I was cautiously optimistic about Sea Of Thieves. Having watched some reputable streamers play the beta (admittedly with the cynicism that Microsoft had paid for them to do so) it looked like a fun, albeit repetitive sandbox. The full game boasted a larger range of quests and incentives to play, and after a friend suggested I sign up for the two week Microsoft Game Pass Trial I was able to take to the seas without spending a single dollar. The rest of my PUGB squad already had the game preordered, so it was a fairly easy transition, and we've spent the last week sailing about, shivering timbers, and other nautical verbs like that.

It's been less than a week and half my crew has already uninstalled the game.

There's a lot to appreciate about Sea Of Thieves. The game looks gorgeous, and as a longtime fan of both Eve Online and Guns Of Icarus Online this, on paper, was everything I'd ever wanted. A ship shared between multiple players with open world PVP. Awesome.

After a lengthy debate over which side of the boat was port and which was starboard (left and right respectively, thank you), we got going. There are three NPC guilds/alliances to align with, though we were told that it's better to level all three without prejudice as you're required to hit the cap with each to participate in the endgame content. Each of them had quests that were entertaining at first. Until we handed them in, and were given an identical set of replacements. 5 days later, we're still getting the same quests. Fetch quests.

Go to this island. Dig up some treasure/kill a skeleton/capture a chicken. Sail back. Slowly.

But we're fucking pirates though, we all agreed, and we're not going to do the manual labour when there's a whole server full of peons for us to have at. So we started sailing between outposts instead, looking for other players to fight. Unfortunately most other players seemed to have the same idea, and while ship-to-ship combat is fun, it would usually end in one of us being sunk and neither of us having anything to show for it.

For all its beauty, there are some bizarre gameplay decisions in Sea Of Thieves.

The assorted user interfaces are clunky and awkward, and the layout of the galleon is simply frustrating. Players can only carry 5 musketballs for each of their guns (two max) but apparently are able to simultaneously haul around 10 cannonballs? The result is you're frequently running below deck to refill your guns, as the ammo crate is frustratingly tucked away among the cosmetic/vanity items in the hold. However even a fully loaded weapon is problematic to wield, as there's no crosshairs and the bullet drop on long range weapons is bizarrely unpredictable. The sensitivity options of the controls are also minimal, with one slider for everything, and the sensitivity of the sniper is far too low relative to the default view. As a result almost everyone carries the blunderbuss shotgun and the sword, and the main tactic right now seems to be to get as close to the enemy as possible and then flail wildly. It's effective, but it feels sloppy, and fights seem more dependent on luck than skill.

Respawns are slow and tedious. If a ship sinks it will (usually) immediately materialise only a single island away with absolutely no penatly, which clearly benefits the attacking players rather than the ones defending; an attacker with nothing to lose can endlessly throw empty ships at their target with zero repercussions, while a treasure-laden defender is forced to tirelessly hold off their attacks or sail away.

The core gameplay loops in Sea Of Thieves simply aren't fun.

You can spend hours sailing around feeling like you've achieved nothing meaningful - you can complete dozens of quests, amass a stack of gold, but the only things you can spend it on are cosmetics, the most extravagant of which are ridiculously expensive and would require weeks of monotonous playtime to unlock. The suggestion that I farm fetch quests for 10 hours in order to unlock a new coat does not sound particularly appealing. You can make your character look like more of a badass, but as there's no stats or weapons to upgrade and the combat is so shallow, you seldom feel like one.

The positive experiences we've had with the game usually take place despite its design, rather than because of it.

The skull forts, waves of increasingly difficult enemies, are a welcome change to the usual gameplay, and are one of the few elements of the game where you're rewarded proportionately for the amount of effort put in - when these events begin a giant glowing skull appears in the clouds and players from all around will sail towards it to take part. This often will result in some great clashes as players fight either to control the island, or to seize the majority of the treasure after completing the event.

The sandbox elements of the game encourage experimentation, and sneaking aboard an enemy ship with a barrel of gunpowder only to stealthily detonate it in the hold and sink their ship while they're off looting an island left me laughing maniacally for about ten minutes. There's moments in Sea Of Thieves which allow a fantastic array of natural set-pieces, and there's moments of brilliance where you can see and appreciate the potential of this game. The majority of the time though itstill feels like a beta, a game lacking in structure and purpose and inadequately rewarding the players who take the time to invest in it. The emphasis on cosmetics makes me wonder if some iteration of the game was heavily dependent on microtransactions, and I can't help but feel like the only reason there are no loot crates in this game is due to the recent public backlash. Either that or because there's simply not enough content to justify it. I can understand why several of my friends are so bitter about their purchases.

I appreciate there's an echo of EVE online in Sea Of Thieves; you need to be proactive about the elements of the game you find entertaining. If you only want to mine asteroids in high-sec then you can't complain that the game is dull - you need to go out and camp warp gates, or join a corp of players who are more PVP focused. And it's possible to treat this game as an opportunity to simply goof around - even if you're achieving little in a gameplay sense, there's value to be had in a sandbox where you can sail around with your friends. I do sometimes feel though that even if you start playing with this attitude, the game doesn't do enough to meet you halfway by providing you a good range of things to do together. You can fight enemy ships, sure, but the game rarely gives sufficient reason to do so other than the combat itself which, as we've already mentioned, is average at best.

There's obvious changes that could be made, meaningful ones, that would improve this game dramatically.

Any player you ask can probably suggest a couple; Use the brig to capture attacking players? Alter the layout of the galleon to encourage different types of combat? Let players carry more ammo so they can take part in combat for longer when off-ship? Increase the amount of weapon types and let players upgrade individual parts (scopes, stocks, grips)? Increase the variety of equipment to encourage certain types of gameplay and allow players to specialise? Hire a fucking gameplay designer to come up with some quests that aren't completely mind-numbing? Etc.

There's good times to be had with sea of thieves, but they are few and far between, and having spent a week with the game already I see little incentive to keep going. I feel like I've already seen everything the game has to offer and while the best of it is good, the worst of it is fucking dull. There are better, more consistent games out there for us to play.

It feels like Sea Of Thieves is constantly promising something better; there's going to be patches with new content. There's more exciting quests locked once you hit the level cap. There's cool cosmetics to purchase once you level up enough to buy them. There's more coming, eventually! The problem is the gameplay isn't interesting enough to keep playing, so I doubt most players will ever see it.

Thanks for reading,

Love Sweep