v 1.3

It’s clear this game needed 1-2 more years and wasn’t ready and they shipped it anyway.

Update: I’m one rep below kingpin. It’s basically a WoW elwynn forest mining simulator. You mine shit, then turn it in to quests to upgrade your ship. There’s no real player level so it’s about ship level and you can cheese that by farming at the start of the game OR by just sitting out in the middle of the ocean killing ships for 40 hours. haha. It’s just grinding which is my type of game but it’s un-enjoyable for most. Wandering around farming mats to do upgrades to farm some more. It’s got elements of Diablo as well. Common-Green-Rare-Epic. Fill your “stash” with tons of shit and hope you need it later.

Earlier Post

I’m crusing along. I maxed the rep in the Open beta. I got the best ship i could get and it’s L7. I explored most of the map. There are a few upgrades still left to do on my ship.

Sea of Thieves is seriously a way better game but there’s no way to upgrade your ship or weapons or anything. So it’s cool to be able to do it in this game. There’s no lasting progress in Sea of Thieves other than rep or how much $$ you save. The cosmetics are all pointless.

On to the game

Price? There’s some scandal about it being $70 because it’s a AAAA game when clearly it’s not even up to the level of Black Flag. I’d give it like 6/1o or 7/10. I can’t even recommend getting it unless you’re like me and LOVE pirate games. For me I’ve always wanted 2 games (before they even were created): a Pirate game or a GTA Game (based off of APB arcade game).

SKULL & BONES FEEDBACK

Character Creation is bad
This version you couldn’t seem to zoom out and see your chars body unless I missed it. A previous version let you see it, I swear. I created a really weird too skinny character but at least they let you change it afterwards. I created a character I was happy with. Always blonde blue-eyed girls.

Onshore is horrible
You can’t tell what you can click on or easily pick out things you can pick up. There’s a slight flash. It’s FIND THE PIXEL. You have to go by jamming F to pickup everywhere you go. It’s so bad. It’s not even up to the level of Black Flag or any of the previous Assassin Creeds. You can’t jump. You can’t do rolls, you are just flopping around. There’s no jumping up or 3d spaces or levels. At best you go up ramps then take a rope down by hitting F without any control.  It’s not up to the standards of any game, going back to 15-20 years. The NPCs talk to you or sell you things. All of the stops are largely full of garbage. There’s no map. It’s hard to find anything in these towns. Occasionally treasure is buried there. You get lost in the ports in the jungle or fort. There’s no benefit to explore them. Sometimes you find some silver (18 oh boy) and some materials you don’t need.

Food
There’s a whole food system I mostly ignore. It increases the stamina for your boat. Finally on hour 15+ I started using it. You can learn more recipes and cook better food to add more stamina and stuff but that’s not really fun. You can upgrade this shit boat to go spear things. Pretty pointless other than the + bonuses. I wouldn’t call that really fun. It’s less fun than fishing in any game. It’s not as fun as any “cooking’ type game or system in other games (red dead redemption).

Map is terrible
My current location cursor keeps disappearing. Then I can’t even tell where I am on the map. I have to restart the game to fix that. It’s super confusing tracking quests or resources on the map. You can track ingredients or blueprints or quests but it’s difficult to do. There’s all sorts of quest markers then you have no idea what quest it’s referring to. When you inspect ships it puts a blue star over it which means there’s quest but then you don’t know what quests it’s talking about. The map is a complete struggle to use vs. any previous map or even say Far Cry.

They put icons over the fast travel icons so you can’t click on them without zooming in and zooming out. Some places you can’t fast travel because of that issue.

Other players
Don’t have much of an impact. Two players tried to attack me and I just ran back to the safe base haha. There was a pop-up PVP event I saw. I did also enjoy teaming (non grouped) with another ship to siege a fort. You can form groups but I have no idea what fun that would be. I guess if you can get on the same quests or loot faster or siege. There’s sometimes a group quest that you can press F for help, no one shows, the you solo it and die haha. I’ve had a few good battles where people showed up and it was fun but there’s no way to thank them (chat disabled). At best I can launch a firework. ZERO interaction.

GTA Star System?
Seems to have the GTA star system. They get more and more mad at you but I have no idea if they just STOP being mad or if it’s perm. They seem to forgive you after a while.

Reputation
There’s this reputation level up system that unlocks your ships and weapons and recipes and stuff. I maxed it out in the open beta.

Trading
Some trading/merchant system that’s pretty bad even compared to Sea of Thieves. You can see on the map what ports want things then drive it over and somehow maximize profit but I assume if you fast travle there vs. SLOW going, you’ll really lose money. I don’t see how doing Fedex/doordash runs would be fun. heh. It’s not even as good as 1990s SNES uncharted waters.

Your Body
You die then you go back to get your “ship body” and get your loot back. I got stuck in a situation where my body was down some tight river next to some patrolling ship I could never beat. Then my body seemed to disappear and it gave me a crappier body with less tuff on it to recover. This is a classic video game problem going back 20-25+ years that apparently is back again. But I lost all my progress.

Treasure Maps
They give you treasure maps to follow but they’re also really bad. You just figure out where on the map they are. Then you go to a port then wander around until you find an indicator that the loot is buried there. It’s not as good as Sea of Thieves treasure/maps. Also these maps can be lost with your body.

Your Stash
Stole the concept of your stash from Diablo 2 and basically everytime you stop at a port you unload your ship into your stash. Haven’t ran out of space yet and no idea if you can upgrade it.

Looting
It’s really wonky. You always hit the wrong button for “loot all” and have to escape then give up then hit F to pick it up anyway. You have no idea how far away you have to be to loot. It’s crazy far sometimes.

50 slots. They give you 50 slots to hold things but they get clogged up with things like (1) food that you have to eat or drop or put in your stash. The first time it happened I had no idea that’s why I couldn’t loot. Then you have to sit there dropping or destroying things to loot while ships are shooting at you haha.

Materials
You go around with your boat and mine rocks, harvest things, chop wood or loot shipwrecks for materials. It’s a little fun but mostley tedius. Then you go back to the refinerally and combine the items and pick them up. You can upgrade your crowbar, scythe, saw, telescope (but have to double zoom in annoyingly), and pickaxe.

Story/Quests
Pretty fun. Just jam spacebar and speed read then go do what they say.

Woke
Not especially woke but they did make one lady leader which I don’t believe is historical.

Furniture
Your ship has slots for furniture which basically provide passive bonuses to things like say a rare item has slots.

FUN?

Controls
It’s fun to pilot your ship around. You do take damage when you bounce off of ships or the shore.

Artwork is great. No complaints. 

Upgrades
Fun to customize your ship or upgrade or change your weapons. Looks like it suffers from the basic early WOW design problem where you’re just taking the same weapon (spell) and just adding + stats to it. That isn’t fun but you do unlock some new weapons here and there (torpedos, motors, rockets, etc).

Open Sea
The crossing from Open Sea to indonesia is fucking epic. There’s a storm. There’s giant waves. There’s all sorts of giant ships out there fighting. There’s ROGUE WAVES that can destroy your whole boat. It’s so epic to cross. It’s a struggle to control your boat until you get a cross. You worry about big ships targeting you. Then you make it across to a world of giants with huge Dutch ships and another faction. It really feels impressive the first time.

Fort Siege/Pilage
You roll up to a base and slowly start to destroy it. Then waves of ships come. Once you’ve destroyed everything you get more loot. The loot was pretty dumb, just some commodities you could trade.

Quests
Lots of quests to do although very confusing as to where to go or how to do them. You can abandon them but it’s a pill, you ask for more details then can finally abandon them. They also set you up for failure pissing off some faction.

Annoying

The crew starts singing randomly and you have to jam a button to turn it off. I didn’t see in the options where you can turn that off. When you’re watching a TV show it’s just annoying.