Skull And Bones has had enough days out since release to get a few reviews in, and the verdict among gamers and reviewers isn’t very good.
MetaCritic shows that the game has earned a 64 metascore on PC, with a slightly better 65 metascore on Xbox, and a surprisingly higher 72 metascore on PlayStation 5.
Metacritic’s 64 metascore on PC is based on 12 reviews, so this isn’t quite the big masses of reviews coming together to share their verdict, but it’s enough to give us an idea of where the wind is blowing. Of those twelve reviews, scores are actually spread from bad, good, and in the middle, but the highest individual score the game received was an 80 from TryHardGuides
Metacritic’s user scores for Skull And Bones is far harsher at 3.1 out of 10. That comes from a staggering 362 user reviews, 255 of which, or 71 % of all scores overall, is negative. But, we will also point out that Skull And Bones also has a few positive reviews as well. In fact, 76 of those 362 reviewers, reflecting 21 % of all players, like the game. So this poor score may be overwhelming, but it isn’t actually unanimous.
Things are not much better on OpenCritic. Skull And Bones has received an OpenCritic rating of weak, with a Top Critic average of 61, and 15 % critics recommending the game from a total of 15 reviews.
If we were honest, it was a miracle that Skull And Bones even released at all. Kotaku’s behind the scenes reporting alleged a mismanaged project that started development 11 years ago. The game went through several cycles of getting rescoped and exceeding its budget.
When it finally released a few days ago, on February 16, 2024, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot referred to it as a AAAA game to justify that $ 70 price point.
As shared by Eurogamer, Yves said this:
“You will see that Skull and Bones is a full-fledged game. It’s a very big game and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. So it’s a really full triple-A, quadruple-A game that will deliver in the long run.”
It’s wild that Ubisoft took such a big gamble on this title, when it hinged the potential popularity of this title to how well received the sailing and piracy portion of Assassins’ Creed Rogue was. It now remains to be seen if Skull and Bones will convince enough interested players to stick around for the long haul, and maybe if not, belatedly make this game a success.
Ubisoft isn’t likely to convince most gamers to give it a try now, but it may be a matter of biding their time and finding an organic following for this game, if it exists our there.
