Skull & Bones Looks And Plays Worse Than Assassin’s Creed Black Flag

Comparisons between Ubisoft’s new pirate-themed naval warfare game, Skull & Bones, and the decade-old Assassin’s Creed Black Flag shows that the former looks and plays worse than the latter.

Direct comparisons between Skull & Bones and Ubisoft’s decade-old Assassin’s Creed Black Flag shows the same or, in certain cases, worse details and physics. In terms of water physics, both games depict similar looking ripples and waves when moving across the shore area. Water drops can be seen dripping from Edward’s character model in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag when stepping out of water. This detail is missing in Skull & Bones.

Additionally, Edward, the protagonist in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, is able to swim around freely, while your character in Skull & Bones cannot swim at all. This is a glaring omission in the latter, as the game is focused on naval warfare, and the ability to swim comes as a natural expectation.

Moreover, Skull & Bones doesn’t feature any land exploration and hand-to-hand combat when boarding an enemy ship during ship battles, whereas Assassin’s Creed Black Flag  does. Destruction and debris from ship battles also appear more realistic in the latter. Meanwhile, the harpooning mechanic in Skull & Bones is clunky, and hit reactions are abrupt and unrealistic. In Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, however, the mechanic is fluid and intuitive.

During a Q&A session that was part of a conference call discussing Ubisoft’s Q3 sales for its fiscal year 2024, one participant highlighted a shift towards a more live service approach in Skull and Bones, as indicated by the game’s Year 1 roadmap. This participant questioned Ubisoft’s decision to price the game at $70, suggesting that adopting a free-to-play model might be more conducive to the live service model and player base.

In response, Guillemot defended the pricing strategy, asserting that Skull and Bones warrants being a full-priced game due to its extensive scale. He emphasized the game’s substantial size and completeness, describing it as a ” quadruple-A” game that will provide long-term value to players. However, this doesn’t appear to be the case, based on comparisons with the decade-old Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.

Skull and Bones was released on February 16, 2024, for Amazon Luna, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S following several delays and development challenges.