Ten years in the making, Ubisoft's ambitious pirating adventure is here. Does it sail into the sunset or sink to the ocean floor? Our review.
Ten years in the making, with as many of Ubisoft’s globe-straddling studios involved in its development if the title reel is anything to go by, Skull and Bones is finally here.
It all starts with a showy encounter with the British Navy. Outnumbered, you end up shipwrecked on a sparse archipelago before boarding a dingy dhow and reaching Sainte-Anne, a pirate den where you’ll be roped into the machinations of the sharp-tongued Captain Scurlock. From there starts your journey to becoming a feared pirate kingpin. It’s the perfect premise for the rags-to-rich progression, a core pillar of Skull and Bones’ gameplay loop.
The deeper you get into Skull and Bones, the more minor irritants become major annoyances. The need to dock at a settlement or outpost to fast travel artificially inflates playthrough length as you spend a silly amount of time simply getting somewhere to fast-travel to deliver this or that commodity. Similarly, every fast travel jump costs silver.
However, the most disappointing is the on-foot portion of Skull and Bones. While an Assassin’s Creed game it is not, it’s difficult not to make the comparison, especially as it was inspired by Black Flag. Being unable to explore freely, penned in by invisible walls to trudge at a leisurely running pace through outpost layouts that, by the twelfth one, all seem identical, quickly becomes dull.
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