I'm sick of people saying that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said "Skull and Bones is AAAA.'" This was taken totally out of context. He was screaming "Aaaaaaaaaaa!" because Singaporean hitmen were chasing him.

“AAAA” Is what people will say when they try and get a refund.

This is the video game equivalent of a kid taking 4 months to hand in his submission for a 500 word essay containing nothing more than half of his name printed at the top.

Also did I missed it? What is up with little red flags on the sides of ships? Enemy shows you where to shoot them?

"Ubisoft" That's all you need to know about this game.

The art team and animators are the only quadruple a part of this game

Man, I wish the gaming industry would shelve any kind of crafting for a decade or two. Like with other trends like cell-shading, loot boxes and rail guns. MineCraft has a lot to answer for. But we’ve been doing this for two decades now of being in an open-world void punching a tree for hours.

I think I'll fire up black flag again. I remember the ship combat being fun

Ubisoft is so far ahead of other developers that they're already making one extra A games.

Great review, spot on, well done mate!

There better be a microtransaction that enables the Popeye theme song when you eat the "nutritious food" mid battle. Too baad I won't find out... Even if you would have to defeat other ships by damaging various parts of it and the crew until they can't fight anymore, while of course you also having to do damage control to your ship and shift around combat capable crew to replace injured or dead gunners, loaders, helmsman etc., I would still be worried about gameplay longevity. Boarding the enemy ship with whoever left that can still fight with various weapons, or bringing in a surrendered ship to base and stripping it down for resources/parts or repairing and enlisting it. Hold the captured sailors for ransom, convince or force them to join your crew or have them work at the base in an involuntary unpaid internship. Trade for stuff at various ports with your "innocent" cargo ships, buy up or invest into stuff with your blood money... yeah, that could be a good game. Or you could have this for 70 dodos.

I was hoping we'd be getting some sort of spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Pirates. The treasure hunt goes on.

That ramming look so bad I thought the ship would break in half.. ship proceeds to explode like vice city car

Will you look at the silent hill game that just came out?

Ubisoft really are masters of coming up with unique and interesting concepts that haven't been done all that much in gaming only to somehow make the most generic, painfully mediocre grindfests out of them. Seriously, you'd think concepts like pirates or the neolithic age would easily lead to fun games, but unisoft always out does itself in terms of sheer, mind numbing mediocrity.

Made by a studio in my country if I'm not mistaken. A game made by Singaporeans, funded by Singapore government! I wish they funded the people instead

What would you say are the best pirate games?

exactly what I imagined it to be. from visuals to mechanics, it's insane how mediocre this is... Edit: it's not that the graphics are bad, the art department did a good job at times, yes, but it looks really samey. like all the other anvil games it has this certain look I just expected.

How on earth did they spend so much on what is basically a worse blackwake?

I’ll just pop in assassin’s creed rogue for my pirate/privateer fix

Idk I am loving the game and I tried revisiting black flag instead to see if it holds up and skull and bones is far better when it comes to naval combat, OTHER THAN... the boarding. Which yeah, sucks it isnt there, but it doesnt ruin the game for me. I feel like a lot of these youtube reviews have not seen what the game really has to offer because you haven't reached the end game gameplay loop of building your empire, running trade commodities and upgrading ports etc. Theres pvp port takeovers and lots of fun to be had.

The sad thing is, if anyone else made this it could have worked

I kinda like this game but im far into it where im selling opium and rum and i do the pvp. Ps…no matter what your ship is if you get into a pvp battle and the other ship is much more powered than you…you will not outrun them. The problem with this game is its a ship rpg….you basically are playing the ship and its kinda jarring for some people.

Stick with AC 4 , kids.

So do I understand it right? They spend a crazy amount of money on this, but the presentation is just okay and there's almost no content except some simple and grindy things? Why would they make this and why are people playing this? There seem to be so many games like this. I don't understand the business at all. Games made sense to me in the 90s and 2000s. You made a good game and it would probably sell well. Pretty simple. I know that development costs were much lower, but overall sales as well since gaming was still mostly for young people.

I hope someone in middle mangement will pickup the assets made for this game, to make a litte dubble a single player game its just a lost opportunity.

After seeing Ubisoft's past few games, i'm glad they left Rayman behind. They would've ruined the series' quality otherwise.

Ubisoft are my favourite developer tied with rockstar, every assassins creed game is my favourite games to play but the thing I hated the most in ac 3, rogue, black flag, origins, and odyssey was the sailing and fighting at sea aspect of these games so why the heck they would make a whole game round this just astounds me. I do not buy games anymore because they have turned into greedy, grindy buggy messes that are just not fun to play anymore. I'd rather play games from 10, 20 plus years ago. Ahh times when gaming was actually good and when you bought a game, you had the game instead of paying to test a game and hope it gets better in the years to come.

I will never buy an Ubisoft game after what they did to the first The Crew. Absolute scammers.

I still would argue that AC III had the better naval gameplay

So this is quite literally Sea of Thieves, but worse in just about every way. At least in that game you can get piss-drunk, and board the enemy ship by having your captain ram into it, and jump aboard while holding an explosive barrel. You know, actual fun stuff.

UBI CEO is as far from gaming as you from being UBI CEO, this is why he said this AAAA stuff :) Same goes for anyone who calls damagers - DPS class, its DD class, Ship type - Damage Dealer, not Damage per Second :) Doesnt matter anyway, UBI does not deserve my money even if its was a good game, and especially after their anouncement to close down The Crew instead of making it off-line like it shouldve been from the start.

Is it pronounced “you-be-soft” or “OwO-be-soft”

Tried it for a few hours. The game is exactly what I thought/feared it would be. Generic AAA trash. The way you walk around and "talk" to npcs is so arcady and bland.. there is no depth, no immersion and no player agency. Im perfectly okay with a game being more of a world sim vs having a story. I love mount and blade, the X series and kenshi fx. But you know what those games allow you to do? Impact the the world and actually enjoy the mechanics

Its funny because its looks like Risen 2 is a better pirate game than this game, and Risen 2 is a mediocre game...

DW doesnt like this game because he is bad at it.

Games like this are just mobile games put on PC and console. Charging $70 for garbage like this is laughable.

No one give a crap about an Ubisoft game

Although it was expected, it's amazing that they managed to be more monotonous than Sea of Thieves