The piracy simulator from Ubisoft, Skull and Bones, was released on February 16. However, despite promising a lot of features in the lead-up to the launch, it seems that the high-seas adventure game has crashed against the rocks when it comes to user reviews.
Currently, Skull and Bones has an average score of 31 on Metacritic, based on over 300 user reviews at the time of writing this article.
Many of these comments make unfavorable comparisons with Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. Released in 2013, Black Flag put you in the shoes of Welsh pirate Edward Kenway and involved a lot of sword fighting, naval battles, and stealth.
On the contrary, Skull and Bones focuses more on naval battles, as players send their sailors to board enemy ships in a short cinematic instead of engaging in melee combat.
Negative reviews focus on pacing issues and a limited game design approach. “Painfully slow and boring,” explains one user, while another complained, “It’s worse than it looks. There’s no ship boarding, no swimming, naval battles are all the same. It has no ending.”
The 12 professional reviews on Metacritic at the time of writing this article are more favorable, with an average of 64, which the site classifies as “mixed”. These reviews are slightly more favorable than those of the users: PC Gamer, our affiliated website, states: “Skull and Bones, which combines a brooding and rewarding ship combat with a superficial live service, is great within the claustrophobic parameters allowed by market forces”.
Skull and Bones had a notoriously problematic development, having received multiple delays since its announcement in 2017. Since then, the game has undergone numerous changes, with revisions to its setting, branding, and scope of its gameplay mechanics.
The pirate and navigation game is currently available on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC through the Ubisoft store.
