Skull and Bones: Deluxe Edition

Skull and Bones is a maritime RPG with a strong foundation, even if it feels like a live-service first draft.

Skull and Bones strips away everything great about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, resulting in a dull live-service game that's often a chore.

Ubisoft's long-in-the-works pirate adventure boasts a beautiful world and bombastic ship-to-ship combat, but it sinks amid boring busywork and tedious traversal.

Combining moody and gratifying ship-on-ship combat with shallow live service trappings, Skull and Bones is great within the claustrophobic parameters of what market forces allow it to be.

With excellent sailing and naval combat mechanics, it's a shame that Skull and Bones is so hampered by its lack of diversity, odd developmental decisions, and minimal capacity to offer a true pirate fantasy.

Despite its long and circuitous course to arrive at port, Skull and Bones is the type of game that may change significantly in the coming months. But to evaluate it as it stands, fellow pirate enthusiasts may discover what I did – a flawed but beautifully presented historical fantasy in which one can take to the water and make a fortune, even if absolutely everything about the pirate life isn’t always pretty.

After 11 years of development, Ubisoft Singapore's open world pirate-venture is a deeply ungenerous live service that's so dull, I'd turn anywhere else for entertainment.

The looming question now is support. Is Ubisoft’s roadmap for this game going to generate the kinds of quality content and community excitement needed to sustain a player base? Live-service games are a crapshoot at best, but it’s clear there are things in the works. Speculation runs rampant on reddit that we’ll be getting more dynamic PvE events like monster hunts, and that the really cool stuff is coming. But, like so many other good ideas for Skull and Bones, it doesn’t actually exist yet.

Skull and Bones delivers boatloads of explosive tactical action, with players playing the part of pirates in an impressive oceanic world. Its 17th-century naval battles are best-in-class, with developer Ubisoft Singapore building a firm foundation for future voyages. But with no real story to speak of and little in the way of variation, repetition inevitably sets in. While not the spiritual successor to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag as some might have been hoping for, Skull and Bones is never-the-less an incredibly unique, reactive game well worth checking out.

Skull and Bones turns the Golden Age of Piracy, one of the most exciting periods in history, into a mundane and plodding experience.