As someone who really enjoys booting up either Assassins Creed: Black Flag or Rogue and just sailing around a bit every now and then, Skull & Bones was something I knew would be in my wheelhouse. What made it a hard sell for me was the fact it was a ‘live-service’ game, and those usually wear out pretty fast for me. Still, I found it on sale for $8 on PS5, & I figured that was a fair price for some sailing action.

If you’ve played the nautical themed Assassins Creed games, the gameplay of Skull & Bones will feel very similar. Your ships handle similar to the Jackdaw & Morrigan. There’s a range of ships to build, mostly smaller crafts. Each handle differently, with the smaller boats being more maneuverable and the bigger boats being a bit faster and offering more firepower. The few improvements are more camera angles, one of my favorites being the view from the crow’s nest, the camera I used the most though was the one from the deck where I could see my captain and the crew as the waves washed over the deck. Unfortunately, your crew isn’t very lively, they mostly stand next to their cannon with a few that walk about and scrub the deck. There’s also the option to have cannons fire independently instead of a unified broadside, though I was so used to the older games, that I often exclusively use the cannon types that fire all at once. Your ship an enemies have levels, so it does have that annoying thing where someone a level above you is a bullet sponge that deals massive damage. That’s where calling in help is a good idea. You can send out a call at any world event to other ships and create these large impromptu armadas taking down a boss ship.

For the most part, you are playing as the ship, but there are pirate towns you can stop at to visit the shops and get missions. These on-foot parts in the hub areas are just for selling & buying, finding other players to party up with, showing off your pirate threads, and getting missions. There is on-foot combat coming in one of the future updates apparently.

You are always looking to upgrade your ship and weapons, which is done through either collecting resources to craft an item or buying it from a vendor. All of the weapons and armor are on the typical rarity scale, green, blue, purple, orange, etc. The ships are a little more varied, there are some ships that are better than others, but what ship you’d like depends more on your playstyle, some are built as tanks, others as support healers, and others as hit’n’run ships. Luckily, the game isn’t too stingy with handing out equipment when you complete missions, and its stuff that is useable. That’s always the danger with live-service games, how bad is the grind. Ubisoft does do all the typical live-service bullcrap, with DLC packs that require a premium currency to buy, but it’s always just enough you have to buy the more expensive pack, and there’s 4 other in-game currencies you have to collect. It gets annoying because every in-game vendor seems to have their own currency. The basic vendors take silver, the smuggler takes gildmarks, the black market takes pieces of 8. So, there’s a part of the game that’s this boring spreadsheet manager because the black market sells the blueprints to high level weapons, but the silver blacksmith has to craft them, and the unique weapons are only at the gildmark shop. Most of these currencies are easy to collect through gameplay, and I was lucky that I was able to get a decent set of gear on my ship after a few hours of gameplay.

When I play Assassins Creed games, I usually try to dress up my characters to look like they would’ve belonged in the period, so nothing too flashy. With a ‘live-service’ game, there’s the tendency to have all the cosmetics be gawdy and unimmersive. Skull & Bones does have plenty of those, but there is also enough decently authentic looking gear to dress your pirate or put on your ship. They are often unique enough to make your ship stand out, without it glowing like neon vomit. The probably most immersion breaking thing was your little animal sidekicks. You could have anything from a parrot to a lizard to a baby hippo, each wearing goofy costumes. This was the first game I bought a battle pass for because they had a set of gambler gear that I wanted for my ship. The selection of ship colors is okay, but many of them are muted and plain, but the biggest complaint I have for customization is the lack of good ship figureheads. Most are locked behind premium currency and these are often the most gaudy of all the ship cosmetics, with lights and particle effects. I just wanted a classic mermaid figurehead for my ship. A lot of the basic ship customizations that you can buy are these ugly spike walls that make your ship look like it came out of Mad Max, I didn’t care for them.

Going in, I thought Skull & Bones was set in a high fantasy world that was vaguely Carribean. I was pleased to learn that the game is actually set in the Indian Ocean between Africa and India, with a pirate den in Madagascar. The world is more a grounded fantasy. There are mentions of S&Bs version of Libertalia and you come across sea monsters and ghost pirates, but they aren’t overblown. It’s more like the world is if the pirate tales of the period were real. Storms seem to roll in at random, or at story moments, or there’s a chunk of the open ocean that always seems to have a storm going on. They are fun to sail in, but there is this thing where if you jump off a wave, you take damage & I've yet to figure out a good way not to, which is annoying during tough fights. There’s a photo mode, but since this is an always online game, it’s hard to get nice photos before you accidently run into a rock or another ship. The sea shanties make a return. There’s a mix of old classics, some new ones, some are inspired by the East Indies, and there’s a few original songs that sing about characters in the game.

The story is, well, there’s not much of a story. It’s a live-service game, the story isn’t the main focus, the gameplay loop is. You start off working for a scoundrel pirate lord in Madagascar. He’s dealing with the French and their pirate hunters, which just means missions of “go sink these ships”, “find these supplies”, or “plunder this village”. There are a few missions that mix things up by letting you captain other ships, but that’s about it. The story is ineffectual because the characters are ineffectual. You find out the pirate lord is secretly working with the French, but because he serves as the mission giver, he just kinda goes, “Yep, I’m a scoundrel, but you’re going to keep working for me”. It’s bare bones character development and you’re a silent protagonist, so there’s not much input from you. The dialogue is mostly utilitarian, just giving you missions, explaining features, and handing out rewards. And for a den of pirates, everyone is awfully polite. I would’ve preferred some more hard talking, gruff pirates, they’d add a little depth to the world.

All in all, I enjoyed Skull & Bones for a good couple weeks and got a nice ship and loadout by the end. I will probably still play a little more of it because I do enjoy the ship combat and just sailing around. If I wasn’t a fan of the gameplay, I’d’ve probably bounced off this game a lot quicker because the story and characters are not going to keep you sticking around. If you enjoy Ubisoft’s pirate games, I can recommend this one on a sale. It’s got the live-service crap, but I found I could still play the game and make good progress solo without constant grinding or buying my way.