Skull and Bones
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Skull and Bones is a 2024 action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Singapore and published by Ubisoft. It was released on February 16th, 2024, with the deluxe edition giving players 3 days early access, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Amazon Luna, and Microsoft Windows. It's been called by Ubisoft as a true "AAAA" gaming experience.
Why Its Bones Are Destroyed
- Development hell: The game started development back in 2013, initially serving as an expansion to the then-recently released Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, then as an MMO game, and then finally as an independent project due to it using technology that became outdated at the time. However, as time went on, the game was subject to several severe changes, like the setting, the gameplay, and so on. It was reported that the budget cost $120 million despite the game looking and playing worse than Assassin's Creed III, a game released in 2012.
- Adding further insult to injury, Baldur's Gate 3 cost $100 million and that game played way better than this one and even Larian Studios' previous games such as Divinity: Original Sin II!
- Like most recent Ubisoft games, the game is a live service title and a bad one at that, featuring a lot of microtransactions, a battle pass, and so on, despite the game costing $70.
- Sure, you can play for free, but only 8 hours. And after that, you need to pay a $70 paywall to play the full game, which makes things even worse.
- On the topic of live service, the game requires constant internet connection, even in single-player mode. Otherwise, it'll be unplayable, especially if the servers go down or you don't have a good internet connection.
- The game lacks many elements that are not only staples in pirate games but also open-world games.
- The graphics, despite having good lighting, are outdated, especially for 2024 standards. Keep in mind, that the game has been called by Ubisoft as a "AAAA" experience, and the fact that Assassin's Creed IV has much better-looking graphics, and that game came out in 2013. It looks more like a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launch title, as well as a late PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game.
- Speaking of which, the character models look similar to each other, with the exception for important characters.
- Harvesting material of this game is just a lazy minigame as you'll be cutting or mining at the right time, over and over, and it's quite boring and repetitive.
- Anachronism: The ship has a stamina bar (even though all ships, without exception, NEVER HAD STAMINA at the time this game takes place) and it's a stupid mechanic for pirate games. Even Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag had a realistic representation of sail-powered ships.
- The combat overall is very downgraded, you just spamming the attack button to the ship over and over.
- It is not better with boarding the enemy pirates, you need to get your close to an enemy ship and then... it's just cut to the treasure cutscenes and watch the enemy pirates explode. It's absolutely stupid to look at.
- To unlock the region, you need to wait for a long time because there's a timer.
- The gameplay's dull and repetitive throughout, as you'll be battling against enemy ships, fighting the ship bosses, and hunting the beast over and over.
- You can't buy the large ship unless you need to level up your player to Kingpin.
- To craft a ship, you need to have a blueprint, but this blueprint requires too much grinding, making things feel tiring.
- Even worse, the progression system is too slow. It's a chore and extremely grindy, and if you want to large ship, you have to grind A LOT in order to unlock it.
- You can't battle in the on-foot section.
- The game is riddled with bugs and glitches at launch, such as audio glitches, chat unavailable, etc.
Redeeming Qualities
- The idea of making MMO pirate with setting from Africa to Southeast Asia is neat idea, but the execution is really poor.
- The graphics are good even the visual is feels outdated.
- Some players is still enjoyable, especially for players who want to live out their fantasies of being a pirate.
Reception
Skull and Bones received "mixed or average" reviews, according to critics but negative to players. The Metacritic score is 60% and user score gave a 3.5. Opencritic was a 16% Critics recomended. the game is currently IMDb rating are 3.4/10.
Angry Joe gave the rating 3/10 calling it "A shallow pirate game", they also saying that the Singaporean people are getting pissed due to how embarrassing this game. It's also one of the first Southeast Asia games that had been reviewed and also one a few Southeast Asia game that it did get a bad score rating.
It's also one of a few Southeast Asia games that failed to being live-service games, considering that this is a completely commercial failures.