursuing the main story or completing one of the many side quests. Naturally, with the game mistaking me for a lapsed player, I found my inbox stuffed with free gifts that gave me a nice leg up, outfitting my first ship with some decent starter weapons and armour.
Read more – Interview: Skull and Bones – How Ubisoft found fun in the Golden Age of Piracy
For those completely new to Skull and Bones, it’s best described as a pirate RPG set in a shared open world. You play as a swashbuckling captain who takes on increasingly challenging missions, attacking enemy factions and plundering their settlements to gain resources and currency which are then used to unlock and upgrade new ships. It’s played in third person with most of your time spent engaged in naval combat, outmanoeuvring your foes and hitting them with an arsenal of cannons, mortars, and other more exotic weaponry. As you level up and explore, you’ll discover new activities and landmarks while rubbing shoulders with other player pirates with a number of PvE and PvP opportunities being available.
As with any live service RPG, you’ll find yourself embroiled in a web of menus though these thankfully aren’t as egregious as those plastered all over your typical free-to-play gacha game. To make progress in Skull and Bones you’ll need to learn what the various NPCs have to offer, including vendors who sell blueprints, and craftsmen who transmute your stockpile of resources into gear, upgrades, ammunition, and consumables.
The sheer quantity and variety of items you’ll amass can be overwhelming at first though you’ll soon learn which resources to focus on, what to sell, what to refine, and what to salvage. Your ultimate goal is to expand your personal fleet, levelling up the gear score of your flagship in order to access a more diverse and difficult pool of challenges including world events and co-op activities.
So, what does Year 3 have in store for new players? At first, it doesn’t appear like there’s much new content and features being targeted at S&B’s saltiest seadogs, namely the addition of a new endgame Galleon ship and an overhaul to the World Tier system, dialling up the difficulty for veterans while offering better rewards. There’s also the new Seasonal Mastery feature, offering a new layer of progression as you unlock buffs and upgrades though, as the name suggests, these will reset with each new season, though your finishing rank will influence your starting position going into the next one. There are some quality of life improvements that benefit everyone with a new, cleaner loadout menu for managing your fleet.
While the developers continue to refine what players enjoy about the game, it’s far from being the ultimate pirate sim. Sadly, Ubisoft Singapore shelved its plans for land combat, a feature that could have helped to make off-ship gameplay more versatile and meaningful. Skull and Bones also suffers from a common sandbox game problem in terms of story. While the Indian Ocean makes for a gorgeous watery playground waiting to be plundered, its narrative hooks are blunted by a lack of compelling characters or scenarios, leaving players to create their own memorable sagas upon the high seas.
Despite these shortcomings – and the game’s penchant for resource grinding – there’s still a fun experience to be had, especially in multiplayer. Stumbling upon world events and having fellow pirates join you to take down notorious bounties or colossal sea monsters adds an MMO-like twist, as does the increasing depth of loadout and playstyle options. With Skull and Bones having been heavily discounted at various time (it’s also bundled in with certain PlayStation Plus tiers) the arrival of Year 3 marks an opportune moment to jump in, buoyed by a sizeable fanbase of loyal fans and plenty of content in the pipeline: 2026 will see the introduction of even more large ships as well as competitive Trials, challenging new Elite Bosses, and a treasure trove of smaller upgrades.