Skull and Bones it is a project of Ubisoft born many years ago, but which has not yet seen the light for various reasons. More precisely, it was born as an expansion of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag which came out at the end of 2013, among the launch titles of the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, and also came out on PS3 and PC in the same period. Skull and Bones, which we didn’t even know existed at the time, it takes up Black Flag precisely in every wayexalting its contents to the nth degree, but eliminating maybe one of features most important of the period, that is, fighting with swords once the enemy ship has been boarded.
We could therefore define Skull and Bones as a sort of Black Flag’s younger brotherbut let’s go step by step and see what the gameplay of our test in the PC Beta this late summer consists of.
Single Player? No thank you
The first thing that catches your eye as soon as you start Skull and Bones is that the title looks like a always onlinewhere therefore the internet connection will always be necessary to play, and where in game the other players will be visible and part of the map.
In fact, it can fight usbut also collaborate and exchange goods and make friends, adding yourself to the friends list a bit like what has already happened in other Ubisoft productions such as The Divisionfor example, of which the third chapter was announced a few days ago.
Set inIndian Oceanthe fulcrum of the game will therefore be to create increasingly imposing battleships, progressing in level as in a naval RPG, going to research of materials necessary and gods money to buy what you need.
Ours too digital alter egocompletely editable from the start, can be personalized through pirate clothes, which can be purchased with in-game currency at the shops in the various cities of the game, or by discovering the chests and digging up treasures in remote islands, to be explored on foot once docked with the ship.
Also there ship will be fully customizable and can be improved through the appropriate shops in the cities, and will be equipped not only with many cannons and mortars for naval combat, but also with a cargo hold where we can store everything we find during our travels. And we will need space, including fish to kill for us and our crew to survive, but also for the resources to craft to create multiple objects, up to and including the weapons necessary to progress the game. They will be there too many recipes to discover in the game, given that obviously to survive as mentioned we will have to eat and keep the crew’s morale high at sea.
But how to achieve all this? Skull and Bones is a game Game as Service with RPG elements for the management of our crew and ships. What we learned during our test, is that cities serve as a central huband that both they, and the countless islands that make up the game, are packed with NPCs which will fill you with contracts to complete, which once completed will guarantee you an avalanche of rewardspoints experienceand therefore also skills to learn.
But is all that glitters gold?
The troubled development that has followed the product for about a decade is given by technical problems that according to many afflict the title (actually we had already tried it other times on PS5 and it didn’t seem like anything special from a technical point of view), but with the PC version we can say that we didn’t find any, and that the game runs perfectly even at an incredible resolution, without slowdowns of any kind, unlike the version tested a year ago on console.
Ubisoft itself said that there was a PC version not shown at the time, which was much better than the console version tested at the time.
We affirm that in fact since graphic point of viewthe game seems to us to be in excellent healthand also on the technical side, because we have not noticed any slowdown either in cities or in naval combat.
The only flaw it is as mentioned at the beginning the absence of sword fighting , which we really can’t understand why it hasn’t been implemented (even present in Black Flag), and the naval combat alone could end up being monotonous and lacking in bite in the long run. It seemed like a very important feature that should be introduced, also because eventually the cities and islands can be fully explored on foottherefore also fighting with swords – perhaps to find a hidden chest on an island contested by pirates, or fighting on enemy ships once boarded – it seems practically mandatory to us.
It is no coincidence that the game continues to be postponed, since does not yet appear to reflect Ubisoft’s expectations (and probably not even that of most players, unless they expect only naval combat and lots of crafting). From a sound point of view, however, nothing to say, nor about the game controls perfectly inherited from Black Flag and perfected for the occasion.
We hope that the game will see the light next year, given the excellent state of the Beta in the PC version, and we hope that fundamental features can be introduced to avoid making the pilgrimage in the Indian Ocean monotonous.
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