We’ve got a range of issues with Ubisoft’s ‘quadruple-A’ game.
Let’s talk about the positives first.
In its best light on PC, there are some graphical niceties here to call out.
For example, the wave simulation is nice, but reflections on water are primarily achieved with screen-space reflections.
They present with lots of flicker as the camera moves.
SSR in this scenario is a bad idea.
RT reflections or SSR mixed with some form of projected real-time cubemaps or planar reflections would deliver better results.
However, the older game’s character animations and expressions are superior.
Another issue is lighting quality.
Skull and Bones has a dynamic time of day but is still using last generation lighting techniques.
So, areas in shadow look flat with just screen-space ambient occlusion giving them shade.
In Skull and Bones, RTXGI only affects the shading of the ship and nothing else.
This is one of the most bizarrely limited ray tracing implementations I have ever seen.
We’ve got to go into more depth on the post-processing quality and particle effects.
Another baffling aspect of the game is the massive disparity between quality and performance modes.
Series S, of course, will be lower than that.
Object disocclusion issues fizzle out massive pixels, lacking any real anti-aliasing on the move.
Put simply, image quality completely falls apart in motion.
This is then coupled with the quarter resolution particles which have pixels that are just huge in screen-space.
So, the price of good performance in the 60fps mode is dire image quality.
However, quality mode is native 4K (!)
This leads us on to more general gameplay issues.
Ships in this game control with inertia and have large swooping movements.
This lack of responsiveness also carries over to character movement on land, which has some very heavy animation.
There is an inherent latency in the response of movement per default built into the game.
It made piloting my ship harder and I think many people will feel this way.
These are not great choices.
As for the game itself, this was another area where I struggled.
You are constantly doing small errands and none of it feels particularly pirate-like.
The RPG systems grafted on to the game seem patently at odds with the pirate concept.
As a result of this disconnect, you don’t actually spend much time doing more interesting pirate-like things.
For example, boarding and taking another ship should be very exciting, right?
In Skull and Bones, this is reduced to showing a cutscene and getting some loot.
On top of the boring gameplay, I encountered many bugs while playing.
Ultimately, this just isn’t good enough.
Is the game of a quadruple-A standard?
Well, give it a go for yourself.
you’re free to download and play for free for eight hours on any system.
