Skull and Bones – With inspiration derived from the naval battle array (Naval Combat) from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, game section Assassin’s Creed The fourth takes the topic of pirates quite successfully from Ubisoft, Skull and Bones quickly attracted the attention of players when it first released the trailer in 2017.

However, it is not until 2024, nearly 7 years after the announcement time, that the game will be officially launched to players, which has generated doubts related to the game being stuck in the development loop.

Not to mention that right around the time of launch, Skull and Bones received negative reviews when Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, said that this is a 4A game to justify the game’s $ 70 price.

So Skull and Bones Is it really attractive, worthy of a ‘AAAA game’ or will it be a game where players will ‘AAAAAAAAAAAA’?

Let’s explore with MarkGame through the following article!

YOU’LL LOVE

EXPERIENCE STABLE DISCOVERY!

At the beginning of the game, Skull and Bones let you play as an unknown pirate in the waters of East Africa and Southeast Asia in the late 17th century. Where players will have to participate in wars for resources, looting and trading to become a notorious pirate boss.

In general, the game owns a rather massive world, detailed islands with all kinds of secrets to explore. Typically, these are hidden treasures in the game, where players will often have to find maps and use these clues to track down the location of treasures.

The special feature is that the game will not directly indicate the location of the treasure, instead, you will have to rely on the directions on the map, such as the zoned location of the island, signs, landmarks to find out the location of the treasure burial. So this clue tracing model is quite difficult and consumes a lot of exploration time of players.

Overall, this approach is quite interesting, with all kinds of clues that require players to explore continuously, only unfortunately the items you find are usually not too special.

Next, another feature that Skull and Bones Bringing that is the constantly changing environmental effect, directly affecting the player’s control ability.

The game owns a wind direction system, if you go with the wind path, the movement speed of the ship will be increased, but on the contrary, you will move significantly slowly. Or if the wind pushes horizontally, the player will gradually be tilted to one side.

It is even more difficult to move in the center of the storm, when now not only is the speed of travel reduced, but you also have to avoid being engulfed by huge waves.

Therefore, players will have to pay attention to the constant wind and obstacles while moving, even in calm seas. Thereby, the game not only brings an extremely solid feeling of driving a train, but at the same time, the chase situations of the game become quite dramatic and quite satisfying!

In addition, the feeling of ship control of the game is also quite good and deep, typically this is that you can flexibly switch between different viewing angles on the ship, zoom in / small while aiming and allow to control each bullet when shooting, instead of discharging it all with the push of a button.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention the weapon system of Skull and Bones.

Similar to other MMORPG games, Skull and Bones Owning a fairly massive and diverse weapon system, with all kinds of stats, special skills and different levels.

The game does not provide a weapon upgrade system, but in return to be able to craft them, players are forced to find or buy sketches, then collect materials to craft them. This means that to get ‘delicious’ equipment, you will have to spend a lot of time finding them, quite similar to the treasure hunting mechanism.

Upgrade weapons in Skull and Bones is quite a painstaking and challenging process. But in return, tracking them often gives you powerful weapons, typically these are ‘purple’ level Bombard or Mortal guns, making it easy to engulf enemies in battles where you are outnumbered.

Although there is no breakthrough element, or the content is too unique, but in general, the way Skull and Bones The emphasis on adventure and exploration of players has helped to bring the amount of content that can be said to be enough to ‘plow’ for 15 to 20 hours without getting bored.

manner Skull and Bones The player’s emphasis on adventure and exploration has helped bring enough content to ‘plow’ for 15 to 20 hours without getting bored

YOU’LL HATE

WEAK STORYLINE

As a game that focuses primarily on the massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) model, the writer is not too surprised when Skull and Bones Possess a story line that is not very unique, or at least can fulfill the role of leading the player.

But it is worth criticizing this is that the plot of the game is not achieved in any way, because the content is built more than ‘half a season’, the narration does not come to any appropriate conclusion.

The game revolves around the conflict between pirate factions, where the player mainly focuses on the series of missions to loot and drown enemies for other characters in the game.

This loop repeats continuously until the player encounters the boss of the game, but nothing seems to change, your task is just to defeat the enemy with more health and bring back items to finish the mission.

It seems like everything is over when you take down the boss, but in reality, you are only halfway through the game, and this motif continues to be ‘recycled’ by Ubisoft for the rest of the game.

Thereby, the ‘plowing’ of the main story line of Skull and Bones gradually becomes boring after only a short time of experience. They lack such depth that even if the development team leaves the storyline out of the game, it will not affect the player’s experience.

Finally, the game owns a lot of dialogue with a few answers for you to choose from. But the deplorable point is that these choices are completely linear, with and without any effect or effect on the storyline.

They are simply a form of right/wrong question, but even if you choose the wrong one, it will not affect anything, depending on your choice, the next two to three lines of the character will differ slightly, but then they all lead to the same ending, There is almost no value in the game.

The game owns a lot of dialogues with a few answers for you to choose from. But the point of criticism is that these choices are completely linear, with and without any effect or effect on the plot

LACK OF VARIETY, LACK OF DEPTH

Another problem that Skull and Bones Encountering that is the lack of content, and the available mechanics of the game are also designed to lack depth.

The game allows players to set foot on islands, where you can trade, trade, as well as search for treasure. However, the problem here is that apart from manipulations such as running around and interacting with characters and environments, there is nothing else you can do.

There are no minigames or interactive activities for you to experience with your friends on the ground. Make the activities on the island revolve around buying, selling, receiving, and returning tasks.

You are not free to move on the island, instead there is only a very small area for players to explore, most of which are fenced off by invisible walls. But sometimes such a half-season design is also a good point of the game, because you will not have to spend too much time wandering around the empty, boring maps that are the ‘forte’ of the Ubisoft family.

Moreover, the ridiculous point is that your character – a genuine pirate, can’t … Swimming, through which areas, perhaps accounting for nearly 80% of the map such as seas and rivers, are completely inaccessible while controlling the character on land.

Skull and Bones is developed under the MMORPG model, which means that most of the content as well as improvements will be released some time after the game is released. Even less than a week into the game, Ubisoft announced a roadmap for the next year’s game.

This is probably a good sign for players who love the model that Skull and Bones bring. However, if only considered at the present time, the amount of content that the game brings is quite poor.

The first is the team activities so that you can cooperate, ‘plow’ with other players quite little, if any, only revolve around the motif of hunting bosses with giant health bars, sinking a barracks or following a death match model.

The good equipment drop rate of these activities is also quite high, but not diverse, so you will have no other reason to return after a few visits here to ‘plow’ equipment.

Most of the activities related to ‘Helm’, a system that allows players to buy, sell, and exchange goods, are ‘unlocked’ quite late and also revolve around running across the map to deliver goods.

You will be subject to restrictions such as not being able to teleport (Fast Travel), which can be hunted by other characters and players to loot goods. However, you can completely remove all the goods in the warehouse on the island and take it out to return the task at the destination without worrying too much about risks.

So throughout the experience, the game’s activities only appear for the purpose of leading you from point A to B, then handily ‘drowning’ the enemy along the way.

Throughout the experience, the game’s activities only appear for the purpose of leading you from point A to B, then handily engulfing the enemy along the way