Skull and Bones looks like it’s going to be big, maybe too big?

This new pirate game plops you down in the dangerous, pirate infested, Indian Ocean. I say Mad Max in the Indian ocean because that is what it looks like. You can add all sorts of armor to your ship, like wooden spikes on the sides, massive iron shields, samurai-esq armor plating, and much more. You can have flamethrowers, rocket launchers, and all sorts of weaponry that they definitely did not have back in pirate times as well. Each ship is going to be armed to the teeth like something straight outta Fury Road. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw Mel Gibson behind the wheel on one of these behemoths.

There is just way too much in this game. Having a lot of stuff in a game has both benefits and drawbacks. The main upsides are that there will always be something to do. Whether it’s mining ores, chopping down trees, trading with smugglers, or upgrading, there will always be something in this game for you to be doing. But frankly, I don’t care about any of that in a pirate game! These same upsides are also the downsides, I don’t want to be stuck for hours mining ores on some tiny island just to upgrade my level one cannons to level two! That sounds boring! I want to be blowing people up and taking their treasure, and then I want to take that treasure to an Island were I can pay some merchant who has been out in the mines all day to give me their ores, that’s their job! My job is pirating, their job is mining materials, that’s how it should be.

So many games nowadays are just so insanely complex. When I am playing a pirate game I want to be a pirate, not a farmer, or a miner, I want to be a pirate. Just give me a ship, give me some cannons, and I’ll do the rest. That’s why, if you want to play a solid pirate game that lets you be a pirate, I recommend Sea of Thieves. All you have to worry about in Sea of Thieves is getting gold, that’s it. You hop on with your friends, pick whatever ship you want, you don’t have to worry about if the enemy ship has a level 500 flamethrower or a level 600 rocket launcher, none of that. You get on, get treasure, blast people to smithereens, and then you get off. And this simplicity is what makes it the best pirate game I have ever played. It should be illegal how much fun that game is.

Now, Skull and Bones does have some cool stuff that you can do as a pirate. Like taking down massive military forts, attacking merchant ships that are guarded by a ton of high class defense ships, exploring massive islands for lost treasure, etc. But it just seems like a whole lotta nothing if you have to level up a billion times just to be able to do that stuff. And, I forgot to mention, the entire time you have to be worried about whether you crew likes you or not because they will throw you overboard and mutiny! Which, honestly is pretty cool, until you realize that you basically have to start all the way over, get a new ship, get a new crew, all that.

This game just seems like a big mess of a ton of crazy stuff, but if they make it so it isn’t an insane grind of level up to actually do the fun pirating things, then having a Mad Max style pirate ship loaded up with rocket launchers and wooden spikes could be pretty sweet.