While they've released almost nothing but formulaic slop in the last decade much like Electronic Arts they used to release some amazing games back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. The Rayman series, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, the original Splinter Cell trilogy the Prince of Persia games and a couple of others. That is the thing that sucks the most. The fact that they DID make games worth owning.
Note to Ubisoft: Wooden ships did not blow up and sink in seconds as if a 15" shell from the KMS Bismarck hit the magazine. Wooden ships took a long, hard time to sink...that's because wooden ships are made out of wood, and wood naturally floats.
In game you have to despawn the enemy, to free up the resources. It would be a needless clog to the server. Why do you want a ship to sink in ages? Also if hit below waterline or low and the side they capsize and sink pretty damn fast. Not instant but definitely not slow.
but unless you buy like every game, why who bought this game? and if they did thank goodness they can't afford a home yet because they need to think before they buy things that in theory will be a weeks to months of their entertainment. other than old school graphics i bought black flag on sale because i only played AC one at a friend's house in high school. Black flag is better than this game in every meaningful way. Sea of thieves is better than this game if you actually want to be in a video game as a pirate. i hope every person who wasted their money and time take this chance to learn, bad companies and bad projects don't deserve your effort.
@@jitteryjet7525 Pff, I ended up getting Falllour 76 from Humble Monthly. Still haven't touched it... Likely never gonna touch Skull and Bones unless it comes up in Humble, and even then I might just decide to give it to someone else.
I love how in the CEO quote about Skull and Bones is that he mentions how much of a complete game it is like 4 times. Evidence enough that something's up
@@AlexVardr thats also true with any employer on top of th3 market. theyll lie or cheat to get ahead fraud and they DO get ahead because of it. until the things go up on flames though. its just how business workers cheaters and liers get ahead from doing so atleast temporarily sometimes they are never held accountable.
If someone assures you that they're honest, especially multiple times, you can be assured that they are not honest. Truly honest people don't do that. They don't have to. They have facts. They'll use those instead.
It used to be part of their business model. They gave away most of their AAA games for free themselves on PC after a few years to try to get people to buy DLC and junk. Don't think it worked well for them since they've recently stopped doing it. But I did get more than two dozen of their games that way...and only really bothered with Far Cry 3 and The Crew.
@@MapsaiLiv I don't. People have been saying this for years, literally. Nothing has changed. People have still preordered their games en masse, and still do.
The fact that black flag beats it in everything including graphics even though it’s a decade old and made by the same company shows the hilarious state of Ubisoft
@@oscar12ty You're delusional if you think this looks better than Black Flag, shitty art direction with a few good shaders doesn't beat good art direction with slightly dated graphics. Character models somehow got more hideous in 10 years, water looks worse, lighting looks awful in many scenes, Black Flag has actual color while this is the same horrific desaturated LUTs that have plagued recent games. I'd absolutely say Black Flag looks better. Take away all the modern post processing effects and you've just got an unappealing pile of dreck.
@@oscar12ty you ignore the mess up texture mesh of the shadow and some object sometimes when you fast travel or spawn, that is really sloppy, how could they charge 70 bucks and give us a high school project that was made by a group of gender confused teenagers ?
I was amazed to learn Skull & Bones was originally called Black Flag Infinite. It started off as a multiplayer expansion for AC Black Flag before it became a stand alone game and was renamed.
the best f ing pirate game ever made by the same company 10 years ago anything pirate you can do it in immense detail. from diving bells monster hunting rading ships even a offscreen fleet raid content.@@henlohenlo689
@@henlohenlo689the original Ubisoft game that had ship combat. It was an Assassin's Creed game with different formula that people really loved. Ubisoft saw this and decided to make a game entirely based around the ship fighting. However, they also (probably) let the people with buisness diplomas determine what mechanics should be in the game. "the market has a lot of products with crafting and ressource collection, we should put that in to get bigger audience"
watching ubisoft stock lose 60% of its value over 5 years and it dropped 4% since skull and bones release. I can hear their investors ripping the executives out of their seats. Ubisoft an original french made company having its own revolution against its leaders....poetry
The boating in Black Flag makes the rest of the game worth it. I used to just sail around playing sea shanties. Actually, I should play that game again.
I'd get it for PC if I didn't have to deal with Ubishit's special ass fuck launcher. (Well, it is a game about pirates, maybe I should pirate the damn thing)
Yes, you should definitely try Black Flag! Even if you don't end up liking it, you can at least make a video comparing the ship mechanics to skull and bones.
No boarding. No ship upgrade. No consequence of be a pirates. Walking it's atrocius. Ship have the speed of a bugatti veyron and the turn of a F-22 Raptor. Price it's 70 euro/dollar. Microtransaction in a 70 dollar/euro game. DID I MENTION THERE IS NO BOARDING IN A PIRATES GAME ??.
This game is wild. Imagine, if you will, the year is 2000. Your friend has just found this thing called Amazon, and wants to make a new business just like them. It seems like a good plan, your friend gets to work and stops talking about it. 10 years have passed. Amazon is now the global giant It is today. Your friend comes to you and excitedly shows you a terrible shopping site right out of 1999 and exclaims: "It's finally ready! My new site will take down Amazon!" Your friend is confused when you aren't excited for the "new" product. Ubisoft is your friend, and skull and bones is the "new" website.
This game just looks like "AC Black Flag" without the Assassins and Templars. Like they literally just reskinned AC:BF and released it as a "new" game. Edit: After watching, AC:BF is a better pirate game than this...
It's an insult calling this game a clone to Black Flag imo , it's less good in every single aspect than Black Flag , exept maybe the fact that you can change your ship plus there's micro-transaction on a game like this , so it's just not worth the time and money to take this shitty ass ''AAAA game '' as they love to call it... i'll go back to Black Flag any day of the week even if they give this game for free
Well, I dont get any laugh off it, but considering how demonic that SoB of a CEO the guy was its fitting. Though should've been Evil Incarnate from Doom 2 instead to me.
Ubisoft had the recipe for a potential world winning chocolate gateau but they released a plain jam sponge cake. Recipe: black flag, $120m and 11yrs for development, how can a company mess up so bad.
I think Ubisoft should be sued for this monstrosity. They're clearly skimming investment funding or something because there's zero excuse for a game to be this bad after ELEVEN YEARS. I don't own any stock in Ubisoft but if I were a shareholder I'd be pissed right now. The sad part is that Ubisoft could probably make a Red Dead-like pirate game, but they want to cut as many corners as possible to make the maximum amount of money. They shouldn't be in business anymore. It's like a restaurant not bringing your food out for 3 hours, and when it gets there, it's missing all of the advertised sides, and the meat is undercooked. The drink you ordered is just someone else's unfinished glass, and the manager comes out and asks you to pay additional money for using their table for 2 hours more than they wanted you to.
Honestly I am dumbfounded at how they went from Blackflag to this mess. They just had to take the bones of black flag. I mean climbing rigging, actual swashbuckling oh swimming and at least better resource collection. It's another case it feels the developers at Ubisoft havnt even played their own games.
This is like that one parent, who called your xbox a "gameboy", got promoted to direct a game. With a sprinkling of Ubisoft company policy to guide them on their novel career choice.
That's not completely impossible. Or even just unlikely, really. The people making the decisions probably don't see games as anything but a product, where you can easily convince the customer to purchase one thing over the other with enough shiny marketing and they'll never complain... Problem is, a lot of the people who nowadays play games don't care enough, don't watch reviews on something, they just buy a shiny new product because the marketing was hype.
I played AC Origins. Amazing game on it's own, the only AC I personally enjoyed. Lots of detail, amazing work from the modelling and animation departments. That being said, the game contained an in game cheat engine on launch - The Animus Control Panel. It let you change your player character, change in-game physics, combat, health values and so on. Guess what they did? They changed their launcher from Uplay to UbiConnect. The Animus Control panel stopped working completely. So, did they bother fixing it? Nope. Putting something else in place of it? Nope. At least removing the in-game tips that tell you to use it every time you get a loading screen? Also no. Origins launched in 2018. UbiConnect launched in 2020. 2 years. They couldn't bother to mantain an in-game feature dependant on a launcher for more than two years. They couldn't bother to add a single button and shuffle some files around to fix it either. How do you trust them to not do the same with anything else they release nowadays?
Sea of Theives had not only a POTC crossover (with all missions still playable to this day), it even got a Monkey Island crossover towards the end of last year.
The “auto harvest” setting is intended to make the game more ‘accessible’, much like games now commonly offer settings for colourblind players, and so on. But sure, some folks that don’t need to depend upon it will still make use of it.
Oh hells, even Odessey did it better. Swimming, Harvesting, Going on shore, Exploring, Ship Boarding Combat. And how did they even fk it up so bad???? All they had to do was tune up Black Flag for more Pirate theme!!! They had a winning formula n they fkd it up so bad!
I don't normally write comments, but I wanted to say and clarify that the 800 gold price is for the whole outfit NOT one piece. I should know, I bought it. Spent 5 bucks and bought it together with free gold given. This is simply an FYI for anyone else.
FYI I spent more money in a full priced 70$ game. For an outfit. That should be part of the game. As an unlockable. idk maybe like ac black flag did over a decade ago lol
@@unc54 - I've heard that SnB was scrapped and restarted internally three times (and it started as a Black Flag expansion), so if you water it down FOUR times.. well, there you go.
I was learning guitar playing RockSmith on Xbox. Spent a few hundred dollars on tracks I liked and was progressing quite nicely. I sold my Xbox and moved to another city. Less than two years later I bought a new Xbox and when I logged into my old account all the content I purchased was gone with no way to get it back. All those great songs were replaced by shitty tracks that I have no interest in playing--but even those tracks are locked behind a subscription service. No refund of course. I now hate UbiSoft. I understand why there is such a huge push behind retro gaming. Hell, even I just bought a GameCube yesterday. The shit is expensive now but once you have it, you have it until something physically breaks. So sick of the corporate grifts. Skull and Bones looks like rubbish and UniSoft can stick its microtransactions up its ass.
If your GameCube breaks, you can just switch to emulation. So you have it _forever._ Bonus: Owning the physical GC basically means you own a copy of the system ROM. _Legal_ emulation, regardless of what Nintendo might think.
The difference between buying digital music or videos and buying digital games is that the music and video files are self contained. You can copy and transfer them and any device or app that can decode them can play them back. You actually own these digital files. That's not true of most digital games from anyone other than GOG. It's especially true of any "Always Online" game that needs a server supported by the devs or publishers.
Sure. Im all for these options.....but then: not include this half assed minigame and implemet an actual gameplay, but thats too much to ask from 120mil project and 60$ product
Its insane Ubisoft made Black Flag, which was a pretty decent pirate game, admittedly it had its flaws but it was fun, and now they are producing such slop of a game. It makes you wander if they wanted a new pirate game why not just iterate upon the core concepts of ACBF that everyone liked instead of making this mess.
Its literally a mobile game. A few years ago when i first saw the trailer i was so excited. But the last 2 years the more ive seen, the more ive been disappointed. I will never waste money on a mobile game thats 70 dollars and wastes space on an SSD. As someone who sails IRL, i can confirm that both the physics and historical inaccuracy are laughable. Rockstar should make a pirate game
It's remarkable that Yves Guillemot isn't widely seen as worse than Bobby Kottick, if not just as bad. Seriously, when you crawl through Ubisoft's history of misdeeds, he almost makes Kottick look civilized. Look up Serge Hascoet and buckle up just for a little taste of the Ubisoft horror show.
I stopped buying Ubisoft games the day they required uPlay (yes, even with the stripped down Steam uPlay libraries). Not surprisingly, there really hasn't been any Ubi games since then that make me regret my decision.
I don't want games as a service - I want a well crafted, immersive single player experience. - mainly because I have no online mates but also because as an old guy that's what I grew up playing and enjoying.
Geez, that microtransation price is getting to the level of World of Warships, but at least they occasionally sprinkle in rewards so you dont NEED to buy things.
this is exactly the type of development that needs the Yamiks' treatment. consumers who choose this over sea of thieves or black flag get exactly what they got. (technically sid meyers is better but the others i mention are better than old siddy)
People are being next-level dramatic about this game lmao. 2:00 find me a live service game that you'd actually play that doesn't have some form of premium currency/micro transations to it. Plus, S&Bs premium currency so far is purely for cosmetics and some of those cosmetics you can buy with in-game coin OR premium currency. As of right now there's nothing paywalled. In-game coin has been abundantly accessible simply by casually playing the game and there are a lot of clothing options for regular coin. 5:30 have any of you actually even played a sailboat-style combat game? Go back to Black Flag and tell me the fabled Jackdaw and it's enemies don't move like a "sliding rectangle". 6:30 seriously? The resource gathering mechanic is really that harmful? So much so that you have to stop everything that you are doing and stare in to the abyss and be a "loss for words"? So many people have been complaining about how games are becoming "too grindy" and now it's not enough. 8:10 I don't even know what else you could possibly do but to install a cannon and have the crew fire them. Black Flag? Same mechanics. Naval Action? Same mechanics. Battle Sails? Same mechanics. Pirates of the Burning Sea? Same mechanics. The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt? Same mechanics. Sea Dogs? Same mechanics. Akella's Pirates of the Caribbean? Same mechanics. Sid Meier's Pirates? Same mechanics. 8:50 some other pirate based games don't have dynamic boarding, either. Some are RNG-based clickers and others are auto-resolve. It's a thing. 9:25 it's so far and at last a casual multiplayer combat game that simpletons and pvp-incapables like myself can easily pick up and enjoy without being overwhelmed by the toxic cesspool of humanity and the sweatfests of those who base their entire personalities around winning. PVP needs to be reworked but since you brought up No Man's Sky don't you remember how that first month went? and look at it now? 10:00 so we're mad that the S&B ship is the main character of the game but we're okay that the Jackdaw was not the main character of Black Flag. 10:38 so far it's a pretty laid-back and casual resource collecting time sink that doesn't require 100% of your attention to do. You can watch your favorite podcast or youtube series and resource collect at the same time. 11:00 the 90s?!? You're comparing this graphics engine to the era of jpeg textures and polygon based characters??? Have you not played Final Fantasy 7 for the ps1? 1997. Ever heard of Resident Evil 2 on the Nintendo 64??? 1999. Tomb Raider 1? 1996. All triangles, circles and squares, lol. 11:50 We're in a time in gaming where mo-cap and proper cinematic creating tools are abundant and state of the art. Stretching around a 3d model's mouth to simulate speaking is just outdated and doesn't look right anymore after getting spoiled over mo-cap and other AAA titles. Full support. 13:35 it's pretty lackluster and kills off the excitement of exploring and finding new lands when it's simply a loading screen and no welcome to or a brief drone-style tour. Full support. 14:00 did you notice that high-pitched screech sound when your stamina gets low? Literally yanked my headset away and took my glasses off to recuperate from that one at full volume, lmao. There's definitely a lack of music and there were many times where intense music just suddenly started playing but there was nothing threatening around. Oh... A Sea People fishing boat?!?!? -Boss Music-. As far as sound effects go there are quite a bit of them but it's not very immersive and they all sound pretty generic. Full support. 15:00 the island ambiance and NPC presence is extremely boring and underwhelming. Full support. 15:25 I couldn't really find budget amounts for Sea of Thieves but Black Flag apparently had 20m less than S&B so at $120m there could've been so much more as far as polishing and adding to the environments and the overall atmosphere of the game. Full support. 15:50 the game is definitely not worth $60 much less the $80 for the premium version. But there is an 8-hour trial available so there's no money grabbing or stealing going on. If someone outright buys the game and hates it without doing the 8 hour demo first then that's 100% their fault. In 5 hours I've ranked to Buccaneer and that's just playing the game and not speed-running or anything. Full support. 17:40 again so far there's nothing paywalled or important that requires a transaction so just don't buy it. TL;DR it's an arcade-styled pirate ship combat game that filthy casuals like myself can easily pick up and play and aren't immediately skill-issued by every other salty hardcore PVPer in the game. It's lax, it's simple and to me it's fun. But what do I know lol I obsessively enjoyed Fallout 76, too...... Hopefully some of us can just agree to disagree.
1- extra purchase being present in games: What then is the point of the up-front cost?! what are we paying for?! are we so quick to accept more advertizements in a game that we alreeady PAID for!? And if we paid for a game which is only a part of what it only costs.....are we so quick to CHAMPION predating on a small minority of our fellow players to "complete" the income for making the game?! Bottom line : microtransactions are BAD.. simply BAD and excusing them is doing ONLY disservice to yourself and your fellow customers/players/gamers! 2- resource gathering : sailing up to flotsam and pressing 1 button that picks it up instantly is just LAZY, there are no 2 ways about it. If you need to compare or examples of how the very same thing is done better : sea of thieves! AS for "mining/gathering/etc" with that minigame : again : incredibly lazy. Again sea of thieves shows better possibilities and that's just ONE option of many much better ones than what S&B has. Thou I didn't go into gamedesign and balance : gathering materials in S&B is positioned in typical Live service fashion : GRINDY. meaning that it's DELIBERATLY designed to be highly time consuming ...and THAT is not fun,good or beneficial in any kind of way! 3 - Boarding : again LAZY. Why have gameplay when it can be an instant loot menu. Are we so eager to lower our standarts...just to justify a bad purchase or blindly defend something for whatever reason?! These sorts of "shortcuts" would be understandable in a small budget game... but you are going to DEFEND this kind of low level effort from a 120million dollar production...especially when better examples exist from the past?! 4 - graphics : "have you tried......[insert console-itis bullshit]" no... but what I have tried is Half-life1 from 1997 and textures do resemble the BS we see today! ...ok I'm being charitable with my response but at this point I gotta wonder if this is not just elaborate troll. I simply refuse to believe that someone would willingly ignore genuinely bad practices and go as far as to adamantly defend them without even having a though that it's not right, while also writing up something soo long. So well done .. you got me. rock on!
@@TheYamiks I'm not a troll man I've been respectful in my disagreements and I thank you very much for choosing to be be respectful in yours. As far as our worlds go you're a magnifying glass in the sun and I'm but a meager ant but I appreciate you responding with class instead of letting your fans tear me apart which is probably imminent as it is lmao they are gonna make sure I feel their online presence and wrath but I don't take it personal at all it's just the rules of the internet. 1. Microtransactions have been around for decades now and aren't going anywhere. I know most modern games i've played has battle passes now and premium currencies and even paywalls but it's up to us in the end whether we choose to buy them or not. I agree and don't really like microtransaction either but again, it's been a decades-long fuss and absolutely nothing has changed. I'd rather enjoy the games for what they are and spare myself the stress and agony of worrying about the stuff that I can't change but rather just not indulge in it at all if I don't want to. Black Flag even had cosmetic packs I believe. 2. Idk if you're familiar with Monster Hunter but if there was ever a 1-button pick up for resource gathering lol and MH is highly revered and highly supported and even a GOAT at this point. I know Monster Hunter has no relevancy to S&B but since you've mentioned No Man's Sky and other games I feel like you've made it safe to do the same. 3. The boarding really does suck. They put a really cool cinematic in that built up a lot of hype only for it to get shutdown by an unlosable auto-resolve. But this game speaks nothing but "Arcade Ship Shooter" to me so I can let it go. 4. I actually never played Half-Life so I had to look it up and come on, man... even tho for a '97 game it was definitely ahead of it's time, it's still jpegs and polygons. I just don't see the argument. I'm not lowering my standards for video games I just feel like if I dive down the rabbit hole of what is and what should be then I'll never be able to enjoy any other video games other than the classics. Again, we can agree to disagree and I know i'm one of the few and for all I know maybe even the ONLY one who enjoys S&B but with it's ease of access, friendly interface and quick to learn mechanics it feels like I'm just playing an arcade shooter instead of having to tirelessly do research and watch videos on how to play which has always felt like a chore with some games. I'm not ignoring bad practices I'm just enjoying the game for what it is. I like pirate-style games and I've played most of them. We don't have many. I know my response was long but instead of blindly agreeing and signing off on everything a content creator says like most people do and like a lot of content creators expect, I wanted to actually get your attention and have a friendly engagement. That was my entire goal. Not being passive-aggressive, not trolling you, no agendas or politics. Just an engagement from a simple viewer. Thanks for your time.
Right right... i can be rather harsh in text, apologies. HOWEVER, my point's stand : 1 - it's NOT just up to us to "vote with our wallets" saddly it has been proven to simply NOT work. But generally speaking I urge you to examine microtransaction closer. All of them are predatory and all of them are BAD, but they get accepted BECAUSE they are easy to dismiss for majority. Ultimately they are extra revenue source for the company WITHOUT LIMIT and it always attracts problem spenders more than anything else. Even still there are 2 scenarios that a game would implement MTX : 1 - they reduce the cost of the game upfront, to be competitive, but to recoup the loss, uses MTX to suppliment income......or 2 - the company just wants more money and MTX are easy chaep way to get more without anyone noticing (which by the way is the case for 95% of thee games... seriously go look up finansial report of game companies that report their income) Ether case for MTX use these "cosmetics" rely on a small minority of your fellow games/customers/players...you could even say that MTX predates on this small group...are you seriously going to say that it's "not bad"?! Even dismissing any psychological gocha mecanics and manipulations that come from "cosmetic items" or that "they actually do affect gameplay" the fact that a company is contunously trying to squeeze money out of everyone using MTX after getting the game sale is not a good thing : you already BOUGHT the game.....but the game keeps advertizing to you : THAT IS NOT OK! I've noticed this in a lot of people,which is why I'm so adamant and harsh when it comes to this : ARE YOU CONTENT WITH THIS?! ARE YOU REALLY SO WILLING TO ACCEPT THINGS AS THEY ARE?! WHY ARE YOU SO QUICK TO SAY "it iiiissss what it iiiisss so i'm choosing to see the good in what we got"?! Point is : there ARE better things! we HAVE to demand better! If we let them, companies will (like with MTX) normalize BAD practices! 2- point about 1 button pick-up was simple : there are games out there that actually put in a little bit more effort (or a lot more) to make "looting" part MORE engaging that just "1 button -> POP -> looted". Again sea of thieves is an example, but it's not the only one. Again I ask : why are we so quick to BE OK with what is presented?! For a 120mil budget game these minimum-viable actions and mechanics like the minigames or 1 button pickups are a disgrase. hell even if you dont care what budget the game had and only were concerned about your immediete surrounding : the 60$price : there are FAR more engaging "looter shooter" games out there with far better gameplay. sooooo WHY again are we OK with seeing only the "good" in stuff that is presented to us without questioning it!? 3 - you mentioned "for me, a casual player, this game is good to play while i watch some videos etc etc" ...but are you seriously going to excuse the clearly minimal effort presentation, mechanics,gameplay,etc etc quality of the game, just because YOU feel OK about it!? This is where my quesion about LOW STANDARDS comes from : sure I too like playing mindles games, but even mindless games can have depth and layers beyond the surface! you can't defend mechanical and functional critique with just "hue hue I FEEELLLLL OK about that soo it's OK". This is a very common dismissal by people about many things in life : "eh , it doesn't feel that bad" "eh, I even kind of like it" "eh i think it's pretty cool". This reasoning simply DOES NOT WORK. All I ,as a "critic" can do is present my findings and you, the viewer draw a conclusion from it....and some people are so far gone that they will be happy about gambling in video games even.... but that ...again ..is the minority. However IF you are going to start defending and rising your own counter criticizms : you cant just hide behind the blind "hue hue I still think it's good cuz my feelings for it are good" - that shield is vapor thin! SO in the end : even from the most casual of the casual gamers - you can and HAVE to look past the thin veil of "ca-ching,ca-ching". Apathy and acceptance of how things are WILL NOT make our games better, in fact it will help cementing the bad practices even further! Rise the standard and push back on this exploitative industry's bullshit!
Sea People fishing boats are the biggest threat in the game. Two level 11 rogues trying to kill me? Three shots, free loot. Accidentally smash a Sea People fishing boat and now I can't collect my pieces of eight! I've either gotta kill every Sea People ship and town in a wide radius, or run away even further to make them forget about me. Granted, it's hilariously funny when my ram-build brigantine hits something at 18 knots and it shoots across the water and explodes violently, but c'mon, man...
I hate to be " that guy" but I need to correct you. It's not freedom paper, its called independent democratic super credits. I would appreciate a full edit of the video addressing this. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
I think that's a good point that you should have dug into more. Especially with skull and bones charging on average $8 for a single piece of clothing while only allowing you to purchase currency in increments of 5 that START at less than the cost of a single piece of clothing. This has FAR surpassed what counts as a microtransaction, "microtransactions" used to be bundle purchases with an average maximum price being $15, and you would usually be getting a lot for that $15, often times it would be a bundle of 3-5 entirely new maps, with skins costing less than a dollar to an average max of $5. The prices aren't even in the same ballpark anymore, and calling what we have now "microtransactions" is just disingenuous, and does nothing but benefit the company doing it by normalizing $60 purchases as "micro". That's not even to mention the fact that over the years the amount and quality of the items you get per-purchase has been steadily decreasing, so now even when you fork out the $60 you only get ONE outfit. If I spent $60 ten years ago, I would have bought out most in-game stores, now I'd need a second job if I wanted to actually purchase all the items in a store (not that I would want to normally). I miss unlocking items in free progression systems, bring back Reach.
What baffles me is that they literally had a blueprint for how to make a good pirate game. How hard would it have been to take the pieces of Black Flag that people loved and just trim out the assassins angle?
... yeah, you watch a DVD a few times at most, if not just a single time, contrary to a game that you might play for thousand of hours. This is the worst comparaison ever wtf
I havent watched a Yamiks video since the shitpost planetside 2 pro guides, and that was close to a decade ago! How funny that the algorithm decided to throw me this little gem of a review out of the blue. It's like reuniting with an old friend, because the Yamiks charm is even better than what I remember from way back then
I cannot remember how i got my hands on black flag years ago, but the whole skull and bones fiasco reminded me to try it out again. I'd say give it a try as well! If for no other reason then to swing from your ship to the enemies. That alone will give you far more fun then this game will I imagine.
I'd recommend you play the intro naval battle of black flag, then try to get a savefile that skips the forced havana section and leaves you at the start of your pirating career. OR one that has completed the story itself but somehow not made anything else so that you can do it on your own? (not sure if there are any like that though) Black flag can get pretty boring with the mandatory assassins segments, but the ship improvements and the getting treasures, and naval battles, all of that is plenty fun IMO.
if ppl are looking for a pirate game there's an old one i play it's called Pirate:the caribbean hunt ( it's free and on steam and for weirdos microsoft store,) there is some big ship you buy via real money but all ship can be unlocked by buying them in ports or finding parts in wrecks it can be played solo or multiplayer ( nvr player multiplayer so dunno how it is )and you can play either as a blood thirsty pirate and kill anybody you meet destroy towns to take them over or stay neutral and trade and kill the ppl that attack you and make money by trading or finding treasure or you can decide to serve a nation and fight for them you got your own base you can develop to produce goods and set caravans on voyages to sell your goods it has a good pace and wind DOES matter in battles you can even choose the long way to go to ports you can choose to command your ship directly and go to the ports you want by navigating
Maybe over the course of the year they'll patch and update the game to flesh it out and make it better. *this is the point where we all throw our heads back and laugh*
A mobile pirate game called "Tempest" has an actual ship boarding mechanic where you actually go on the other ship and fight the crew. A fucking mobile pirate game is better than this garbage
Go even further, try the Pirrates of the Carribean from the early 2000s series (it's not the one with Jack Sparrow from Disney, it's a different one - although it has some references to the movies like the Black Pearl showcasing in one of it's main quests)!!!! Yes, it is limited by lots of stuff including black screen transactions and minimal vocal sounds (if any) or the lack of swiming (even early GTAs were lacking this feature back then), but for a game this old (which is more of an RPG style game) has a lot of mechanics which many games (including Black Flag) have failed to introduce successfully. This game has trading mechanics included, ammo count is a thing (so you have to keep track and re-arm periodically to have ammo for your cannons), sails conditions do count how fast you're turning, you get access to a fully controllable character and you can interact with other people on islands or even combat with others as well. Plus, you can hire 3 (or 4) "officers" and even assign them to other ships you can board and conquer for yourself (so yes, you could board and fight on the ships - although you would transition between the decks with a black screen because hey - it was a fairly old game). Your pirate (although clothes and aspect were standard and could not be customizable) could be upgraded with better weapons and equipment (for example the Scope was essential and better scopes would offer more info - like cannons and types of ships or hull condition - and zoom options) and many essential interactions happened with the Captain's character (conversations, quests, missions, trader interactions etc.). I know this game lacks a lot of stuff due to technical limitations, but it has done the essential aspects of a "pirate" game so well, I will always remind it fondly!
Sea of Thieves has a POTC crossover where you get to interact with and sail alongside many of the characters, and then past that, it even has a Monkey Island crossover!
What I’m gathering from this is that “quadruple A game” means that it’s a triple A game that’s so bad they don’t even wanna call it that, but are gonna charge you more money for. Cool and awesome
If i think back to the games I play in the 2000 it would be one that’s still getting yearly love from its Creator and its modding community. For me that would be SW EaW an 18 year old game i still adore an play till now. Even though it’s old it is so much more fun than what this „AAAA“ title is offering. Stuff like the slow, annoying and meaningless grind for 8th sided coins just to get a weapon or equipment that’s only slightly stronger than those you can craft. Or the sea monster teeth to get an armor upgrade. Where you need 50+4 to unlock and craft it. But if i saw correctly the quest to get that monster to spawn only gets refreshed every 1-2 hours but in itself only offers a 2 min fight against the stupid thing. And an 3/4 h just to wait until the quest refreshes. And you only get like 3-4 teeth every time. What in return gives you at least 12h in witch you basically do nothing but waiting for the refresh. Sure you could do other stuff in the meantime but. There isn’t much to offer in this pile of burning trash. Than doing the same Wheel quest over and over again. For a season that’s 90 days long it’s extremely sad.
How did they nail the feel of being a pirate so well in Black Flag (in my opinion at least) but when they release a game literally FOCUSED on being a pirate, it has NOTHING other than sailing?
Its honestly so sad, cuz i really loved ubisoft. Assassins creed(2, brotherhood and black flag), far cry, watchdogs, prince of persia and splinter cell are all some of my favorite game series of all time. But theyve been fumbling so hard in the last decade. Prince of persia lost crown was a pleasant surprise, but outside of that, theyve had barely any good games in the last 10 years.. its been in the cards for a while now, but this feels like the nail in the coffin.
Hats off to the talented crew that made Black Flag. It's a shame execs get rid of their best talent after they prove their worth. That Talent should be worth more than those executives. Big companies fire the wrong people. And now we see the results. Just look at Rocksteady. And it's hilarious they don't make new IPs. They're scared of their own shadows.
I feel more and more comfortable with NOT OWNING UBISOFT games with each year. Back in the PS2 days they made dozens of top tier games but in the last decade their games are so bad I don't even bother pirating them. They literally resorted to giving the games away themselves for free on PC and they're still not worth your time (except for Rayman). Playing Watch Dogs reminds me of the True Crime games with their buggy, offbrand GTA veneer and the Assassins Creed games are just the PS2 Prince of Persia games but with lobotomized platforming sections. But the thing that made me really give up on them as a company was when they gave away The Crew and I finally played it. I was simultaneously amused, impressed and depressed by the fact that they managed to shoehorn their tower climbing formula into this car game where you can't exit your vehicle.
I like this game's sub-Reddit, it's a huge echo chamber, filled with buyers' remorse. Tears all over the place, people swearing this game is an amazing work of art :))
I played the beta, and completed everything in it before the game released. I essentially played the whole game and was left with the grinding and the second half of the story
Naval Action is what I wanted the game to play like but being your own character that does pirate stuff and have actual combat between ship crews and on land
I had some streamer I’d never heard of before’s video of this game recommended to me by UA-cam. The second I saw him automatically get some loot when the ship he was attacking exploded I felt blinding rage.
I don't think I've ever heard the "10 years is enough" argument, but if someone actually ever tried to present that as a valid point, they should consider this: 2014 was 10 years ago. Can you imagine losing games from that era or earlier?
i am still 100% comfortable not owning any ubisoft game.
this made my day
Stay ubivirgin stay pure! Good work.
While they've released almost nothing but formulaic slop in the last decade much like Electronic Arts they used to release some amazing games back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. The Rayman series, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, the original Splinter Cell trilogy the Prince of Persia games and a couple of others. That is the thing that sucks the most. The fact that they DID make games worth owning.
*Any modern. Ac2 and brotherhood are masterpieces
To be fair though, even if you do buy this you won't own it 😂
Note to Ubisoft: Wooden ships did not blow up and sink in seconds as if a 15" shell from the KMS Bismarck hit the magazine. Wooden ships took a long, hard time to sink...that's because wooden ships are made out of wood, and wood naturally floats.
In game you have to despawn the enemy, to free up the resources. It would be a needless clog to the server. Why do you want a ship to sink in ages? Also if hit below waterline or low and the side they capsize and sink pretty damn fast. Not instant but definitely not slow.
@@nagyzolinot necessarily, despawn the enemy and replace it with a wreck asset.
@@gbjbaanbI imagine that should be possible for a quadruple a game made by a major video game company
Charging $70 for a game that looks and plays like a mobile game.
Now THATS Piracy.
The most ironic part is that this game wouldn't be worth pirating, even if it were possible. XD
And tax fraud in Singapore 😂
but unless you buy like every game, why who bought this game? and if they did thank goodness they can't afford a home yet because they need to think before they buy things that in theory will be a weeks to months of their entertainment. other than old school graphics i bought black flag on sale because i only played AC one at a friend's house in high school. Black flag is better than this game in every meaningful way. Sea of thieves is better than this game if you actually want to be in a video game as a pirate. i hope every person who wasted their money and time take this chance to learn, bad companies and bad projects don't deserve your effort.
Well I hope no one buys the game at that price. Let it be discounted to 30% of that after a month or two like Fallout 76 was.
@@jitteryjet7525 Pff, I ended up getting Falllour 76 from Humble Monthly.
Still haven't touched it...
Likely never gonna touch Skull and Bones unless it comes up in Humble, and even then I might just decide to give it to someone else.
Skull and Bones is exactly what we got .. they forgot the meat on that skeleton.
Ohh, good one, I like that.
Lmfao
I love how in the CEO quote about Skull and Bones is that he mentions how much of a complete game it is like 4 times. Evidence enough that something's up
You gotta apply the Russian metric with these people, if they tell you stuff is there, you can be certain it's not.
@@AlexVardr thats also true with any employer on top of th3 market. theyll lie or cheat to get ahead fraud and they DO get ahead because of it. until the things go up on flames though. its just how business workers cheaters and liers get ahead from doing so atleast temporarily sometimes they are never held accountable.
@@AlexVardr Hence why Hi-fi rush was released without any advertisement.
If someone assures you that they're honest, especially multiple times, you can be assured that they are not honest. Truly honest people don't do that. They don't have to. They have facts. They'll use those instead.
Weasel word
Ubisoft ought to start feeling comfortable with people not buying their shitty games.
It used to be part of their business model. They gave away most of their AAA games for free themselves on PC after a few years to try to get people to buy DLC and junk. Don't think it worked well for them since they've recently stopped doing it. But I did get more than two dozen of their games that way...and only really bothered with Far Cry 3 and The Crew.
And Singapore will demand someone die for this . Gum chewing is a year in prison....I say Bobby.
You don't really believe that'll happen, do you? People will bitch and complain (rightfully so) only to then buy it on release day. It never fails.
@@SmegmaticianBut it feels this gains traction. At least with the last few games. So I do I have hope this will eventually reach a breaking point
@@MapsaiLiv I don't. People have been saying this for years, literally. Nothing has changed. People have still preordered their games en masse, and still do.
Take away the AAA graphics and it's a mobile game.
That is exactly what it is, and I won't be touching it.
Free2play mobile game .... For $70 🤣
They really are closer to double a graphics
What graphics? Black Flag looks like a renaissance painting compared to this
@@youtuvi7452 That's a gross exaggeration and AC 4 is an 11 year old game with more features and depth that the pezzo di merda you're defending.
Ubisoft thinking Shiver me timbers meant a woodcutting minigame
Not a single timber was left unshivered that day. u.u
The fact that black flag beats it in everything including graphics even though it’s a decade old and made by the same company shows the hilarious state of Ubisoft
And that can be played offline.
Dont be silly, ac black flag looks good to this day but skull and bones is better grapically. I played both today
@@oscar12ty You're delusional if you think this looks better than Black Flag, shitty art direction with a few good shaders doesn't beat good art direction with slightly dated graphics. Character models somehow got more hideous in 10 years, water looks worse, lighting looks awful in many scenes, Black Flag has actual color while this is the same horrific desaturated LUTs that have plagued recent games. I'd absolutely say Black Flag looks better. Take away all the modern post processing effects and you've just got an unappealing pile of dreck.
Even weirder is Sid meires' Pirates! is a 2 decade old game that looks like it plays similarly and but some how has better, more robust mechanics.
@@oscar12ty you ignore the mess up texture mesh of the shadow and some object sometimes when you fast travel or spawn, that is really sloppy, how could they charge 70 bucks and give us a high school project that was made by a group of gender confused teenagers ?
It’s functionally a cut down multiplayer version of a game they did better 11? Years ago.
AAAA is probably only regarding the executive bonuses.
I was amazed to learn Skull & Bones was originally called Black Flag Infinite. It started off as a multiplayer expansion for AC Black Flag before it became a stand alone game and was renamed.
Black flags multiplayer servers are still alive! Just had a full lobby of noobs this mornin!
Keep the servers alive
Sterling said it best, when it comes to video game. A stands for 'Ass'.
It took them 11 years to give us "Black Flag at home"
Made in Singapore.
what is blaq flag?
@@henlohenlo689Assassins Creed 4, the game people were hoping this would be.
the best f ing pirate game ever made by the same company 10 years ago
anything pirate you can do it in immense detail.
from diving bells monster hunting rading ships even a offscreen fleet raid content.@@henlohenlo689
@@henlohenlo689the original Ubisoft game that had ship combat. It was an Assassin's Creed game with different formula that people really loved. Ubisoft saw this and decided to make a game entirely based around the ship fighting. However, they also (probably) let the people with buisness diplomas determine what mechanics should be in the game.
"the market has a lot of products with crafting and ressource collection, we should put that in to get bigger audience"
Tbf we cant rly complain a game called skull and bones isn't fleshed out
underrated comment
watching ubisoft stock lose 60% of its value over 5 years and it dropped 4% since skull and bones release. I can hear their investors ripping the executives out of their seats. Ubisoft an original french made company having its own revolution against its leaders....poetry
The boating in Black Flag makes the rest of the game worth it. I used to just sail around playing sea shanties. Actually, I should play that game again.
I'd get it for PC if I didn't have to deal with Ubishit's special ass fuck launcher.
(Well, it is a game about pirates, maybe I should pirate the damn thing)
Yes, you should definitely try Black Flag! Even if you don't end up liking it, you can at least make a video comparing the ship mechanics to skull and bones.
The multiplayer for black flag still works too! Might just have to play a little early in the day
No boarding.
No ship upgrade.
No consequence of be a pirates.
Walking it's atrocius.
Ship have the speed of a bugatti veyron and the turn of a F-22 Raptor.
Price it's 70 euro/dollar.
Microtransaction in a 70 dollar/euro game.
DID I MENTION THERE IS NO BOARDING IN A PIRATES GAME ??.
I'm off to find 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean again.
No rum ether
Wait - they actually made a pirate game where you can't board other vessels? You're serious?
@@maxanderson9187it's true
Bro you clearly never played the game lol
This game is wild. Imagine, if you will, the year is 2000. Your friend has just found this thing called Amazon, and wants to make a new business just like them. It seems like a good plan, your friend gets to work and stops talking about it. 10 years have passed. Amazon is now the global giant It is today. Your friend comes to you and excitedly shows you a terrible shopping site right out of 1999 and exclaims: "It's finally ready! My new site will take down Amazon!" Your friend is confused when you aren't excited for the "new" product. Ubisoft is your friend, and skull and bones is the "new" website.
Skulls and bones is made for Investors not for gamers. MOBILE gaming at its finest. It feels like a chore playing Skulls and Bones
Well they failed at that too as the stocks fell 4% since skull and bones came out
Sea music exists in Assassins Creed since Black Flag. They know how to do this, they just didn't want to.
This game just looks like "AC Black Flag" without the Assassins and Templars. Like they literally just reskinned AC:BF and released it as a "new" game. Edit: After watching, AC:BF is a better pirate game than this...
It's missing some of the best bits, sadly.
beat me to the same comment
I played the beta with the same thought but nope it's so much worse
It's an insult calling this game a clone to Black Flag imo , it's less good in every single aspect than Black Flag , exept maybe the fact that you can change your ship plus there's micro-transaction on a game like this , so it's just not worth the time and money to take this shitty ass ''AAAA game '' as they love to call it... i'll go back to Black Flag any day of the week even if they give this game for free
Minecraft has beter mods then this . Porn games are better then this. Mt shit floats better then these ships.
Using shitty flutes will never not be funny.
yep
Well, I dont get any laugh off it, but considering how demonic that SoB of a CEO the guy was its fitting. Though should've been Evil Incarnate from Doom 2 instead to me.
Games as a corporate cash cow. Just say no.
Ubisoft had the recipe for a potential world winning chocolate gateau but they released a plain jam sponge cake.
Recipe: black flag, $120m and 11yrs for development, how can a company mess up so bad.
The fact Helldivers 2 is running circles around this game gives me more joy than anything else in the world.
I think Ubisoft should be sued for this monstrosity. They're clearly skimming investment funding or something because there's zero excuse for a game to be this bad after ELEVEN YEARS. I don't own any stock in Ubisoft but if I were a shareholder I'd be pissed right now. The sad part is that Ubisoft could probably make a Red Dead-like pirate game, but they want to cut as many corners as possible to make the maximum amount of money.
They shouldn't be in business anymore. It's like a restaurant not bringing your food out for 3 hours, and when it gets there, it's missing all of the advertised sides, and the meat is undercooked. The drink you ordered is just someone else's unfinished glass, and the manager comes out and asks you to pay additional money for using their table for 2 hours more than they wanted you to.
I am so glad I bought Helldivers 2 instead of this.
Honestly I am dumbfounded at how they went from Blackflag to this mess. They just had to take the bones of black flag. I mean climbing rigging, actual swashbuckling oh swimming and at least better resource collection. It's another case it feels the developers at Ubisoft havnt even played their own games.
this game has got to be the most expensive advertisement for AC Black Flag
This is like that one parent, who called your xbox a "gameboy", got promoted to direct a game. With a sprinkling of Ubisoft company policy to guide them on their novel career choice.
That's not completely impossible. Or even just unlikely, really. The people making the decisions probably don't see games as anything but a product, where you can easily convince the customer to purchase one thing over the other with enough shiny marketing and they'll never complain... Problem is, a lot of the people who nowadays play games don't care enough, don't watch reviews on something, they just buy a shiny new product because the marketing was hype.
14:33, no that is stolen from AC Black flag.
you should really play that now mate.
I LOVE that you used the Druid face from The Mystery of the Druids in the thumbnail. It works so well.
idea came from my discord moderator. it's great!
I played AC Origins. Amazing game on it's own, the only AC I personally enjoyed. Lots of detail, amazing work from the modelling and animation departments. That being said, the game contained an in game cheat engine on launch - The Animus Control Panel. It let you change your player character, change in-game physics, combat, health values and so on. Guess what they did? They changed their launcher from Uplay to UbiConnect. The Animus Control panel stopped working completely. So, did they bother fixing it? Nope. Putting something else in place of it? Nope. At least removing the in-game tips that tell you to use it every time you get a loading screen? Also no. Origins launched in 2018. UbiConnect launched in 2020. 2 years. They couldn't bother to mantain an in-game feature dependant on a launcher for more than two years. They couldn't bother to add a single button and shuffle some files around to fix it either. How do you trust them to not do the same with anything else they release nowadays?
I am convinced that nobody can make a good pirate game anymore. The Disney POTC game was about it.
Sea of Theives had not only a POTC crossover (with all missions still playable to this day), it even got a Monkey Island crossover towards the end of last year.
The “auto harvest” setting is intended to make the game more ‘accessible’, much like games now commonly offer settings for colourblind players, and so on. But sure, some folks that don’t need to depend upon it will still make use of it.
his bigger issue isn't that the minigame can be skipped but rather that the game relies on those minigames to begin with.
Sid Meier's Pirates on the NES was a better pirate sim than Skull and Bones, and it wasn't even a $70 live service AAAA game!
NB: The original was on the C64. And yeah, it's still a better pirate sim. And you can still play it today. Let's see if SnB is playable in 2061.
This makes Starfield look like a AAAAA
I know where you're coming from, but not even this makes Starfield look like AA.
@@lemming9984 well as bas as Starfield is, at least it doesn't have microtransactions. So maybe AAa?
@@Canela_L LOL! 🤣. I wouldn't be surprised if MS patch-in mtx soon, as it's not selling like they hoped.
Actually, the As are how shitty a product is. The best games are indy and they don't have any As at all.
Oh hells, even Odessey did it better. Swimming, Harvesting, Going on shore, Exploring, Ship Boarding Combat. And how did they even fk it up so bad???? All they had to do was tune up Black Flag for more Pirate theme!!! They had a winning formula n they fkd it up so bad!
i hated odessey as a assasins greed game... but omg do i hate this game
Singapore tax dollars...wrong country to steal from 😂. Blood will be paid.
I don't normally write comments, but I wanted to say and clarify that the 800 gold price is for the whole outfit NOT one piece. I should know, I bought it. Spent 5 bucks and bought it together with free gold given. This is simply an FYI for anyone else.
That you’re bad with your money. Roger that.
FYI I spent more money in a full priced 70$ game. For an outfit. That should be part of the game. As an unlockable. idk maybe like ac black flag did over a decade ago lol
I mean I'm literally hearing about this game for the first time, right now, from Yamiks.
This does feel like a phone game.
So it’s watered down Black Flag. How the hell do you even make that happen. Oh wait.
Watered down Black Flag is AC:Rogue. I'm not even sure you can called this watered down Rogue.
@@unc54 - I've heard that SnB was scrapped and restarted internally three times (and it started as a Black Flag expansion), so if you water it down FOUR times.. well, there you go.
I was learning guitar playing RockSmith on Xbox. Spent a few hundred dollars on tracks I liked and was progressing quite nicely. I sold my Xbox and moved to another city. Less than two years later I bought a new Xbox and when I logged into my old account all the content I purchased was gone with no way to get it back. All those great songs were replaced by shitty tracks that I have no interest in playing--but even those tracks are locked behind a subscription service. No refund of course. I now hate UbiSoft.
I understand why there is such a huge push behind retro gaming. Hell, even I just bought a GameCube yesterday. The shit is expensive now but once you have it, you have it until something physically breaks.
So sick of the corporate grifts. Skull and Bones looks like rubbish and UniSoft can stick its microtransactions up its ass.
If your GameCube breaks, you can just switch to emulation. So you have it _forever._ Bonus: Owning the physical GC basically means you own a copy of the system ROM. _Legal_ emulation, regardless of what Nintendo might think.
I've had more "pirate-ship" style fun playing the first Rebel Galaxy.
Isn't Rebel Galaxy an indie space game? :p
This looks like a free to play game. I would be mad if I paid money for this.
I can't get over how bad those water graphics are
Love seeing Ross’s points about games as a service being promoted so much recently
The difference between buying digital music or videos and buying digital games is that the music and video files are self contained. You can copy and transfer them and any device or app that can decode them can play them back. You actually own these digital files.
That's not true of most digital games from anyone other than GOG. It's especially true of any "Always Online" game that needs a server supported by the devs or publishers.
Turning timing needs off is actually an accessibility feature for those who struggle with it for a variety of reasons & disabilities.
Yes... but why is it not under accessability tab then. Like colorblind features??????
@@TheYamiks because a dev miscategorized it? Better it's there at all than not.
Sure. Im all for these options.....but then: not include this half assed minigame and implemet an actual gameplay, but thats too much to ask from 120mil project and 60$ product
At what point do they just make the game play itself the ?
Its insane Ubisoft made Black Flag, which was a pretty decent pirate game, admittedly it had its flaws but it was fun, and now they are producing such slop of a game. It makes you wander if they wanted a new pirate game why not just iterate upon the core concepts of ACBF that everyone liked instead of making this mess.
Because ego and pride
It was a tax right off from Singapore
Its literally a mobile game. A few years ago when i first saw the trailer i was so excited. But the last 2 years the more ive seen, the more ive been disappointed. I will never waste money on a mobile game thats 70 dollars and wastes space on an SSD. As someone who sails IRL, i can confirm that both the physics and historical inaccuracy are laughable. Rockstar should make a pirate game
It's remarkable that Yves Guillemot isn't widely seen as worse than Bobby Kottick, if not just as bad. Seriously, when you crawl through Ubisoft's history of misdeeds, he almost makes Kottick look civilized. Look up Serge Hascoet and buckle up just for a little taste of the Ubisoft horror show.
As I've been saying the Pirates of the Caribbean game from 2003 has more actual gameplay then this
I stopped buying Ubisoft games the day they required uPlay (yes, even with the stripped down Steam uPlay libraries). Not surprisingly, there really hasn't been any Ubi games since then that make me regret my decision.
I don't want games as a service - I want a well crafted, immersive single player experience. - mainly because I have no online mates but also because as an old guy that's what I grew up playing and enjoying.
Geez, that microtransation price is getting to the level of World of Warships, but at least they occasionally sprinkle in rewards so you dont NEED to buy things.
Diablo 4 charges you 70 dollars for a horse.
@@The_Queen_Chrysalis a bloody HORSE? DAMN. Also, nice name. Bug pony queen has some darn good fan fics..
this is exactly the type of development that needs the Yamiks' treatment. consumers who choose this over sea of thieves or black flag get exactly what they got. (technically sid meyers is better but the others i mention are better than old siddy)
2:02 horrifying water effects there :s
Suicide Squad: "We are worst game of 2024"
Skull and Bones: "Hold my rum"
the fact that the game is barely a week old and already has one of these is amazing
People are being next-level dramatic about this game lmao. 2:00 find me a live service game that you'd actually play that doesn't have some form of premium currency/micro transations to it. Plus, S&Bs premium currency so far is purely for cosmetics and some of those cosmetics you can buy with in-game coin OR premium currency. As of right now there's nothing paywalled. In-game coin has been abundantly accessible simply by casually playing the game and there are a lot of clothing options for regular coin. 5:30 have any of you actually even played a sailboat-style combat game? Go back to Black Flag and tell me the fabled Jackdaw and it's enemies don't move like a "sliding rectangle". 6:30 seriously? The resource gathering mechanic is really that harmful? So much so that you have to stop everything that you are doing and stare in to the abyss and be a "loss for words"? So many people have been complaining about how games are becoming "too grindy" and now it's not enough.
8:10 I don't even know what else you could possibly do but to install a cannon and have the crew fire them. Black Flag? Same mechanics. Naval Action? Same mechanics. Battle Sails? Same mechanics. Pirates of the Burning Sea? Same mechanics. The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt? Same mechanics. Sea Dogs? Same mechanics. Akella's Pirates of the Caribbean? Same mechanics. Sid Meier's Pirates? Same mechanics. 8:50 some other pirate based games don't have dynamic boarding, either. Some are RNG-based clickers and others are auto-resolve. It's a thing. 9:25 it's so far and at last a casual multiplayer combat game that simpletons and pvp-incapables like myself can easily pick up and enjoy without being overwhelmed by the toxic cesspool of humanity and the sweatfests of those who base their entire personalities around winning. PVP needs to be reworked but since you brought up No Man's Sky don't you remember how that first month went? and look at it now? 10:00 so we're mad that the S&B ship is the main character of the game but we're okay that the Jackdaw was not the main character of Black Flag.
10:38 so far it's a pretty laid-back and casual resource collecting time sink that doesn't require 100% of your attention to do. You can watch your favorite podcast or youtube series and resource collect at the same time. 11:00 the 90s?!? You're comparing this graphics engine to the era of jpeg textures and polygon based characters??? Have you not played Final Fantasy 7 for the ps1? 1997. Ever heard of Resident Evil 2 on the Nintendo 64??? 1999. Tomb Raider 1? 1996. All triangles, circles and squares, lol. 11:50 We're in a time in gaming where mo-cap and proper cinematic creating tools are abundant and state of the art. Stretching around a 3d model's mouth to simulate speaking is just outdated and doesn't look right anymore after getting spoiled over mo-cap and other AAA titles. Full support. 13:35 it's pretty lackluster and kills off the excitement of exploring and finding new lands when it's simply a loading screen and no welcome to or a brief drone-style tour. Full support. 14:00 did you notice that high-pitched screech sound when your stamina gets low? Literally yanked my headset away and took my glasses off to recuperate from that one at full volume, lmao. There's definitely a lack of music and there were many times where intense music just suddenly started playing but there was nothing threatening around. Oh... A Sea People fishing boat?!?!? -Boss Music-. As far as sound effects go there are quite a bit of them but it's not very immersive and they all sound pretty generic. Full support. 15:00 the island ambiance and NPC presence is extremely boring and underwhelming. Full support. 15:25 I couldn't really find budget amounts for Sea of Thieves but Black Flag apparently had 20m less than S&B so at $120m there could've been so much more as far as polishing and adding to the environments and the overall atmosphere of the game. Full support. 15:50 the game is definitely not worth $60 much less the $80 for the premium version. But there is an 8-hour trial available so there's no money grabbing or stealing going on. If someone outright buys the game and hates it without doing the 8 hour demo first then that's 100% their fault. In 5 hours I've ranked to Buccaneer and that's just playing the game and not speed-running or anything. Full support. 17:40 again so far there's nothing paywalled or important that requires a transaction so just don't buy it.
TL;DR it's an arcade-styled pirate ship combat game that filthy casuals like myself can easily pick up and play and aren't immediately skill-issued by every other salty hardcore PVPer in the game. It's lax, it's simple and to me it's fun. But what do I know lol I obsessively enjoyed Fallout 76, too...... Hopefully some of us can just agree to disagree.
1- extra purchase being present in games: What then is the point of the up-front cost?! what are we paying for?! are we so quick to accept more advertizements in a game that we alreeady PAID for!? And if we paid for a game which is only a part of what it only costs.....are we so quick to CHAMPION predating on a small minority of our fellow players to "complete" the income for making the game?!
Bottom line : microtransactions are BAD.. simply BAD and excusing them is doing ONLY disservice to yourself and your fellow customers/players/gamers!
2- resource gathering : sailing up to flotsam and pressing 1 button that picks it up instantly is just LAZY, there are no 2 ways about it. If you need to compare or examples of how the very same thing is done better : sea of thieves! AS for "mining/gathering/etc" with that minigame : again : incredibly lazy. Again sea of thieves shows better possibilities and that's just ONE option of many much better ones than what S&B has.
Thou I didn't go into gamedesign and balance : gathering materials in S&B is positioned in typical Live service fashion : GRINDY. meaning that it's DELIBERATLY designed to be highly time consuming ...and THAT is not fun,good or beneficial in any kind of way!
3 - Boarding : again LAZY. Why have gameplay when it can be an instant loot menu.
Are we so eager to lower our standarts...just to justify a bad purchase or blindly defend something for whatever reason?!
These sorts of "shortcuts" would be understandable in a small budget game... but you are going to DEFEND this kind of low level effort from a 120million dollar production...especially when better examples exist from the past?!
4 - graphics : "have you tried......[insert console-itis bullshit]" no... but what I have tried is Half-life1 from 1997 and textures do resemble the BS we see today!
...ok I'm being charitable with my response but at this point I gotta wonder if this is not just elaborate troll.
I simply refuse to believe that someone would willingly ignore genuinely bad practices and go as far as to adamantly defend them without even having a though that it's not right, while also writing up something soo long.
So well done .. you got me. rock on!
@@TheYamiks I'm not a troll man I've been respectful in my disagreements and I thank you very much for choosing to be be respectful in yours. As far as our worlds go you're a magnifying glass in the sun and I'm but a meager ant but I appreciate you responding with class instead of letting your fans tear me apart which is probably imminent as it is lmao they are gonna make sure I feel their online presence and wrath but I don't take it personal at all it's just the rules of the internet.
1. Microtransactions have been around for decades now and aren't going anywhere. I know most modern games i've played has battle passes now and premium currencies and even paywalls but it's up to us in the end whether we choose to buy them or not. I agree and don't really like microtransaction either but again, it's been a decades-long fuss and absolutely nothing has changed. I'd rather enjoy the games for what they are and spare myself the stress and agony of worrying about the stuff that I can't change but rather just not indulge in it at all if I don't want to. Black Flag even had cosmetic packs I believe.
2. Idk if you're familiar with Monster Hunter but if there was ever a 1-button pick up for resource gathering lol and MH is highly revered and highly supported and even a GOAT at this point. I know Monster Hunter has no relevancy to S&B but since you've mentioned No Man's Sky and other games I feel like you've made it safe to do the same.
3. The boarding really does suck. They put a really cool cinematic in that built up a lot of hype only for it to get shutdown by an unlosable auto-resolve. But this game speaks nothing but "Arcade Ship Shooter" to me so I can let it go.
4. I actually never played Half-Life so I had to look it up and come on, man... even tho for a '97 game it was definitely ahead of it's time, it's still jpegs and polygons. I just don't see the argument.
I'm not lowering my standards for video games I just feel like if I dive down the rabbit hole of what is and what should be then I'll never be able to enjoy any other video games other than the classics. Again, we can agree to disagree and I know i'm one of the few and for all I know maybe even the ONLY one who enjoys S&B but with it's ease of access, friendly interface and quick to learn mechanics it feels like I'm just playing an arcade shooter instead of having to tirelessly do research and watch videos on how to play which has always felt like a chore with some games. I'm not ignoring bad practices I'm just enjoying the game for what it is. I like pirate-style games and I've played most of them. We don't have many.
I know my response was long but instead of blindly agreeing and signing off on everything a content creator says like most people do and like a lot of content creators expect, I wanted to actually get your attention and have a friendly engagement. That was my entire goal. Not being passive-aggressive, not trolling you, no agendas or politics. Just an engagement from a simple viewer. Thanks for your time.
Right right... i can be rather harsh in text, apologies.
HOWEVER, my point's stand :
1 - it's NOT just up to us to "vote with our wallets" saddly it has been proven to simply NOT work. But generally speaking I urge you to examine microtransaction closer. All of them are predatory and all of them are BAD, but they get accepted BECAUSE they are easy to dismiss for majority.
Ultimately they are extra revenue source for the company WITHOUT LIMIT and it always attracts problem spenders more than anything else. Even still there are 2 scenarios that a game would implement MTX : 1 - they reduce the cost of the game upfront, to be competitive, but to recoup the loss, uses MTX to suppliment income......or 2 - the company just wants more money and MTX are easy chaep way to get more without anyone noticing (which by the way is the case for 95% of thee games... seriously go look up finansial report of game companies that report their income)
Ether case for MTX use these "cosmetics" rely on a small minority of your fellow games/customers/players...you could even say that MTX predates on this small group...are you seriously going to say that it's "not bad"?! Even dismissing any psychological gocha mecanics and manipulations that come from "cosmetic items" or that "they actually do affect gameplay" the fact that a company is contunously trying to squeeze money out of everyone using MTX after getting the game sale is not a good thing : you already BOUGHT the game.....but the game keeps advertizing to you : THAT IS NOT OK!
I've noticed this in a lot of people,which is why I'm so adamant and harsh when it comes to this : ARE YOU CONTENT WITH THIS?! ARE YOU REALLY SO WILLING TO ACCEPT THINGS AS THEY ARE?! WHY ARE YOU SO QUICK TO SAY "it iiiissss what it iiiisss so i'm choosing to see the good in what we got"?!
Point is : there ARE better things! we HAVE to demand better! If we let them, companies will (like with MTX) normalize BAD practices!
2- point about 1 button pick-up was simple : there are games out there that actually put in a little bit more effort (or a lot more) to make "looting" part MORE engaging that just "1 button -> POP -> looted". Again sea of thieves is an example, but it's not the only one. Again I ask : why are we so quick to BE OK with what is presented?!
For a 120mil budget game these minimum-viable actions and mechanics like the minigames or 1 button pickups are a disgrase. hell even if you dont care what budget the game had and only were concerned about your immediete surrounding : the 60$price : there are FAR more engaging "looter shooter" games out there with far better gameplay. sooooo WHY again are we OK with seeing only the "good" in stuff that is presented to us without questioning it!?
3 - you mentioned "for me, a casual player, this game is good to play while i watch some videos etc etc" ...but are you seriously going to excuse the clearly minimal effort presentation, mechanics,gameplay,etc etc quality of the game, just because YOU feel OK about it!? This is where my quesion about LOW STANDARDS comes from : sure I too like playing mindles games, but even mindless games can have depth and layers beyond the surface!
you can't defend mechanical and functional critique with just "hue hue I FEEELLLLL OK about that soo it's OK". This is a very common dismissal by people about many things in life : "eh , it doesn't feel that bad" "eh, I even kind of like it" "eh i think it's pretty cool". This reasoning simply DOES NOT WORK.
All I ,as a "critic" can do is present my findings and you, the viewer draw a conclusion from it....and some people are so far gone that they will be happy about gambling in video games even.... but that ...again ..is the minority. However IF you are going to start defending and rising your own counter criticizms : you cant just hide behind the blind "hue hue I still think it's good cuz my feelings for it are good" - that shield is vapor thin!
SO in the end : even from the most casual of the casual gamers - you can and HAVE to look past the thin veil of "ca-ching,ca-ching". Apathy and acceptance of how things are WILL NOT make our games better, in fact it will help cementing the bad practices even further!
Rise the standard and push back on this exploitative industry's bullshit!
Sea People fishing boats are the biggest threat in the game. Two level 11 rogues trying to kill me? Three shots, free loot. Accidentally smash a Sea People fishing boat and now I can't collect my pieces of eight! I've either gotta kill every Sea People ship and town in a wide radius, or run away even further to make them forget about me.
Granted, it's hilariously funny when my ram-build brigantine hits something at 18 knots and it shoots across the water and explodes violently, but c'mon, man...
I hate to be " that guy" but I need to correct you. It's not freedom paper, its called independent democratic super credits. I would appreciate a full edit of the video addressing this. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
I think that's a good point that you should have dug into more. Especially with skull and bones charging on average $8 for a single piece of clothing while only allowing you to purchase currency in increments of 5 that START at less than the cost of a single piece of clothing. This has FAR surpassed what counts as a microtransaction, "microtransactions" used to be bundle purchases with an average maximum price being $15, and you would usually be getting a lot for that $15, often times it would be a bundle of 3-5 entirely new maps, with skins costing less than a dollar to an average max of $5. The prices aren't even in the same ballpark anymore, and calling what we have now "microtransactions" is just disingenuous, and does nothing but benefit the company doing it by normalizing $60 purchases as "micro". That's not even to mention the fact that over the years the amount and quality of the items you get per-purchase has been steadily decreasing, so now even when you fork out the $60 you only get ONE outfit. If I spent $60 ten years ago, I would have bought out most in-game stores, now I'd need a second job if I wanted to actually purchase all the items in a store (not that I would want to normally). I miss unlocking items in free progression systems, bring back Reach.
What baffles me is that they literally had a blueprint for how to make a good pirate game. How hard would it have been to take the pieces of Black Flag that people loved and just trim out the assassins angle?
Question: Why does a ship needs stamina? Is the ship running and if so, at what surface is running from?
... yeah, you watch a DVD a few times at most, if not just a single time, contrary to a game that you might play for thousand of hours.
This is the worst comparaison ever wtf
I havent watched a Yamiks video since the shitpost planetside 2 pro guides, and that was close to a decade ago! How funny that the algorithm decided to throw me this little gem of a review out of the blue. It's like reuniting with an old friend, because the Yamiks charm is even better than what I remember from way back then
I cannot remember how i got my hands on black flag years ago, but the whole skull and bones fiasco reminded me to try it out again. I'd say give it a try as well! If for no other reason then to swing from your ship to the enemies. That alone will give you far more fun then this game will I imagine.
I'd recommend you play the intro naval battle of black flag, then try to get a savefile that skips the forced havana section and leaves you at the start of your pirating career. OR one that has completed the story itself but somehow not made anything else so that you can do it on your own? (not sure if there are any like that though) Black flag can get pretty boring with the mandatory assassins segments, but the ship improvements and the getting treasures, and naval battles, all of that is plenty fun IMO.
if ppl are looking for a pirate game there's an old one i play it's called Pirate:the caribbean hunt ( it's free and on steam and for weirdos microsoft store,) there is some big ship you buy via real money but all ship can be unlocked by buying them in ports or finding parts in wrecks it can be played solo or multiplayer ( nvr player multiplayer so dunno how it is )and you can play either as a blood thirsty pirate and kill anybody you meet destroy towns to take them over or stay neutral and trade and kill the ppl that attack you and make money by trading or finding treasure or you can decide to serve a nation and fight for them you got your own base you can develop to produce goods and set caravans on voyages to sell your goods it has a good pace and wind DOES matter in battles you can even choose the long way to go to ports you can choose to command your ship directly and go to the ports you want by navigating
I feel like Rayman 2: the Great Escape was probably the best Ubisoft game I played in a while.
Full games' price for full outfit in game
Ubisoft should become comfortable with being the laughing stock of the industry.
Maybe over the course of the year they'll patch and update the game to flesh it out and make it better.
*this is the point where we all throw our heads back and laugh*
A mobile pirate game called "Tempest" has an actual ship boarding mechanic where you actually go on the other ship and fight the crew. A fucking mobile pirate game is better than this garbage
Been a Ubisoft hater for years and used to feel bad about it. No longer
that quote at the beginning... gave me YUGH spaghetti bowl flashbacks...
Go even further, try the Pirrates of the Carribean from the early 2000s series (it's not the one with Jack Sparrow from Disney, it's a different one - although it has some references to the movies like the Black Pearl showcasing in one of it's main quests)!!!!
Yes, it is limited by lots of stuff including black screen transactions and minimal vocal sounds (if any) or the lack of swiming (even early GTAs were lacking this feature back then), but for a game this old (which is more of an RPG style game) has a lot of mechanics which many games (including Black Flag) have failed to introduce successfully. This game has trading mechanics included, ammo count is a thing (so you have to keep track and re-arm periodically to have ammo for your cannons), sails conditions do count how fast you're turning, you get access to a fully controllable character and you can interact with other people on islands or even combat with others as well. Plus, you can hire 3 (or 4) "officers" and even assign them to other ships you can board and conquer for yourself (so yes, you could board and fight on the ships - although you would transition between the decks with a black screen because hey - it was a fairly old game).
Your pirate (although clothes and aspect were standard and could not be customizable) could be upgraded with better weapons and equipment (for example the Scope was essential and better scopes would offer more info - like cannons and types of ships or hull condition - and zoom options) and many essential interactions happened with the Captain's character (conversations, quests, missions, trader interactions etc.).
I know this game lacks a lot of stuff due to technical limitations, but it has done the essential aspects of a "pirate" game so well, I will always remind it fondly!
Sea of Thieves has a POTC crossover where you get to interact with and sail alongside many of the characters, and then past that, it even has a Monkey Island crossover!
"These are no longer fucking microtransactions."
your right, they are macrotransactions.
What I’m gathering from this is that “quadruple A game” means that it’s a triple A game that’s so bad they don’t even wanna call it that, but are gonna charge you more money for. Cool and awesome
If i think back to the games I play in the 2000 it would be one that’s still getting yearly love from its Creator and its modding community.
For me that would be SW EaW an 18 year old game i still adore an play till now. Even though it’s old it is so much more fun than what this „AAAA“ title is offering.
Stuff like the slow, annoying and meaningless grind for 8th sided coins just to get a weapon or equipment that’s only slightly stronger than those you can craft.
Or the sea monster teeth to get an armor upgrade. Where you need 50+4 to unlock and craft it. But if i saw correctly the quest to get that monster to spawn only gets refreshed every 1-2 hours but in itself only offers a 2 min fight against the stupid thing. And an 3/4 h just to wait until the quest refreshes. And you only get like 3-4 teeth every time. What in return gives you at least 12h in witch you basically do nothing but waiting for the refresh. Sure you could do other stuff in the meantime but. There isn’t much to offer in this pile of burning trash. Than doing the same Wheel quest over and over again. For a season that’s 90 days long it’s extremely sad.
How did they nail the feel of being a pirate so well in Black Flag (in my opinion at least) but when they release a game literally FOCUSED on being a pirate, it has NOTHING other than sailing?
Its honestly so sad, cuz i really loved ubisoft.
Assassins creed(2, brotherhood and black flag), far cry, watchdogs, prince of persia and splinter cell are all some of my favorite game series of all time. But theyve been fumbling so hard in the last decade. Prince of persia lost crown was a pleasant surprise, but outside of that, theyve had barely any good games in the last 10 years.. its been in the cards for a while now, but this feels like the nail in the coffin.
Hats off to the talented crew that made Black Flag. It's a shame execs get rid of their best talent after they prove their worth. That Talent should be worth more than those executives.
Big companies fire the wrong people.
And now we see the results. Just look at Rocksteady.
And it's hilarious they don't make new IPs. They're scared of their own shadows.
The only plundering going on here is Ubisoft somehow charging $70 for this mess
I feel more and more comfortable with NOT OWNING UBISOFT games with each year. Back in the PS2 days they made dozens of top tier games but in the last decade their games are so bad I don't even bother pirating them. They literally resorted to giving the games away themselves for free on PC and they're still not worth your time (except for Rayman). Playing Watch Dogs reminds me of the True Crime games with their buggy, offbrand GTA veneer and the Assassins Creed games are just the PS2 Prince of Persia games but with lobotomized platforming sections. But the thing that made me really give up on them as a company was when they gave away The Crew and I finally played it. I was simultaneously amused, impressed and depressed by the fact that they managed to shoehorn their tower climbing formula into this car game where you can't exit your vehicle.
If skull and bone is quadruple a game for life service game then helldiver 2 would be dectuple A by now.
I miss crowbar cat. Hope he’s alright!
Play Sid Myers Pirates, it's a game that actually lets you be a pirate.
I like this game's sub-Reddit, it's a huge echo chamber, filled with buyers' remorse. Tears all over the place, people swearing this game is an amazing work of art :))
Peak sunk cost fallacy.
dude, i didnt know it was THAT bad.
this is hillarious
Thanks for the review and stressing out, so that we don't have too. I love your vids.
I played the beta, and completed everything in it before the game released. I essentially played the whole game and was left with the grinding and the second half of the story
Naval Action is what I wanted the game to play like but being your own character that does pirate stuff and have actual combat between ship crews and on land
I had some streamer I’d never heard of before’s video of this game recommended to me by UA-cam.
The second I saw him automatically get some loot when the ship he was attacking exploded I felt blinding rage.
I don't think I've ever heard the "10 years is enough" argument, but if someone actually ever tried to present that as a valid point, they should consider this: 2014 was 10 years ago. Can you imagine losing games from that era or earlier?
My favorite PlanetSide 2 UA-camr is so grown up
Great video Sir. Entertaining and informative.
I'm so comfortable not owning this specific game, thanks.
@3:32 did you turn down the graphics a lot or does the game really look this bad? No shadows anywhere?
I feel like Ubisoft were the type of kids that stuck forks into light sockets multiple times.