Stormy waters ahead.
I have never been more torn when writing a game review. Sea of Thieves was supposed to be the return to form for Rare that many of us have been waiting on since Kameo. A brand new IP focused on pirates that would bring gamers together for endless high-sea shenanigans. The beta had promise. I hadn’t had that much fun messing around with friends in a long time. The developers promised the final version would be bountiful with content and things to do.
Now that the game is out and I have spent many hours at sea I can safely say, they were not entirely truthful. Sea of Thieves is a magnificent playground that lets players live the life of a pirate. The water is marvelous to look at, and the mechanics are outstanding. The problem comes from what gamers had feared for so long before release. What is it exactly that we would be doing?
MSRP: $59.99 (free with Game Pass)
Platforms: XB1 (reviewed), PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
The game is broken down into countless fetch quests for separate factions. One involves tracking down ghost pirates, one for finding treasures, and one for bringing back animals. While these all sound like great pirate endeavors, the repetition sets in fast and it sets in hard. Ranking up my faction stance required me to repeat the same boring missions over and over again. These missions are also full of tedium. Taking down the skeletons for example is one of the most boring missions I have ever encountered. Slowly chipping away at their health while running back and forth to get ammo was simply not fun.
All of this could be overlooked if there was a genuine progression in the game. Taking down bounties and earning new and improved gear could be just the loop to keep players coming back. Sadly this is also a sore spot as everything earned in the game is purely cosmetic. I understand the logic behind this. No one wants to be mowed down by over leveled pirates while trying to finish their missions. However, this leads to little reason to progress. I found myself a lot of times just toying around in the world, taking in the sights, missions bared little urgency. Then the PvP kicks in.
Not having a penalty for dying is good, but becomes a hard loop when players get into battles. Sure blasting cannonballs back and forth can be fun, but once a team gets a decent advantage they can simply take up shop on a player’s boat and endlessly spawn kill them over and over. This is not fun, and it ruined several sessions. Especially considering my crew had absolutely nothing of value on our ship. Eventually both parties grew bored and moved on. The PvP is simply not that fun.
Speaking of getting a crew together this is 2018 right? Well I wouldn’t know that considering the archaic ways this game deals with playing with friends. Everyone has to be ready to go from the start. If I am playing with two people and a third wants to join, everyone has to leave the game and head back to the main menu to start matchmaking again. Drop-in co-op has been a thing for ten years now, why does a game that focuses on playing with friends have such a poor implementation of the feature.
Still, playing Sea of Thieves I wanted to love it, I tried to love it. As I mentioned the art style is simply fantastic. Animations are top-notch and that water, just wow. The sandbox Rare has created is unparalleled and it feels like a game that is 3-4 content updates away from being a masterpiece. That is the problem though. With most players currently taking advantage of the Game Pass availability will there be an audience for this game once it gets its true sea-legs? It is impossible to tell, but I feel like this game will eventually be something special.
As it stands Sea of Thieves feels like a title that gets the ideas in place for an amazing game, yet fails to capitalize on them. There simply isn’t enough content to keep me coming back. I love Rare and I hope this builds into something amazing at some point, but for now this game is hard to recommend sinking a serious amount of time into.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
