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In a world where AAA is already seen as inferior to indie, it's no wonder they call this AAAA

Oh wow a game where the pirating part of being a pirate is done in a cutscenes. They should do a fps where all the shooting is done in a cutscenes and you're just responsible for hitting R to reload

So this is the AAA version of those mobile game ads where you get a great cinematic trailer but it's just a city building game

How do you mess up one of the most popular concepts you’ve ever put out? They had it nailed down ten years ago… People were like “Just more Black Flag please”, and Ubisoft went “Ok we don’t know what that means, here is a live-service game with minigames for collecting wood”

Their decade old game, Black flag, is better. What a surprise. Modern Ubisoft.

at this point their new slogan should be "it's not bad, it's ubisoft".

I would honestly have preferred a hyper realistic pirate game where you just die of scurvy after finishing the tutorial

It's like the guys over at Abstergo mistook a splint of cedar wood for Blackbeard's toenail or something and now you're reliving the memories of a pirate ship... It's a whacky concept.

I had one copy of skull and bones, then someone broke into my house and left two more

My biggest contribution to this whole ordeal was convincing my friend to refund his pre-order of Skull and Bones by simply telling him "yeah, theres literally no swashbuckling. Its literally just grinding through ship-to-ship combat in an uninspired live-service game world." Homies don't let homies buy shit games.

8:55 I think a better phrasing would be: "Live service games are built around keeping you engaged for hundreds of thousands of hours" *with as little content as possible.*

"Because it's not Helldivers, the servers are far from at capacity so we should be able to get in real quick." That one got me lmao

This game reeks of an idea that was neat ten years ago but people have clearly lost sight of whatever creative spark there was long ago. Similar to the idea of a Halo TV show.

11:25 I remember, in beta at least, there was a mission where you were tasked with going and attacking a settlement to get a bottle of oil or some such BS. I just remember thinking... If they wanted a bottle of something that could be literally carried in a pack, why would an NPC call upon a captain to disembark in his ship, built to carry crates upon crates of cargo... to do this? And why would the captain do it? Why would they blow up a settlement when they could take a handful of their crew to walk into whatever building it was in and just get it? I went with the mission, thinking that you might do just such a thing. But nope. You cannonball a settlement into oblivion, then "BING!", the bottle of oil pops into your inventory. Uninstalled.

One thing that would bother me is the ships physics in relation to the water. The bow is constantly much lower than the aft and looks like it's taking a nosedive at any point. Boats that sit like that on the water sink.

I knew this was going to be a doozy when I saw the stamina bar on the SHIP

Why is every next AAA game is so bad nowadays. It's truly frustrating to see the whole gaming industry become so disappointing and lackluster. Every next game feels so soulless and bland. And most developers get overworked and rush games just to meet deadlines. There isn't the same excitement i felt when i was younger, eager to play new games. It's a shame tbh.

Open world games that don’t have a true “open world” drive me nuts. You should be able to explore every tiny little island, finding maps and treasures there

I just want to say that in Black Flag you could get out of the ship at any point outside of combat, not just points of interest. This comes into play mainly when you want to fight endgame ships like the highest level bounty hunter very early on. The game doesn't really tell you about it but you could swim to a ship, kill everyone aboard, swim back and then easily capture the ship. This also works in Rogue. You might get shot at but if you hide underwater once in a while it's very easy to do. Ubisoft could have made a quick buck by making sandbox version of Black Flag with different kinds of playable ships but sadly they did not.

They don't even look or act like real ships on water, it's like they're just cars with ship skins on them. They don't dip and bounce on waves, they can turn in any direction with ease, and can go full speed in any direction regardless of the wind speed and strength. Like someone else here said, the whole ship chase thing would actually work if piloting your ship actually took skill in managing these aspects instead of just pressing "X to go faster"

This has got to be one of the biggest gaming fumbles I've seen in a long while. Literally all they had to do was make a cheap re-skin of Black Flag, and maybe change the combat a little, and I bet this game would have been a slam dunk. But Ubisoft spent all that time and money just gave their C-suites extra pay and vacations and kicked the can down the road until the Singaporean government essentially forced them to shit out this game all these years later. Funny how Ubisoft themselves are a sinking ship.

Somehow Ubisoft was going for a slam dunk and ended up hitting their head on the rim, falling backwards onto the court, and breaking their neck. All they had to do was take the Assassin's Creed stuff out of Black Flag. It's honestly astounding they found a way to mess that up.

What will inevitably kill this game is the fact Sea of Thieves is now dropping on PS5, and that console is only big enough for one live service pirate game.

Wait…to plunder a city your crew leaves the boat and then you have to defend an area with your boat with no crew on it??

The very first AAAA game, and it's a live service...let that set in

10 years of development and probably forgotten in 10 days.

They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Seriously, if this came out 5 years ago and was just the Black Flag naval warfare with some extra exploration and more customization options for your ship, it would have been gang-busters. This was so easy!

For a ship focused game, the ships look so bad when theyre sailing. Like a kid's toy floating in a bathtub.

I heard one of their execs called this, "The first Quadruple A title." Same company said: "Users shouldn't get used to owning their games." ...

character movement on island is like they really didn't intend to make your character could walk on land

Funny how they couldn’t figure out how to do a disembark transition without a loading screen even though literally every other game they’ve made with naval ships have been able to do it

Ubisoft even fail to just copy paste Black Flag and make it 100% pirate theme game

I really wonder, who at Ubisoft thought, a ship should have a stamina bar u cant make this stuff up 😂

It was so easy. Blackflag without the Assassin stuff. Few tweaks, different ships, but the formula was basically there.... this could have been a big hit

I feel that the failure of this and SS, paired with the success of Lethal Company and Helldivers II can be nothing but good for the industry overall. I hope these huge studios regroup and restructure the way they do things.

So many AAA games these days seem to stray far away from the cool fun power fantasy, now they're just designed to waste our time gathering resources in a gigantic, barren open world, crafting everything just to be able to do the most basic stuff in the game, and progression systems with very minor upgrades which are also a massive grind to unlock new upgrades. I don't want a _grind,_ I want a *challenge.*

How do you fail at something you had done before with more resources and time? Like it was simple, just expand on BF and Rogue. You could still be greedy with microtransactions and make a decent game at the same time, but apparently they’re exclusive from one another in this case.

0:25 Once upon a time, I'd have thought "video game reviewer" would be a dream job. Phrases like, "I've played a lot of Skull and Bones over the past year and a half or so..." has cured a LOT of that notion. The idea of being forced to play this... Redfall, Gollum, Kong, even Starfield makes me think that even being a plumber wouldn't be so bad.

The harvesting minigame is the same one from chopping wood in Idleon: The Idle MMO, a game literally made by a single person and designed to mostly be played offline

When you said "you can heal a teammate by firing a mortar at him" my brain fell out. I mean, uhm, what?

In my mind when this game was announced i thought it would be a single player rpg type. It could have been something about a pirate who is trying to make his own name. And building a crew going to island for supplies could have been you and a crew disembarking and you could set your disembarking crew with certain abilities. Maybe you encountered hostile wildlife or other pirates or indigenous people. Then maybe making your own hideout. Like that’s the game I wanted. This….seems like a mobile game

Hey video games execs, simple idea: If the main element of your game is to sail around for a long time and fight aboard a ship, this is the part you need to make cool and fun. Remember WB's Mad Max game? It featured a whole lot of driving around and fighting aboard a car, right? But this part was AWESOME. The car controls were great, it was super customisable, the fights were cool and brutal, and spending hours driving around was the best part. Do that, but with boats. It's not that hard.

SoT handled the speed well by making each ship faster or slower depending on the wind direction so you could control how fast you were by going with or against the wind.

I can't hear "Quadruple A" without thinking of the hilariously fake review Dan from Game Grumps read for Motorcycle in the night sky or whatever it was called. It was a line like "fractions of triple A price for quadruple A experience"

Why are devs going backwards lately? I understand Jamie and Sefton left Rocksteady, but still, that team went from Arkham Knight 9 years ago.. to Suicide Squad.. Ubisoft went from Black Flag almost 11 years ago.. to Skull and Bones.. WB Montreal went from Arkham Origins 10 years ago.. to Gotham Knights. These are all valid examples of devs who's older games are not only much better than their latest, but are STILL gorgeous and playable today

To think that Sid Meier’s Pirates had a boarding minigame and this doesn’t is disgraceful.

To give an option on how a better game would handle the beginning (looting wood and getting your first ship) The game opens up with a black screen. Slowly, muddy blues and some orange fades in and muffled sounds can be heard. Lightning blinds the player before screaming men, ripping gales and heavy rain slices through the muffled sounds and your character gets picked up by a crewmate screaming at you to get back up. You are on a mid-sized ship, maybe 20 Meters in length. Debris, flames and broken wood can be seen in the darkness of the storm ridden night. The game leads you towards the helm as you assume control over the mess and you character screams for order into the wind. The camera swaps to the 3rd person ships view as a quick tutorial freezes the game and explains you what button furls and unfurls the three main sails and what sail helps with forward movement and what with steering (Not exactly real boat accurate, but a gameplay translation). “FURL THEE SAILS” your captain screams, prompting you to press all buttons as your NPC men hustle to follow order. “ROGUE ON STARBOARD”, one of the crewmembers' screams, as the camera zooms to a big wave coming towards you and a text tells you to steer into the huge wave. You do, and with a big splash you crash through it. “I NEED A STATUS REPORT” you character screams at the top of his lungs. “UNKNOWN ASSAULT, CAPTAIN”, someone screams back at you. As you scan the surrounding waters for lights, another crew members screams. “THEY ARE COMING FROM BEHIND” The camera focuses on a warship coming from behind you, several sizes bigger than your own ship. It rushes just past you and a fight begins (that you are supposed to lose). If you get sunk, a cutscene plays where your character grabs onto a large piece of wood while all manners of items, rubble and corpses swim around you in the slowly easing waves. You character binds himself to a chunk of wood with a piece of rope and the last of his strength, before he blacks out. If you DON’T get instantly sunk (very hard) and manage to keep your ship alive for long enough, you can chase the big ship away. As it drives off, the sea eases and you slowly relax in a cutscene, another crew man shouts something. “THEY HAVE CHASERS”. As he speaks, canons can be heard, followed by the whistle of cannonballs. As they hit your ship, the last thing you see is your crew on the centre of the ship getting hit point blank, before an explosion close by knocks you out. *Fade to black* As you wake up again, you are on a beach, either bound to the wood or laying by the burned-out skeleton of your old ship. (This only changes the amount of starting loot and had no deeper gameplay effect. You scour the debris gathered on the beach for usable materials and manage to find some simple tools, unburned rope, usable wood and weapons. As you exlpore the tiny island you can see that you are on some kind of archipelago, surrounded by more islands. At this point, you are in multiplayer mode, but only party members will be on the island to prevent early PVP and NOOB farming. Your goal now is to find a tree thick enough to be used as a carved out canoe. This explains you how to gather recourses, as well as how to chop wood later, as it will be one of many commercial goods you can gather later, as well as “healing material” for your boat on the fly. You find one, work it down and then pull it to the shore where you can push it into water and begin cruising on the archipelago. While you can already find things on the islands, you have a very limited inventory that pushes you towards investigating high hanging flags on one island. This island is your starting hub with the first harbour, shipwright, NPCs and fetch quests. You manage to get an old shitty boat, sail around to gather stuff for your first REAL boat and can already move out into the world if you choose to. Different island have different stuff, different boats from different factions you encounter give different high value loot and the game then focuses around catching boats, weakening certain factions on land assaults to weaken the defence on their trade routes, chase down high value boats through information fought of bought and have fun with the pirate life.

At 13:43 it's even worse. The entire place is completely void of life. NO ONE is there running around in panic, trying to mount defenses, going to ring an alarm bell, NOTHING. The entire place might as well just be a jpeg because it'd serve the same purpose.

A DECADE??? Since 2014??? That's wild 😭💀

SAYING BLACK FLAG IS BETTER THAN THIS GAME IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT... BLACK FLAG IS LIGHT YEARS AHEAD OF THIS GARBAGE.

Imagine a pirate game where you can explore a massive map where you can explore secret islands, pillage towns for resources, choose or pick sides to protect or destroy and had pirate sword combat similar to ghost of Tsushima. Actually if a game like tsushima came out but for pirates and mainly on sea, it would be one of the best games ever created because it hasn’t been done before correctly

For resource gathering I think a cool thing would have been to have parallel systems where you could go onto land and cut down trees etc physically in the early game because your ship can't punch above its weight yet in combat, but it takes longer to gather these resources potentially than just going around in a late-game ship and destroying and scavenging wood from smaller vessels. So it would fade into a casual resource gathering method as the game went on, but was essential at lower levels because you're so weak you've basically been pushed off the seas and onto land to gather.

I just want an open world story driven red dead esque pirate world game.

AAAA game managed to give us AA game, but without the fun gameplay part 😂

As a huge fan of Black Flag, I have no interest in buying this game even if it was $5. What is wrong with game studios now days!

this game legally had to come out or the singapore government was going to throw them all in prison

Poison damage? In ship combat? What?!?!

Selling sub-par games at premium prices will most likely cause another gaming crash akin to the one in the 80's, calling it now.

The way the camera is so far away from the ship makes you feel really disconnected fromt he game and makes the ship feel weightless

Here's my idea of a pirate game. Ship and crew customization and upgrades. Ship boarding with actual 3rd person combat. You can only control the captain who can engage in melee and range combat and buff the crew or debuff the enemies, depending on your build. The enemy captain can be a boss-type NPC with unique abilities. Successfully taking over the ship rewards more loot. On the other hand, you can choose to just sink the ship but will give less loot or nothing at all. Another way of acquiring loot is island exploration. Go on an island to raid a village or town which has its own boss NPC. If it's a deserted island, you can still gather resources but will have a chance of finding hidden treasure. Hell, they can even add monster-infested caves with the treasure at the end.

Skull and Bones is missing so many features that should be part of a pirate/sailing game. Caribbean Legend for example has: -boarding -many shiptypes -attacks on forts -land combat -sea combat -trading -capture possibilities -story -tons of sidequests -huge map -fleet management -crew management -personal abilities and skill system -rpg elements -simulation elements -Story Mode -Sandbox Mode -Steam Workshop

Firaxis and 2K now have the chance to do the funniest thing ever and just release a graphically-refreshed reboot of Sid Meier's Pirates! from 2005

At least "Caribbean Legend" just came out too... It's kinda crazy how few good pirate or sailing/swashbuckling/discovery-type games we have. (I've been playing Sailing Era lately and that's been pretty fun too.)

Maybe i misunderstood, but you could grt out and explore pretty much anywhere in black flag, thats the astonishing thing. They went from being able to park your ship anywhere you please and swing of a rope onto a tropical island and hunt for treasure, or dive deep under water and swim through ship wrecks, to none of that and less of everything else... 🤨

Boats with stamina??

They should frankly apologize for trying to pass this off as "AAAA". Except honestly, they made their game a meme instantly, which is made funnier by that being the best part of their game. Their cost: $150,000,000. My cost: $0

So I know this is about Skull and Bone, but I just wanted to say that the issue with max speed boat chasing max speed boat was addressed in Sea of Thieves. At least for a specific voyage that you're encouraged to chase down and fight over the treasure. If you have the Siren Skull treasure on your ship, the ship is cursed to be slower, allowing any ship the potential to catch up with you and forcing you into naval battles you'd otherwise be able to run from.

No treasure to be found in this game lads, looks like it’s back to the Sea of thieves

With AC Black Flag, I sang few songs and pretended to be a pirate (lol yup), and freak out over hurricanes near my ship - a real experience. Seeing Skull and Bones gameplay, I get nothing of it.

That endgame max speed chase thing seems just half-baked.. just like the rest of the game i guess? They could do something like this: The "chasers" can spawn ahead of the escaping ship and take some shots at it. (but they spawn at not-max speed so they take time to accelerate) Something relatively simple like that would allow for multiple strategies. Choose a scout ship and try to avoid enough shots to survive, choose a beefier ship and shoot back, etc. 🤷‍♂

Blackflag had a fishing minigame while here you shoot your mortar at the fish

I figured out the "Quadruple A" reference. You see, you thought the A's were linear, but we were wrong. It is a circular formation, making a triangle. 1 A on top with 2 A's below it, like a pyramid. The A's travel in this circular pattern, so as we get to the 4th A, we are in-fact back at the first A. So, a Quadruple A game goes full circle back to a single A. See, it all makes sense now!

Hey Ubisoft, Remember in ACA you collect materials needed to upgrade your vessel by fighting other ships…. And selling Sugar and rum to gain money which is used to buy upgrades and design. I do.

22:30 easy fix make it so that you have to have a certain kind of ship (one that is bigger with a little more armor or damage output.) that does not have that max speed. This can easily be explained by needing room for cargo or being able to support the weight of it. Alternatively you can make it so that the cargo itself slows you down maybe 5-10 percent of your max speed or thirdly make items that give you speed boosts that are decently difficult to craft or get and disable their use for the ship doing the mission

You could get off your ship anywhere in Black Flag, it's just that all the little desert islands and POIs were very far apart and going for a swim was only rewarded once you got the diving bell and went to one of the various shipwrecks around the map. They condensed the entire Caribbean into an area about 15km² which is still quite big as maps go by 2013 standards.

Mom, I want Sid Meier's Pirates. Mom : We have Sid Meier's Pirates at home.

I might pick it up in four months when it becomes a free to play grind-a-thon.

I bought Black Flag yesterday so I could have fun. I forgot how good it feels to sail with sea shanties. My life is clear again.

You can cut off the ship by fast traveling and slow them by attacking the sails or causing flood damage. Not the greatest solution but it's something.

To me, a live-service game is basically a released game that they haven't finished making yet, so Ubisoft spent a *decade* making a game and then released it unfinished for full price. Yeah, they can arse off with that. All they had to do was copy + paste Black Flag, remove the AC elements, add a load of ship-specific content, and boom. Easy money maker. But noooooooo, that was too fucking difficult, apparently.

I just realised what it is about the UI layout especially in shops and storage... the font, the colors scheme of yellow/white on black the separated item boxes on a semi-transparent black tint backgrounds off to one side... It's PUBG's UI through and through and once you notice it and look back at PUBG you can't unsee it it's practically identical with little variation at all! my sibling just bought it they were installing it last night I'll take no pleasure in saying "i told you so" but they doubled down figuring I didn't know what I was talking about claiming they also saw the demo video quite a few yrs back and that they had changed since them I call bullshit though the inability to land on any island and inability to walk around your ship or board ships like in black flag is easily apparent! and this from the person who played black flag first and then said it was crap and refused to play the other assassin's creed games prior to black to have it make more sense! I don't understand as someone who studied videogames for years and was taught on the course to properly do my research that people still refuse to take my advice even when I got the evidence to back it up! I guess you could say I know how the Trojan Priestess Kassandra cursed to tell prophecies that were true but not to have anyone believe them feels, I educate myself on a matter and i'm right like 90% of the time so I can't understand this illogical level of distrust the only thing I can think of is because their adverse reaction to being told their wrong even if true will cause an emotional response to double down because they can't stand being wrong! Personally I hope she enjoys the game regardless cause it's a damn waste of money otherwise I only say to her cause I care that she practically scams herself expecting higher than what she recieves! It's a good game on it's own right if you don't compare it to other games and just imagine it's the only pirate game which tbh most people highly invested in it do anyways, it's a decent game in my book a decent sailing game and a decent ship battle game but all I said was to "dampen your expectations so your not disappointed" I could of worded it better something along the lines of "any game can be fun if you just wanna have fun, not nit pick and treat it like your doing a review" I have a saying that critics are people who see it as a job pick a game apart and tend to have forgotten what fun is! a major issue with our society these days! I remember playing broken games as a kid I didn't care it was broken that was half the fun! on the flip side though this is a pirate game the intention is to be a pirate sea of thieves got that memo, a cinematic certainly is not good enough for boarding and exploring your own ship practically living on it gives a slight rpg element to it... It's a bad pirate game, a good battleship game but the important thing is if your having fun then it's worth the money just check what your paying for first don't expect a black flag or sea of thieves experience or your wasting your money! it's also nothing like it was originally! as I recall players were gonna be able to crew their ship with players like sea of thieves in the original version I remember many years ago but that was before they stripped everything out! I really need to stop using exclamation marks but it's become a bad habit and yes it is autism! out of curosity for how badly I can break the game I will play the game in the future when it's on sale or up for free depending on the overall view of the game in the end and if those who are tightly grasping what they paid for it are enough to keep the servers running!

I was sailing on a ship (I mean ship and not just a boat) myself once. But even not being an expert, after watching the ships movement in the game, I am sure any real ship would sink almost immediately if it would move like that in real life. I thought people like if the physics in the game can give you the feeling of things you would like to experience irl but can't afford to. And just another mention. Isn't it funny that the flag isn't moving into the same direction where the wind goes (in fact the flag is moving like from a non moving pole and into the opposite direction it would - flags move with the wind and not against).

if they just made a system where you can capture ships and then send them out to collect stuff. so you have to actually tactically destroy boats or else they become usseless. creating a system where in the end you gather your fleet and attack a large island with friends who can control your fleet. and of course there are simple raids where you join an npc pirate so you don't have to do that. that would have made this game 500 times better than what it is now

Why do all the reviews complain about collecting wood and ore, and say they just want to be a pirate. Just kill the ships with the items already refined, with piratey actions lol. i have not done anything but loot shipwrecks.

I've always hated it when the boss poisons my pirate ship and I didn't bring any antidotes or full restores.

I think "you need certain furniture pieces" (18:35) is all I needed to know that this isn't for me.

That plunder section is classic text book AC. They didn't even try to add on to that at all probably when this was in it's AC expansion phase.

The reason we are hearing rumors about a Black flag remake is so Ubisoft can reuse mechanics from this game and recoup money they know they’re gonna lose from skill and bones

I feel like that name “skull and bones” is lazily slapped on and a depiction of the game in general

I’m amazed they didn’t think to have the cargo slow you down, like a real ship.

Man pillaging sounded cool - a well established enemy on land with city ports players can group up and raid together for supplies and materials

Also, ship battles back in the day were more about killing the crew and capturing the other ship or at least use parts of the other ship like planks and cannons to repair your own ship after a battle. So, collecting wood and stuff is just sooo wrong

Ac odyssey has a better pirate gameplay 😂

Hi Luke, Just an updated here regarding 19:25. It's actually a lot worse for two reasons. 1 food is not abundant, it's designed more as a time sink to have player go harvest / an economy funnel to move currency out of players banks. 2 This smuggling mission has the exact same endpoint EVERY single run. So no one chases anyone. You just camp the endzone with all weapons primed. While the smuggler trying to run it in has been bled dry from the long travel and pirate NPC's. It's literally the most anti-fun mission.

The max speed thing can be an issue but that's why you target their sails and equip Skurloch's chasers, a cannon that strips their sails faster and does more damage to them.

A corp having an anti capitalist narrative in a game is just something else. How the mighty have fallen, but we knew this game was going to be cheeks day one.

It's got that shareholder creativity to it.

So I honestly don’t know how Ubisoft is even still around. They’ve been facing massive losses for years now, and it just doesn’t seem like they have any clue what they’re doing anymore. With that said, I think this leaves an opening in the gaming market for someone to make a really good, fairly deep/involved pirate simulator. Blast enemy ships to smithereens with your cannons but risk losing plunder to the depths, accrue loyalty but also infamy and face growing threats as you become more well known, grow your crew and become the ultimate pirate king. You could even have a base that grows and evolves as you progress. That kind of thing. And obviously, have land-based combat. This would, in turn, translate to plundering combat, as boarding ships could lead to close-range fighting opportunities. And obviously, looting, plundering, and pillaging is how you get stuff. And you shouldn’t buy ships, you should steal them and then repair them/upgrade them afterwards.

The most irritating thing for me is that everytime you complete or take a mission, you have some kind of unskippable popup that covers the whole screen and locks you for 5 seconds just to tell you that you took a mission or completed it.