pretty sure the closed beta is up for a couple days! forgot to mention i've got beta keys 😅 here you go! hjbc-bmye-88c3-hgmm lrmf-xqaw-4kx8-acpt w74q-amue-rhfn-cfrb
To be honest I feel like the combat in this is way more compelling than the one in AC4. I love the feedback you get from firing your guns and the explosion effects.
Ubisoft literally was THIS close to having it all. They had the absolute PERFECT blueprint in AC Blackflag! All they had to do was take out the "Assassin" in Blackflag, give the player the option to create their pirate and customize with gender, ethnicity, look, clothing etc and craft an epic narrative story of say something liken to Pirates of the Carribean at World's End. Where you are the last of the Pirate Kings and the East Indian Trading Company and British Royal Navy are after you and your goal is to find your very last hidden treasure to split with your crew to live out the rest of your days. Allow Island and cave exploration, swim to sunken treasures and shipwrecks, sword fight with other pirate factions, maybe even have mutiny in your own crew if they feel they aren't being managed correctly! Have mythical creatures like the Kraken, or cursed Skeletons etc. That would have been the pirate experience that EVERYONE would have thrown money at. Instead, they make a game that belongs on a mobile app. WOW
@@vinicius10573 It's crazy to me that we as players can have this AMAZING idea of a pirate game in our minds but the people that make the games gave us this! 🤦🏽♂️ UNBELIEVABLE
TL;DR of this video. Remember that if Ubisoft was not required by law to finish this game then they would have abandoned this game YEARS ago. So expect this to be the child the abusive parents wish they could just get rid of.
@@SwordlessNinjai don't properly know but i heard it was funded by government so they HAVE to release this game. Edited: it was funded by the Singapore government.
They literally left out the fun things about being a pirate. No boarding and fighting, no docking and leaving your ship, no disembarking on random places. This is just a boat simulator.
Oh but you see, thats those pesky high standards they accused us of having when talking shit about larian. You gotta throw those thoughts out and stop demanding a good game for your money.
ac 2, splinter cell blacklist and chaos teory, far cry 3, ac origins and Odyssey, Rayman Legends, rainbow six Siege,Xdefiant, all that games are Masterpieces!
They have every resource to create the perfect pirate game. A mix between black flag and the exploration of Odyssey minus the assassin's creed stuff with you being able to create your own pirate would have been amazing. Looks like Black Flag is still gonna be the best pirate game afterall.
@@fygjennings87 That game is pure gold and i think it is very underrated. There were no item shops where you could buy ships, you actually had to STEAL them from somebody. You had to manage your crew, you had many side quests from finding treasures to hunting down other pirates, game had a kind of story, you could collect artifacts, fight port cities for gold, even boarding sequence was done right. It really was a peak pirate simulator and you didn't even have good graphics and walking sequences (with few exceptions) and yet the game was awesome and it is what? 20 years old? In 20 years the only good pirate games we got was AC Black Flag and maybe Sea of Thieves.
@@Mary_PuppinsDP play Black Flag (or even AC Odyssey/Valhalla) if the pirate ship stuff interests you. This is inferior in every way besides the updated graphics. And Black Flag still looks pretty good so it’s not even that much of an improvement.
@@franciscoreza8295the government of Singapore dumped millions into the project to help boost the local economy. Ubisoft wanted to just cancel production years ago because they never made any real headway but the Singapore government threatened massive lawsuits if they didnt eventually release the game. So Ubisoft has been dragging their feet making it an acceptable release
@@randymarsh9488 when you are biased af and dont give any games an actuall chance than yes. Ik you havent tried it saying this, nobody that did really says it is a failure
This game could've been so much. Like imagine slower, more realistic ship gameplay, which makes the ship so much more majestic and the game more immersive. They just needed sea of thieves+black flag but with massive ship battles and they wouldve had a hit
wouldn't work that way, SoT works because you got not many players/ships active, Black Flag only worked the way it was because it was singleplayer. none of those would work that well combined and also not with the size they are aiming for in terms of multiplayer
@@Sn1pEzTV Thanks god someone with common sense. People don't realize how difficult it would be to mix SoT and Black Flag. I also despise people who said that this isn't Black Flag only because it's been develop by the same company even when it was never sold as such. With that being said, I'm still not sure about the game but hey we will see at release.
@@SkeDav yeah i was higly sceptical at first too, especially after the push backs multiple times, but i've played it last year and in teh recent beta and do i love this game now, when i wasn't sleeping or eating, i was playing the shit out of the beta xD
If this game had both land and ship gameplay i’d be interested in it. The ship gameplay in ac4 was great, but I would have loved a pure pirate game with the ac4 ship mechanics. I know we have ac4 already, but a pirate game that isn’t connected to ac4, but using what worked in that game could be compelling as hell.
it's not simply a clone of AC4 Ship Gameplay, they've improved it and added much more to it than AC4 had and tbh while i've played it last year and the recent beta, i didn't miss the Land or on-foot gameplay one bit, you can (and often do) disembark onto islands, go back to the Den (Hub Area) but also sail around much at the same time, the boarding sequence makes sense the way this game is designed and how it works and you never lose anyhting really by the way it is.
Literally the only things that held Black Flag back from being the best pirate game out there was the stupid "Abstergo/modern day" plot line and the braindead melee mechanics.
my favorite part of Black Flag was the feelling of jumping off my ship onto a new shore and looking back and seeing my ship waiting for me in the water. I can’t believe they would get rid of that in favor of collection minigames
@@Sn1pEzTV only the main hub island. In AC Black Flag you could jump off your ship in the middle of the ocean if you wanted. They had a game with a great amount of freedom of movement and instead made a game that your welded to the ship while the fun stuff happens in a cut scene.
Honestly the water in Sea of Thieves looks more impressive to me even if it’s exaggerated and a little cartoony. The water actually looks deep and murky in Sea Of Thieves, and the depth of the water seems to control the color, viewing waves from the side you can see light pass through them and the color changes significantly there as well. This water looks above average but not a huge improvement over Assassins Creed
I think the game will be fun, but nothing truly special we haven't gotten before. Like the people saying it's going to be awful because it's Ubisoft, I don't really believe that. The game looks interesting, I could see myself playing it especially as Black Flag is in my top 3 AC games. Basically just an average game release, nothing too awful and nothing too fantastic. Sort of like game junk food, but sometimes that can be good if you're in the mood for it Seems like the kind of thing I'd buy on sale though if they're selling it for 60 bucks. I feel like 30-40 bucks would be a good price range for it
@Kdkjdjewerdnxa Both games have wildly different styles. Sea of Thieves has very exaggerated waves and more 'artistic' visuals if that makes sense. The water in the latest Assassin's Creed games tend to go for a more realistic depiction. Personally I think Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla have amazing water effects, and so does sea of thieves it's just targeting different aesthetics Origins does have that murky depth you're talking about for example, and you can see light pass through it also. Both games have this feature. Sea of Thieves waves are much more of a spectacle on purpose with the way they rise and fall
@@Kdkjdjewerdnxa sea of thieves has the most visually appealing water in gaming. I think red dead 2s is good too, it's weirdly accurate like you can make whirlpools if you run in circles with your horse in it
@@xiax4453You should watch videos of the PC version with maxed out water physics. It looks crazy. Rockstar has always been known for pushing their tech but yeah RDR2 is a whole other beast Maxed out water physics also easily tanks your performance lol. It drops your framerate significantly, but with DLSS it can actually become manageable
This game has been walking the plank for a while now and there’s nothing Ubisoft can do to save it. The sooner they send it out to sink, the quicker they can move on from this disaster.
3:26 Honesly if it was something more like “This whole lifestyle is grand and all, don’t get me wrong, meeting interesting people, tropical vistas, the treasure, but you want to know what I really miss? Those little cakes I used to get with my mum as we watched the ships sail into port.” It would be far more personable and add some character. It would then be like Oh this person actually has some kind of hidden history to them, maybe I can learn more by being around them.
Once upon a time I was hoping for this to be a gritty/realistic(ish) take on Sea of Thieves. Such a hard whiff from Ubi...and I'm the guy who doesn't hate their 'samey' formula.
my #1 problem with this game is still the same to me. The best part about black flag was pulling up next to a ship, swinging over, fighting the crew, and taking over the ship. That was such an awesome high every time i did it. And this just feels like a worse version of that.
Yeah, most fun in Black flag. But because every Ubisoft game has to be developed like a free to play mobile game they couldn't make that work. They could just have a single player campaign and then a multi-player campaign, but they're just chasing the recurring revenue of games as a service multiplayer.
They love releasing games, among releases like Elden Ring and then wonder why their peak players that month are like 10k and their games dead within 3 months lmao
This should definitely fall under the free to play games. That is what it looks like to me. Half assed pirate experience, and I bet it'll be litered with microtransactions. At this point just they should just release it because it'll probably bomb and bomb hard
Check out Naval Action then, it's exactly what you describe. It has its own flaws, but you'll mostky hear them from end game players. Still so much to like there.
I always say the most immersion breaking aspect of most games these days is that you're very much constantly aware that you're actually playing the game and the world isn't real. With great immersive games you can zone out and forget, you feel like you're there and it's real. The old school Assassins Creeds were great for this, despite having intermittent hiccups here and there.
So they took everything that was fun about ship combat in Black Flag, simplified it enough to fit a mobile game, and added literally nothing else that you could stand to play for longer than half an hour to it. Hard pass :D
Damn even with Ubisoft sponsoring people to make videos on their game, people are struggling to find good things to say about it. Wonder how much Ubisoft spent expecting influencers to blindly praise it. This game should have been cancelled years ago, I don’t see a demand for a live service pirate game from Ubisoft, especially when Sea of Thieves is already a far more immersive first person pirate game that seems to work far better in co op than this does. It has artifacts of Assassin’s Creed but it’s like they didn’t want to commit to making either a narrative pirate adventure or an endless sandbox for emergent narratives like Sea of Theives, it’s somewhere in between like they still dont know what they want to make almost a decade after it started development, and that seems incredibly unappealing to me.
I played it a year ago and I will say the difference from last year to this year is really big, it feels much more fun to play now than last year. That doesn't mean it's a great game though lol, it's just more enjoyable than it was a year or so ago.
i'm no developer, but i believe that taking some gameplay features from AC Black Flag and Valhalla, making some tweaks and improvements, and implementing them here wouldn't have been that hard
well all they literally needed was black flag multiplayer, they had the game, they knew what everyone wanted, and they also had the time to make this game as well, since it's been in development for 10 years, I just hope there is some kind of hidden game play that no one has access to, but doubt it.
@@tj-co9goyou realise odyssey came out before valhalla? why would they mean odyssey? the ship in that was awful, it was just black flag with arrows. they meant the interactive crew and openworld rpg features of valhalla, applied to black flag, then remove the assassins creed part of the game and make it multiplayer. they could probably churn that out in 6 months and itd be infinitely better than this shit
@@simplecapt oh hush fan boy, other people have higher standards and expect more. Most people aren't as willing to kiss a$$ like you. If you like it good for you 👍 other people are allowed to have an opinion also, grow up kid.
I remember when Black Flag came out and people all said "this would be a really good game if they just took out all the dumb templars and assassins stuff" We didn't want them to just take out EVERYTHING but the ship driving though... There's nothing here, no fighting on land, no reason to hunt for treasure, no boarding of ships to capture them.
I like the fact you did give it an objective look and not just dogpile it as a "modern Ubisoft game" but it really does reek of that and after hearing your thoughts on it seems to confirm that they wanted to make this a very heavy live service game, but due to the amount of delays it sounds like the passion for the game is beyond dead in Davy Jones's locker which is a shame cause I'd love a Black Flag spiritual successor, but this just doesn't seem to be it.
So many people say they could of stuck with black flag. Just because it’s a pirate game, doesn’t mean they need to stick with a 10 year old game. How the fuck would a game that’s based on assassins be made into skull and bones
@@Kvitebjorn257 There is? Im so glad I already moved on from this game, welp now it makes me sure 100000% not to buy this game or at least wait for the 80-90% discount lmao
LOL A crows nest isn't a cockpit but I did know what part of the ship you were talking about. The command area of a ship would be called the bridge. Great assessment of the game. This is my second beta of it and I think you were very fair and kind to it. Since the NDA is lifted I'm pretty sure this will be the finished product. I'm having fun but I do question how much I'm willing to pay for the game.
they were contractually obligated i.e. forced to complete it. Ubisoft were begging there contractors to let them counsel it, it got so bad that devs were getting depressed as they had to be stretched thin for a game no one wants
@@mgallogical7114You can feel the lack of enthusiasm and excitement from the developers throughout the game. It’s like no one knew or even liked what they were working on and that all comes from mismanagement at the top and the fact they’ve changed genres multiple times while working on it.
A constant peeve of mine in any Ubisoft game is their lack of commitment to full immersion....more specifically the menu designs. Take the menu at 05:16 for example. What I'm getting at is they tried to make the menu look like it was on a piece of parchment. A very clean and intact one but parchment nontheless. Now look at the font of all the text. NONE of that says "ye olde pirate" to me. They used moden plain computer fonts that don't fit the world or the parchment they're on. Instead of, say, light cursive, stylised gothic or even some mild fantasy font. Something like you would almost always see in ES IV: Oblivion UI. This peeve extends to their entire UI, HUD and presentation as a whole....although personally I think there is far to much on screen as is. Ubisoft would probably say it's to make it easier for people to read but I can think of a dozen better designs that what they used. They do the same in Assassins Creed too.
Youd think they would mimic the captains quarters from black flag where you can access some things on the ship to take the load off of having to go to vendors
this isnt even close to black flag, the only similarity is sailing, thats it, even thats not similar with these goofy ass ship models. black flag doesn’t deserve to be associated with this stain
Ubisoft: "hey you like black flags ship combat right?" Well... Yeah but thats no- "Well heres a game thats just the ship combat" Oh thats co- "But we've stripped everything fun from it" ....
I was so hyped for this yonks ago but it has taken soooooo long for this to reach this point. My hype level depleted long ago and just out of spite, i will be passing up this game and sticking with sea of thieves.
They never showed interest in making human combat in this game and we know this, ship combat is what they are doing. We shouldn't be disapointed if it was never the idea, but is it a better idea? I don't think so, one of the thinks that made black flag the best pirate game we had was this perfect flow between ship combat, ship boarding, land exploring (with no loadings), cool animations when entering or ending a hunt or dive, finding caves filled with pirates and stuff. This freedom and attention to detail in animations gave us all that imersion, I don't think choosing not to give us more features and mechanics (that already worked in a previous masterpiece) is a better choice to make us feel like pirates
I love pirate games so will buy this. Have wanted a great realistic graphics pirate game since I was a kid. I don’t know why they don’t do natural progression between ships and land though, Odyssey did it amazingly, it was seamless. Same with boarding. But I still can’t wait for this. As you said, the game is ships focused, not person focused.
If it gets bead reviews and goes on the sale heap quickly I will get it lol. The combat had me hooked to the screen. Takes me back to when I was a kid pretending to be a pirate. And yeah there will be a pretty vast store I'm sure of it.
I loved the Sid Meier's Pirates mechanics when you can fight a captain to captain of ships, and you could actually lose even if you already are on the other captain's ship. Weird there is nothing like that in here.
The constant yelling female crewman is incredibly annoying, it probably would have been tolerable if it was a lower pitch.... but its not. But she's also yelling the ENTIRE TIME you're out there.... I just want to listen to Sea Shanties man, not get screamed at constantly
Was really hoping these delays were leading to them adding on foot combat. Just seems like a such one dimensional game. If I wanted to play this I feel like I could just play Black Flag again and get a better experience. Just automatically winning everytime you board a ship. Not being able to do anything fun on foot. Just be on a ship and shoot other ships. I don’t care if this has a story, I’d rather just have a pirate sim game.
What about exploring your ship with your character and visit your captain's cabin? 5 years ago you could at least see your character stear the ship. 🤔. Not to enter other ships is a downer😑
Nice video! This game seems a lot like an arcade game, more than a deep RPG, I would go back and play the 2013 Black Flag, than pay money to play this. I know it's still beta, but not sure this game is for me.....
After Seeing This Gameplay I Can Confidently Say That Sea Of Thieves Is Still The Undisputed King Of Pirate Games! The Lack Of Dedication From Ubisoft Is Just Abysmal With Skull & Bones.
That ship combat looks more arcady/simplified/casual than sid meier's pirates. Shame, but pass for me (and in-game store, resource mechanics just screaming "we are here just for microtransactions" makes that a hard pass)
Ever since that moment in Red Dead 2 where the gang ends up in guarma, I always thought it would be interesting if Rockstar tried their hand at a pirate centric game. It’s somewhat up their alley in terms of concepts. An outlaw focused narrative and law breaking exploits with an open world traversed by foot or “vehicle”. Whatever it would be I’m sure it would be better than this.
I just hope that this game is enjoyable to some degree. It just feels like too little too late with this one, and I’m not sure where it’s attempting to innovate or set itself apart.
I feel bad for all the devs that worked on this for like a decade just for it to flop before it even comes out. This isn’t even a pirate game, just a ship simulator. I genuinely don’t see the vast majority of people even buying this or enjoying it. They took what made ACIV fun and removed it.
disclaimer this is like the third beta we have seen in the last like 7 years there is still only like a 50% chance this comes out within the next 12 months
All they had to do was make: (Black Flag - Assassin's Creed setting stuff) + Sid Meier's Pirates. Would've been an instant classic. I just don't understand their thought process. If they launch with what's here, a month after release it's going to just be forgotten.
I just can't be convinced. They've had so long to make this game great and it looks like a mobile game that has a AAA price tag. Resource collection looks absolutely ridiculous and the fact you have a black screen to go to shore or the same animation when boarding... it's shockingly bad. It actually just looks like they couldn't be bothered to finish adding the gameplay and emersion aspects that are standard in any game now.
That's a great idea, a quartmaster that work like a drive thru. You don't even leave your ship and it's all one menu. I fuccin hate going to 5 or more different vendors to do my shit
All the game needed to be was ac black flag ship battles with you and an npc run ship with other player's doing the same. And letting you get off your ship to fight using the for honor combat system with a bit of a touch up and there own both those things and never thought of putting them to use.
I wonder how much cutting the on-foot gameplay entirely and simplifying it to 2D menu improve this. Aside from making it easier to do as players and require less resource for devs, it also lessens the expectation of manual raiding like AC4.
Great constructive review, Jay! I swear, they better not get rid of Black Flag ship boarding and use this instead. This game should just come out and we should just take it as is. This game should not influence Black Flag.
The worst part about this whole situation is Ubisoft actually already owns the rights to the greatest single player pirate RPG/simulator experience since Sid Meier's called "Sea Dogs" or "Age of Pirates" depending on your country. Developed by Akella studios, most people are familiar with "Sea Dogs 2" which was published by Bethesda on PC and Xbox in 2003 under the title "Pirates of the Caribbean". The "Sea Dogs" franchise still exist in the dark corners of the Steam library but it mostly survives thanks to the help of the modding community of course. Ubisoft literally already has the game everyone wants collecting dust in the corner and then decided to do this for 10 years instead... The latest version of "Sea Dogs" is a remaster of "Sea Dogs: To Each His Own" coming February 2024 under the title: "Caribbean Legend". I will get "Skull & Bones" as well, but we shall see which one gets more of my time... I think I already know the answer...
I don't care for their Facial-expressions, it is absolutely not needed for Immersion, people who say that grew up with graphics and expect graphics but people immersedquite well into games 20-30 years ago. My issue is the lack of features that Pirate-Games had 20-15 years ago (Games better than Black Flag, for a Pirate game as a whole package, not in part, it was cool that you could jump ship and wander, but the general idea of sailing around isn't new) Sid Meyer Pirates, at least you could fight the captain of the other ship, it had features as Fleet-building and there is a mutiny level to look out for, treasure hunting etc. Age of pirates 1/2 you could build a giant fleet, you could attack strongholds, first by taking out the city's outer defenses, then you and your crew could enter the city, fight through the hord, where you could look for the leader and take out the leader= Victory. You could get the biggest war-ships that existed at that time, you could do a lot of things. These two games have more features than this game has, that to me is BAD. If new games can't do better than older games, the new games have no value to me
3:01 Ubisoft Is never known for their good graphics on humans. In fact they actually downgrade their graphics If you look it up, I remember that they hype it up during trailers and make it look all good but then when you play it it's not that good
