Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is in many ways the dream pirate game, but just like so many dreams, just before you’re about to get to the good part, you find yourself waking up. It’s a deceptive game. It makes a strong first impression with its charm and quirks, and it certainly doesn't hurt that it’s also gorgeous to behold.

It’s an inviting world. You wake up in a tavern to the tune of jolly pirate music and are sent on your way to go plunder the seas. The game charms you with silly gags and the most delirious of drinking mechanics ever seen. It’s minimalistic in its direction, but as you play more and more it begins to become apparent why. There just isn’t that much to do. The seas may be gorgeous, but they are shallow and the pretty shores are empty.

Setting sail for the first time and figuring out how it all works is fulfilling in its own way, due largely in part to the incredible looking and feeling water. Encountering high tides or even sailing through storms give the sailing that little boost to make it just a bit more enjoyable, not to mention encountering another ship. And with the right group of people Sea of Thieves can be a blast, and while that’s something that could be said of just about any game with a cooperative bent, there’s something to be said about running a tight and well-oiled ship.

The ship to ship combat is excellent and there’s a lot of room for complicated sailing maneuvers, improvisation and subterfuge. It’s a shame though that some of the on foot combat doesn’t feel as great.

Beyond encountering other ships and sailing is where Sea of Thieves begins to fall apart. A key problem with Sea of Thieves is none of the things you can acquire serve any purpose other than aesthetics. All new guns, swords, buckets, instruments and everything else are purely cosmetic, and even then, some obvious pirate garb like bandanas and three-pointed hats are absent. You spend all this time digging up chests, raiding forts, and nabbing chickens to what end? The gratification of all the troubles you may have encountered along the way and persevered through is cheapened by this superficial reward structure. There isn’t even some kind of neutral hub city for you to show off your pirate.

A lot of features we’ve come to expect in similar games are notably absent and Sea of Thieves comes across as a bit half-baked by comparison. There’s no real story or campaign to work through and even some obvious pirate tropes like butting heads with a royal navy or a ghost ship or even just keeping pet parrot on your shoulder are nowhere to be found. It’s a pirate game without proper loot, and even if that’s off the table, it seems like the sort of game suitable for a survival or Far Cry style crafting of weapons and upgrades. Not even one of ostensibly obvious ideas or directions were used or taken with Sea of Thieves.

While all these things are problematic, the key issue boils down to a lack of variety in the quests and enemies. There are four major enemies in Sea of Thieves, skeletons, sharks, snakes and other players. Fortunately not all skeletons are the same, some are stronger at night, some are armored and some are packing heat, but they all behave more or less the same. Like the skeletons the quests follow suit. Sure they have different skins on them, but they all end with you putting your booty on your ship and sailing to a port and depositing it appropriately. Some have you digging up treasure after solving a riddle or finding the spot marked by an X, some have you hunting down a skeleton captain to claim his or her skull, and the other one has you chasing down a specific breed of chicken, pig or snake to bring back to a specific port by a specific time.

This quest structure seems like even more of an afterthought when you consider to do the merchant animal fetching quests you might end up sailing to several islands that aren’t even populated with the animal you need. Or if you consider the Order of Souls quests, which will have you fighting a platoon or two of skeletons. You'll frequently be running out of ammo and having to swim all the way back to your ship to get more and then swimming repeatedly, because you can only carry five shots, and there are quite often more than five skeletons, and they quite often don’t go down in even one shot, even with good aim.

There are other ways to get the same loot, like skeleton forts, messages in bottles, shipwrecks or just thoroughly exploring islands, but everything you do fits into the same loop. While it is fun for the first few hours, it begins to wear thin rather quickly.

Apart from hunting the Kraken (which rewards you with nothing for defeating it), that appears to be all the structure there is to Sea of Thieves. Its emphasis on emergent gameplay might be the thing holding it together, but I get the feeling it might also be its downfall.

Warts and all, Rare does have something special here. It’s a compelling shell of a game, and in the days of early access and games as services, Sea of Thieves shows incredible promise. It’s just that right now, its waters are something you might want to dip your toes into before considering a headlong dive in.