I played 'Skull and Bones' to see if it's THAT bad...

the day has finally come Skull and Bones has released after over a decade of work and now we can talk about it it feels weird to be here but you know what I'm not complaining now over the last year and a half or so I have played a lot of Skull and Bones through open betas private betas and Early Access events such as one I attended relatively recently giving me a chance to play Skull and bones' endgame and try the final season 1 boss early so amazingly enough I've actually seen a lot more of this game than you would think and so I have a lot to say but just to be sure I decided to go and play the launch version of the game at least as much of it as I could stomach and muster and so this video is basically the culmination of those dozens and dozens of hours of gam playay and misery that I have put myself through over the last however many months in preparation for this launch so let's just get into it is Skull and Bones actually as bad as we all were a feared it would be or does it actually manage to do something kind of surprising I think the answer may surprise you I'm just kidding it's terrible it's really bad I it's it's bad the first thing that I think is really important to establish with skull and bones is exactly what kind of game it's trying to be back when it was originally pitched to players the vision was basically that it was going to be Assassin's Creed Black Flag but without the Assassin's Creed branding and this isn't necessarily a bad idea a lot of people loved Black Flag and were frustrated every time they were pulled out of the piratey goodness to deal with some sort of abstergo plot line so the idea that we would have a pirate game that just focused on the cool pirate stuff was alluring but as you might have heard the game restarted development multiple times there were all sorts of issues with infighting different directors that would come in from France to take over the project in Singapore and they just could never really figure out what this game was supposed to be so in one iteration it would basically be Black Flag but without Assassin's Creed elements another version would be more like a character-based shooter but with ships instead other times it was like rocket league but with pirate ships just no part of this really made sense and they struggled to figure out exactly what this game was going to be and that led to an issue we've seen over the last decade as they've worked on this game which is just that players don't even really know what this game is supposed to be or trying to be and now that we actually have it we can see the vision though I don't think the version of the game that we ended up getting was the version that excited the most people to demonstrate what I'm talking about I'm just going to boot into the game and because this is not hell divers the servers are far from at capacity so we should be able to get in real quick so what you're seeing here is a reset profile I have with just a really basic level two ship at the very very start of of the game just very very Bare Bones but what you notice immediately is just how confusing the pitch for skull and bones is because what you effectively do is sail around this somewhat anemic map sometimes you might be hunting for say a great white shark or other times you'll just be going around looking for crafting materials to build uh different weapons or to improve your ship with improved like armor plating or whatever else it may be and somewhat similarly to Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag you can't just get out of your ship anywhere and start exploring the sides of of islands or various things it's only at very specific spots that you can dock so the extent of exploration that you'll be enjoying is pretty much limited to major points of interest like that big place we were at just a minute ago over there or at specific forts that are for um like larger missions and things and as you can see I am far too out here for a level two ship so we all are dead I wanted to see and test if the game would let me just sail indefinitely to the edge of the map and you actually can I'm happy to report you can basically just get one shot though so that's something to keep in mind but you see even on land you can look around there are some like characters you can talk to like this Rogue if you talk to them then they have different things that they're vending to you it's all like kind of confusing in terms of UI it's just like you have to read every single item cuz some of these will look similar they're just different tiers not even represented very clearly visually like these are different tiers I get this one's bigger than this one it's enhanced but then level two is just like a slightly taller version of the same basket so I guess that makes it better I I just don't like the UI layout I find it oddly lame and Bland I I don't know how to phrase it it's just it just looks like a grid of stuff and that's about it you can sort of explore around these areas but there's no onland combat there's no docked combat or anything even the animation sets for running around and exploring places are very very outdated like this movement set that you're seeing as I shift left to right the feet aren't planting anywhere near as accurately as they even were back with assassin Creed for Black Flag like I of Jacob put up footage of Edward running around in that game and I feel like he was much more weighted and his foot placement was much more intentional than this this is way more floaty it just reaffirms again the idea that skull bones doesn't actually do anything that well it's just a collection of hodg podged systems none of which are the best at what they're trying to do it's just a bunch of systems that are kind of sucky that make up a generally sucky game and just like that we're back at the beach that is the extent of exploration in Skull and Bones we're right back where we were we hit this button and just like that we are back in it now I do want to say that the game is pretty I mean when you're sailing and you see the sun coming down reflecting off the water you see the god Rays I think the game can look pretty good I don't think character models are that great I don't think the animation is that great for actual character movement but this ships look pretty nice the water looks good and I think it's workable the issues though kind of creep up from there I mean to break this down as clearly as I can I just need to explain I think each of the three phases of the game the early game mid game and end game and what you're going to be doing in each of those and why none of it really make sense in the early game of Skull and Bones you're going to be sailing around collecting wood collecting ore and and other such materials that you need to upgrade either your tools or the Weaponry on your ship or the ship itself this may make sense narratively speaking you need to improve your ship so you need to get materials to improve your ship but you would think when playing a pirate game you would gain those materials by performing piratey actions as it were you know like it's a pirate game maybe you should get that stuff by being a pirate so like sinking ships or or pillaging dare I say that sounds like a good idea right well no that's not what we're doing instead the designers made it so you sail around the outskirts of islands and chop down wood or mine different materials by performing this basic mini game I kid you not like if you were asking the devs what is the lamest way a pirate could collect wood I think this is it I I really do think this is the lamest way you could possibly collect materials in a PIR Pirate game not doing piratey stuff but going and chopping down the wood and Mining The Ore with the lamest mini game you could possibly have it it's amazing to me like how anybody thought that this was how they should start their Pirate game is amazing to me furthermore early in the game you are tasked with completing all of these various collectons and each one is assigned individually and you have to complete them all individually one at a time before taking on the next it would make a lot more sense to just open all of them up to you allowing you to go and complete every single contract all at once but instead they assign them once at a time as if they're just trying to slow you down and bloat the game's runtime and this is where the elements of live service beudy if that's a term start to really creep in the reason live service is a bad word and taboo at this point in the gaming industry is because live service games are built around keeping you engaged for hundreds if not thousands of hours and inevitably the way that that happens is through bloated gameplay mechanics that are designed to eat up more and more of your time sometimes this could be with different drop rates on rare or ultra rare materials maybe you're playing a looter shooter and you need a weapon with a certain set of stats to be able to take on the final season boss and so you fight waves upon waves of enemies and do the same encounter 20 times to try and get the best possible drop or maybe there's a really unique Mount that you want in World of Warcraft and so you have to perform a set of extremely tedious and repetitive activities to try and unlock that mount you know what I mean these are activities specifically designed to slow the player down even though they could give you that super cool Mount or super cool skin or weapon with a singular drop after completing say a boss fight instead they make it take 10 20 hours of gaml to get there so on the one hand it might feel more satisfying because you really worked for it but on the flip side you've also burnt tens of hours trying to complete one simple task and skull and bones unfortunately applies this principle across the board in everything it does if you're trying to craft a singular Cannon to improve your ship's overall capability in battle you have to complete various activities to collect the necessary materials and even then you might need a blueprint or two to be able to accomplish this you have to then sail all the way back to the black Smith make sure that he can actually craft it and then apply it to your ship every single activity in the game is built around padding out gameplay time and it shows one of the very first things you do in the game is you're tasked with collecting eight acacia wood in the very introductory sections of the game in order to craft your first ship to do this you sail on a little Sloop that you have all the way over about a kilometer and a half away to cut down this wood with a boring ass miname and then sail all all the way back to where you started to give that wood to the ship right so that he can use it to craft the ship itself you're then given a series of other contracts to complete which are just glorified fetch quests and after about an hour of doing that you'll be able to craft your first ship and get the game rolling so amazingly enough the early game is basically just a series of fetch quests that are designed to keep you engaged in small gameplay Loops of traveling from point to point for 5 to 10 minutes at a time completing various deliveries or collecting different things not exactly how I would have recommended they start their Pirate game but okay once you have your pirate ship you're able to go and actually perform piratey activities such as engaging in combat or completing various contracts with other players on your squad or team or against other players and their squads and teams this is when the mid game starts and it's where the game starts to pick up a little bit however once again the game leans into the grind as you improve your ship practically every single thing you might want to do to improve your chances as a pirate lord requires excessive grind and more than a little bit of patience and tolerance for repetition not to mention that it's during these periods when you're going to be exploring the game in its fullest and you'll come across places like this places that look really really beautiful and interesting and I don't know about you but I want to dock my ship and explore this Fortress explore this area cuz it looks gorgeous and fascinating and I mean you can see the The Mansions down there where all of the officers no doubt live and exist and you can see the big fortifications in the background the Quarry in the cliffs side like it's a really interesting place visually but you can't actually do that you want to see what happens when you try to explore that location let me show you if you get close enough you're prompted with two buttons you can either interact by holding down B where you're able to buy and sell in this case iron ingots and that's the extent of it or you can sell different items and then it'll restock every half hour or so or you can hold down Y and plunder and if you select to plunder you get a cut scene that plays where everybody jumps out of the ship you don't get to go inside though they get to go inside the NPCs do and now I have to destroy these towers and other ships that are going to come into this little yellow circle and once I've done that for long enough I have completed the pl and taken over this area but that's the extent of it like that is the extent of exploration just when you find a place that's interesting that you might want to explore you're just immediately reminded that this is not that kind of game and as much as you might want to go in here and look around the game's just not going to let you and that never ceases to be disappointing and frustrating and this is where we can say like oh it's not fair to hold skull and bones to the standard of like Black Flag because it's not Black Flag it was never going to be Black Flag so to be like oh well Black Flag did this better isn't necessarily fair and maybe that's true but at the end of the day like players who are playing Skull and Bones almost all of them are familiar or have played Black Flag we know what Ubisoft has been capable of in the past over a decade ago and to see this game fail at every step at accomplishing what that game did so effortlessly seemingly is just nothing less than disappointing and frustrating I mean it would be like seeing uh CD project red come along and with like the next Witcher game they just casually have like 3 and 1 half hours of content and it's all in like a small little area of flat land and there's nothing else interesting and there's like no narrative consequence and it's over before it began and it's just a huge step down in quality from what they did last time and you're like I know you're able to do amazing things look what you did last time what is this another example might be another live service game that just launched no shocker I'm going to bring it up Suicide Squad killed the Justice League Rocksteady an amazingly accomplished developer came out with Suicide Squad after n years since their last game Batman Arkham Knight and they come Out Swinging with a game that is not just extremely short but is also monetized out the ass and wholly uninteresting so while I do think it's important to be aware that skull and bones is not Black Flag players are no doubt going to remember what they were able to do last time they tried this and I think it's fair for them to be disappointed and frustrated at just how far the mighty have fallen but that brings us to the end game of skull and bones and this is where the game is supposed to be at its very best and I do think it does some of the end game really well but there are also problems you see it's in the end game where you actually get to play as a pirate and thankfully I got the chance to play Skull and bones' endgame for hours and hours and hours hours during a preview event just a handful of weeks ago in this session I got to play with a couple of other YouTubers and some members of Ubisoft filling out other parties it was clear that this was where the game was going to shine and look its best there's a lot of PVP combat there's also pvpve in the endgame as well where there are many missions where players are interacting with other seasonal bosses and big encounters and fights or you might be fighting a gigantic sea monster for example and it's at moments like that where skull and bone starts to feel like it could actually potentially compete with the likes of something like sea of Thieves it's also in the endgame when you're going to have your different ship loadouts really kitted up and capable of interacting well with the rest of the party some ship classes are built around playing as a tank with heavy weaponry and armor but really slow movement speeds other loadouts are focused on healing where you basically have a mortar that can heal ships that are members of your same group other ships are more more focused on assault and DPS and some are more Scout class ships which are all about speed and maneuverability remember I said earlier that one of the visions of Skull and Bones was going to be that it was basically like a character shooter almost like an OverWatch with different classes of Heroes and stuff but then they shifted it towards ship combat exclusively and then it shifted back and forth multiple times well this is one of those hold outs where you basically have a Healer a tank DPS and then like support or maybe Scout class is it's here but they're just ships instead even if that doesn't really make a lot of sense like I don't know how a mortar magically heals a pirate ship but it can in this world and while this may initially offer a breath of fresh air after the grind heavy mid game it doesn't stay refreshing for very long you see there are only a handful of mission types for the end game just like in many other live service games where they rely on a core set of missions and activities to keep you engaged for dozen or hundreds of hours and just like so many other live service games that have come before it most of these missions get extremely boring after just one or two completions the plunder mission that I outlined earlier is just as boring the second time as it is the 5,000th time the fights against sea monsters are initially fun but they are far from varied and the payouts for completing them are laughably poor the payouts for completing the endgame bosses at the end of season 1 for example against pest are surprisingly lackluster and require a lot of grind themselves to even approach accomplishing since you need certain Furniture pieces which are basically just individual little perks for your ship in order to take on a boss like leest and stand a chance since he deals poison damage and you have to have certain furniture or perk pieces that specifically counteract those poison effects other Furniture pieces you can have for this endgame boss are things like Furniture pieces that increase damage against his faction of enemies for example and many others but none of these are particularly interesting or novel it's just a really big ship with a lot of health and if you don't have the furniture pieces to make you resistant to his particular type of damage you just won't be able to kill him or survive him in addition to this there are a handful of endgame missions for PVP that are completely broken if you don't have the particular type of ship equipped that you need in order to complete the task I ran into this when I got the chance to play the endgame early and in this particular Mission you basically go to a location collect a bunch of loot from an area that you've captured previously and that alerts everybody in the server to your presence that you're carrying this special Contraband that they want to capture for themselves and this creates a sort of Mad Dash where you are trying to deliver this Contraband you've collected from a site that you've previously plundered while many other players are chasing you down to try and claim it for themselves it sounds like an interesting concept concept sure but once you realize that the max speed is altered for each and every class of ship you should start to see the problem if you are not running a scout class ship you cannot win this Mission type if there is a singular Scout class ship in the server when this kicks off this means that anybody with any experience with the game is just going to equip their Scout class ship before they go and try to even start this Mission so then you have a scout class ship that has the highest max speed of any ship in the game running away from other Scout class ships which have the same Max Speed so they can never catch up so the whole thing is just kind of a waste of time because you'll never be able to catch up to the Scout class ship if the Scout class ship is what actually started off the mission and so there's just no point in doing anything so even after the five five or so hours that I played the end game we were already sick and tired of that mission after we had done it twice because we realized there was no point in even trying because even if you had a scout class ship you couldn't catch up to the guy that started the mission and took the Contraband because his max speed was topped out so your max speed being the same as his you'll just never catch up there's no point in doing it like he'd have to intentionally lose and hang back at slower speeds in order for you to catch up with him which just doesn't make any sense and I don't need to explain to you how bad it is for there to be endgame missions which are so broken that a dumbass like me can figure it out that it's broken within like 30 minutes of playing the game so much so that we asked the developers hey are there like different food items you can craft to increase Max Speed so maybe you could catch up to that guy that took the Contraband or are there other types of perks maybe Furniture pieces that you could equip on your ship to give you higher Max speeds to maybe make this more competitive and everybody that was at that preview event was like h no not really you can like recoup your stamina with food so that's a thing which we knew was a thing and in the end game you're going to have so much freaking food that you'll never run out of stamina basically ever again so that'll be true for everybody so the guy that took the Contraband will always have Max stamina always going Max Speed away from you you may be going Max Speed towards him but the max speeds are the same so you'll never catch up just the whole thing is broken and busted it doesn't make any sense at all and listen maybe they'll figure this out maybe they've patched it by the time you're seeing this video I don't know but this is one of the frustrations with skull and bones is that there are so many little things that just don't make sense like having a pirate game that you spend the first quarter or third of it just going around collecting materials like you're in some sort of knockoff Minecraft mobile game it just doesn't make any sense at all and then they go with the mid game and have it just totally bloated out the ass so every little bitty task is a headache and then the end game comes about and there are entire classes of missions that are totally pointless for everybody like it doesn't make any sense unless you're the guy delivering the cargo with a very particular class of ship and then nobody else even stands a chance at taking you down because you're just too fast and they will never be able to catch up like every time you look at one of these little pieces that doesn't really make sense or doesn't fit together with the other pieces it stacks and it just makes it worse and worse and worse and what you end up with is skull and bone a game that doesn't do anything well a game that is more confusing than it is fun and that begs the question why does this even exist listen I was hoping that they would pull it out and somehow Skull and Bones would be like a surprise hit I love surprise hits hell divers 2 I had no idea hell divers 2 was going to be any good at all I was like yeah looks like people who are fans of the original hell divers will probably like it who knows and I just kind of passed it out of my mind and then I ended up playing it and I freaking love h divers too as is like everybody loving it I mean everybody is obsessed with that game right now and it was a surprise hit I don't think anybody really expected it to be this big or successful so I was hoping Skull and Bones would be one of those a surprise hit that blew us all away but it just isn't instead it is a game that is exactly what we feared it represents everything wrong with live service games and Executives trying to force a game into the public eye at full price even though it definitely should not be full price I mean Eve gal the CEO of Ubisoft said that this is a quadruple game this deserves its $70 price tag which whenever you hear somebody say that just remember like hell divers 2 40 bucks pal World 30 bucks you could buy both of the most successful games of 2024 for the same price as Skull and Bones it's like the executives have no idea how much money like 30 bucks or 40 bucks is they don't understand that the difference between a $30 live service game and a $70 live service game is massive that's a huge difference but I think it's because they're all out of touch that they don't understand that 40 bucks could be a lot of money to somebody like they just don't understand it they're like I don't know like what they're like I I'm going to go hop in my my fifth Lambo I have in my fourth garage and I'll drive it to work today and you know I'll I'll set the price to 70 because who cares about 30 bucks or 40 bucks it's just amazing to me but what is also amazing to me is that now that skull and bones is out the door I don't know what I'm going to talk about like skull and bones is out what like what's the point of YouTube anymore what what are we going to talk about for the next however many years I have no idea I mean that skull and bones is out this week hell divers 2 has ended up being amazing uh suicide squads out and I was just featured in dunkey's Suicide Squad video so like what am I doing like I've finished life I've completed it we're done Max achievements unlocked I I also smashed my thumb that was that was a thing hurt real bad car doors suck those things are dangerous I'll tell you what anyway I'm going to call it there much love to all of you guys I am kind of weirded out that this is going to be the last time I talk about uh Skull and Bones as far as I'm aware but that's just where we are it's time to put this baby to rest she's been a fun cow to milk for Content I suppose but now the time has come for us all to move on and put old Betsy to rest so that's what we're going to do let me know if you have bothered playing the game you probably shouldn't for 70 freaking dollars you should play something else more fun are you playing hell divers are you playing pal world are you playing something else let me know but with all that thank you for watching I love you all dearly and forcefully and I'll see you in the next one hugs and kisses bye-bye

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 706,016

Keywords: luke stephens, luke stephens skull and bones, skull and bones, skull and bones review, skull and bones endgame

Id: oUJr6LZi_rc

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024