Sea of Thieves Reviews

It's hard to know where to start this Review. I first played Sea of Thieves back in September, 2018. While I had a good amount of fun messing around with my friends and having a good time, I found the game back then a little lacking and a little harder than it should be to pick up controls.

2 years later, this game has improved massively. I've really managed to delve into this with such ease now and I'm still having a lot of fun grinding this. I'll try and break this down into categories to be as thorough as possible.

Gameplay: This for the most part I've found completely serviceable. Once you get the hang of where everything is accessible it becomes second nature to control and navigate your character across the seven seas.

Combat is a very mixed bag for me. Most enemies you encounter on land are manageable at least and depending on server lag a moderate challenge. I feel like when it comes to other players, it really comes down more to chance because of how simplified the controls are in this instance.

Naval wise this game is where it really shines. I found that combat on a ship is fun and rewarding no matter what your fighting. I often will cut out of a voyage if I see something that would be worth attacking.

When it comes to actually progression, especially in relation to achievements, this game could be considered overly grinding. Maybe even punishing. This can be slightly helped by becoming an emissary but I still feel like it might be something that should be balanced.

Social: This game is built around the idea of playing with other people and for the most part this game succeeds in making that feel like a natural part of the game. Playing with others really make this game feel more rewarding. I do think that at times Rare may have made this unbalanced for people that prefer to play solo or would rather sail in separate crews, as while it is entirely possible, does make some things next to impossible in-game to complete.

Narrative: Overall, the game doesn't have an incredibly visible story but traversing between islands and talking to NPC's make you aware at how rich the backstory Rare have made in this game. It's intriguing and if you are following the commendations available, even possibly rewarding. The addition of Tall Tales and other story based voyages have definitely improved this as well.

Graphics: This game really shows to me that you don't have to be a AAA game to be beautiful. The style they chose for this game is incredible and works very well for this genre, especially the customisation. I feel like every asset they made for this game had a lot of thought put into it and was lovingly crafted.

I'd also like to say separately that the ocean is absolutely gorgeous in this game and quite possibly the best looking water I have seen this generation.

Audio: This game sounds beautiful, being one of the ones I'm currently using Dolby Atmos on, it feels incredibly immersive. The music is a great accessory and frequently makes me pull out an instrument to start playing Shanties. Most NPC characters are pretty serviceable if not repetitive.

Technical: From this standpoint, I really feel like the overall stability of the servers on this game are mixed. Loading in always feels like a 50/50 on whether or not it'll be Good, Manageable or Terrible. It can really impact how combat with enemies works as I mentioned in the gameplay section. Other than that I don't find many issues with the game itself that don't seem to because of Server issues.

Value: If you are a valued user of Xbox Game Pass then this game is definitely worth a shot. If you're not then I would still say to try it. At it's current retail and with its free updates and drastically improved content, you would make worse purchases. I would fully recommend that you either know people who already have this or are willing to find people once you start playing as solo work can often take away its worth.

After playing Sea of Thieves for more than 2000 hours I felt the need to share my experience. I'll try to give an impression what it feels like to play this game in 2024 and what my experience was over the years.

Sea of Thieves is an online live-service pirate game, which means that it's constantly evolving and being updated since it's release in 2018. Personally, I got into the game in Summer 2020 at the hight of the COVID pandemic, where everyone was looking for a digital world to dive into. Up until that point I was avoiding live-service games, but a co-worker asked me if I want to join him and a few others to play Sea of Thieves. I found a cheap disc in the bargain bin, so I didn't have much to lose. While I only played around 2 sessions with my colleagues, I didn't expect the game to get it's hooks into me and take up a major part of my gaming life, keeping me invested so many years later.

The first time I booted up the game many years ago on the Xbox One S I was a bit skeptical, the game offers you a bunch of pre-generated characters rather than allowing you to create your own and of course as in real-life each character has it's imperfections. One has a strange nose, the other is a bit plumper, the other thin as a straw, but after a few shuffles I had my character. I played the "Maiden Voyage" which is a tutorial and teaches the player the game's basic mechanics, ending with an epic title screen and the player traversing into an online Sea of Thieves server. I was genuinely blown away watching it all on my OLED TV with all the splendor of HDR and the epic soundtrack. While the game has a certain "painted comic style", in combination with luminance of HDR it's unbelievably beautiful. Sunrises and sunsets bath the islands in warm red color tones transforming the scenery into beautiful sights. Once you set sail on those majestic digital ocean waves, which rock your ship with all their force, you will be fully captivated by the presentation. While the world was in a lock-down, I was in a beautiful, immersive Caribbean virtual world. The game allows you to start in a 1 or 2-player sloop, a 3-player brig or a 4-player galleon. So, I started the first time a solo sloop session at Galleon's Grave Outpost, one of the 7 main outposts where you start a session, interact with non-player characters and sell loot. So began my long journey on hunting achievements and living the pirate life...

I quickly noticed that the game doesn't hold your hand, you need to do everything yourself: You need to collect supplies like food, cannon balls and wood to keep your ship and yourself in good shape. On the ship you need to manually raise the anchor, steer with the wheel, raise/lower/angle the sails, shoot the canon, navigate, repair the ship because you are new and you bump into each island at the beginning, bail water before your ship sinks. It's quite a lot for one player, hence while it's recommended to play the game with friends. Each mechanic on its own isn't to complex: for example shooting the canon is easy: you aim, shoot, reload - but you need to consider your ship's and the target's movement and the ballistic fall of the cannon ball. Not only the visuals look good, but also the audio is so well designed with crucial audio cues enhancing your experience, like the short melody when your cannon ball hits another ship. With each session I was learning more and improving my knowledge. I started doing my first quests for one of the 3 beginner trading companies: The Gold Hoarders (who send you on a treasure hunt), the Order of Souls (who send you on skeleton captain bounty hunt) and the Merchant Alliance (who either send you on a cargo transport or ask you to catch certain animals). So with you active quest you sail out and try to find the island mentioned in your quest. Unlike modern day open world games, Sea of Thieves doesn't give you any UI icons or directional arrows on the screen where you need to go, instead you need to figure it out by looking on your ship's map and looking at a compass in which direction you need to go. This is by far my favorite part of the game: it feels great to learn to navigate by looking at distant islands on the horizon, your map and the compass. So, once you find your way to the island you need to go, you solve the quest's requirement and you get loot. Loot is in various forms of treasure chests, skeleton skulls, crates, gems. But there is a catch, you need to take that loot and sell it at one of the trading companies at an outpost. This sounds easier said that done, as the game has several dangers. Sometimes a skeleton crewed ship can hunt you, other times a megalodon can attack you. But the most dangerous of them all are OTHER PLAYERS.

"Player vs Player" is a major part of Sea of Thieves, most memorable moments will occur while interacting with other players - be it with friendly and hostile players. Sometimes it feels like some social experiment. Initially I was very naive, and I learned the hard way the dangers of underestimating the intentions of other crews. I would mind my own business and gather some loot when suddenly a ship would roll around the corner to attack me, leading to a frustrating result where I would lose loot gather over many hours. I learned to be paranoid, always scanning the horizon for other ships, trying to anticipate what they might do next. Maybe they just want to form an alliance, or do they intend to attack? The game elegantly combines naval and on-foot combat. On foot you can use swords, pistols, blunderbusses (shotguns) and the eye of the reach (sniper), with each of the ranged weapons having only 5 shots before you need to find ammo. While there isn't much depth to the combat, recent updates did add some new weapons like a double-barrel pistol, throwing knives, a blowpipe with different darts and a grappling gun. A combat is only won once a player's ship has sunk, if you just kill a player, they will go for a short time to the Ferry of the Damned and return after short time.

The good thing is that progression is only about gold, renown and cosmetics. This means that each player gets the same gameplay tools and have equal chance of succeeding in a battle. The only advantage that a skilled player has over a new player is knowledge about the various game mechanics, islands, world events and common tricks that many players apply. Renown is a leveling system which unlocks new types of quests and cosmetics for each faction. Apart from the afore mentioned 3 trading companies, there are the Reaper's Bones which are representing renegade pirates and Athena's Fortunate which is unlocked by reaching level 50 in 3 other trading companies and becoming a pirate legend. Each trading company allows you to raise an emissary flag which can increase in grade and grant a bonus for each loot you sell to that company. But there is the risk of stacking loot on board rather than trying to sell it right away, which raises the risk of your ship sinking before you manage to sell your loot. While the Reaper's Bones emissary flag is visible for everyone on the map, many crews flying that banner will hunt for other emissary flags which gives them a large amount of gold.

Apart from quests, players can also partake in random world events. Such world events can be a battle against ghost ships around an island, ashen skeleton lords and their minions, skeleton fleets, active skeleton forts, or the newly added burning blade war ship which players can take over when they defeat it. These world events are visible for everyone on the server and will attract other crews.

There are also a decent number of story quests called Tall Tales with 4 different storylines: "The Shores of Gold", "Ashen Age", the Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean crossover "A Pirate's Life" and the Monkey Island crossover "The Legend of Monkey Island". These don't offer much loot, but they are entertaining quests which challenge the players with riddles, platforming and fighting skeletons. But in general, what's the story about? The game doesn't clearly share the story with the player, but through interactions with NPCs, game progression, playing the tall tales, reading journals or listening to the Athena's Fortune free audio book, you will learn about it. Basically Sea of Thieves is a magical place which used to be populated by merfolk and an ancient civilization. But many years ago pirates managed to find a way through the Devil's Shroud, a barrier that kept Sea of Thieves hidden. One such pirate was Ramsey, who became the Pirate Lord and under his banner ships should explore the seas in an alliance. Another pirate is Captain Flameheart who wants Sea of Thieves to become a place where every pirate ship fights one another.

There is basically content & variety for hundreds of hours of entertainment. And I didn't even mention the Sea Forts, the Sunken Shrines, the Fort of the Damned and the whole fishing part. Not to mention the more grindy aspects of Guilds and emissary ledger monthly high score leaderboards.

At one point there was an Arena mode which allowed multiple PVP crews to fight in large battles on a smaller map, but unfortunately the waiting times between matches were quite long and the mode didn't receive much attention from the development team. The Arena mode was replaced by the Hourglass PVP, which basically allows 2 crews of the same size to spawn next to each other fight in a small area on the regular game map until one of the ships sink, making it less frantic than the Arena mode. Unfortunately, this change also resulted in obtainable "legacy" achievements tied to the Arena mode - something that gets brought up in the comment section of every Sea of Thieves article on TA.

In 2021 Sea of Thieves introduced a seasonal model which is typical nowadays for live-service games. It comes with a seasonal progression and a Plunder Pass which can be bought with a premium currency to unlock some fancy cosmetics and grants enough premium currency throughout the 100 levels of the season to buy the next Plunder Pass. Personally, I feel like Sea of Thieves is one of the more casual live-service games. It already offers enough decent looking cosmetics through natural progression, and you are not pressured into spending more real money on premium cosmetics in the in-game shop.

Now after 4 years in this game I'm at a point where I played all parts of the game, which grew to become this large pirate fantasy with many facets. It's hard for me to say if I would recommend the game to others as it's a very special game, but very time consuming, sometimes "pointless" and everyone needs to find out for themselves it they will enjoy it. Over the last few years several updates added many quality-of-life improvements, better onboarding tools, options to play on private server without opposing players and lowered the difficulty on certain areas to ease the entry for new players. But if you have some good friends you want to play online with and have a good laugh, or if you are looking for a game which doesn't hold your hand and rewards your sailing, navigational and puzzle solving skills, Sea of Thieves might be the right game for you. It's definitely one of the most unique gaming experiences I've encountered throughout my history of gaming.

I will keep all the memorable moments I had over many online sessions with my wife, friends, colleagues and friendly random strangers close to my heart. This game is my go-to online game, it's my digital comfort food, it's a lifestyle, it's a mental haven after a stressful day. I don't know how long I will continue playing but I do know that whenever I set sail in the waters there will always be an adventure waiting on the horizon in Sea of Thieves.

You start the game a few months after its release, avoided playing it back in March due to the servers frying during the initial week. You read that this game is very polarizing but it's Rare and Phil: you trust them. So you create a terrible random character and imagine how they will ask for Rare coins later if you don't have the character model you would like but brush it off because you're not a multibillion dollars company, you're a mere player: what do you know? This time the game let's you get in and after an introduction that's very polished you spawn in a bar/pub with no indication of what to do, where to go, what is your life objective. "Ok, so my character has no story so that I can do whatever I want! Nice!" you naively think. You go outside the pub (because the interactions inside are meaningless and there is a "pirate code" on the wall that is laughable at best) and you see the ocean and imagine how wonderful it will be when you sail. If God could narrate your life It would say: "but xXx420Sniper69xXx wouldn't be prepared for what would come next!"

So you have no idea what any of the buttons do. The NPCs will make a forced joke about how pigs and chickens are scary stuff but will not explain how the questing system works: "Rare seems to have their priorities straight!", you joke. But then ask "What are the differences and benefits of different quests"? "Who cares, here's some terrible choices of conversation prompts with NPC's that won't help you or guide you but will make you cringe" says Sue, an NPC who sells clothes the closest to the water, just because owing a piece of land must be expensive (and by the prices she charge you know you'll be poor for the rest of your life.) "How do I get the stuff on the chests in front of the houses in the outpost?" you ask getting desperate about any information about anything. "That's meaningless, Look how beautiful the sunset is!" says Chad, who has some talking prompts that are acessible and doesn't required random levels to click. "How do I set a contract/quest?!" you scream from the top of your lungs. "Why are you stressing with this, this game is more fun with friends!" says any defender of this game on the internet. You remember some indie games made on an afternoon that seem to had a longer thought process of connecting the player to its own world than this "blockbuster".

You remember the 2h tutorials from FFXV or MHW and wonders if not information at all is better than all information shoved at once down your throat. You come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, there is a walkable line between both and you can guide without holding hands, but again you're a player, so what do you know? After 1h of walking around an island with absolutely nothing to do you picked some contract from a random NPC and don't know what to do, how to activate it or where to go. A youtube vídeo from someone very excited (It must be from the beta or the release window: you're probably right) you learn that to activate the contracts it goes something like this: you talk to a random NPC and get a paper that says you need to deliver something to a person that you have never heard of and it's not in the island you're right now. What's your next step? "Certainly I need to lay it down on the table inside my ship and vote just myself to see if I shall do it. After that I can read the contract and see what the hell I'm doing with it, but the button is not together with the list of other contracts I have acquired (but can't put down on the table because reasons)" (It's Jack and Rose all over again). No, you have a special menu where you can see the top of the paper with a time and date (that you have no idea if it's in-game or not) and finally an island name and what the quest requires after scrolling down. This is how a company works in real life: you get an assignment without any information of what to do or when and to who deliver it. You need to go your desk, that's the only place with the Enigma machine to decode the request. You verbally accepts it so Mark Zukemberg knows you're up to it and then open it on your pager. Just one assignment though because the other ones are in your fax machine and your desk cannot hold more than one open. You wonder if anyone at Rare works while sober.

The ship navigation and how to stop it are really easy to get an idea on how to do it. You just have to be intuitive about it: Most people will try to steer the wheel but nothing will happen, the ship won't move. Then you remember that ships have anchors and that's why isn't moving. You raise it and try to steer the wheel but again nothing happens. So you have a direction and nothing holding you in place, but you lack something to push your forward: the sails. This a logical thinking process. You imagine how many people will be stuck at the beginning because of the unintuitive contracts set-up and learning the ropes with your vessel and how much would a simple tutorial just to show how it Works would affect the experience. Again, you remember you're not a company with a history of well-made games with extensive thought about everything: What do you know?

After arriving in your first island, which may or may not be where your objective is, that may or may not have chickens/pig/snakes/explosives and finally that you may not have sunk your ship when trying to stop you will experience the game's combat. This is simple too: one button does damage close and one does damage from afar. And being lucky like your Aunt Debbie always told you, you'll get an island full of enemies with explosive barrells and you'll have few bullets of an weapon that barely shoots from afar. You'll experience your first death. You get to a place for people who perished with nothing to do and can then choose to go back to the surface (if you're being hunted they will respawn you somewhere else "How convenient!") or stay there and wonder why this place exists. You clear the island but your "objective is in another terrible hand-made island that you can easily say it feels like those randomly-generated easily-forgotten planets from No Man's Sky". You wonder slightly if No Man's Sky has been fixed since it was released on Xbox. The Xbox UI, which received all most attention from Phil Spencer's Church will quickly show you that the former PS4 exclusive is better, you wonder what will happen first: SoT gets enough content to validate the $60 price tag or if it releases on PS4 in 2020. Tough call.

You wonder what those black skull clouds in the distance mean but you imagine it's something tough. "When will I be strong enough to go there?" "Depends on your patience with this game" says a voice in the back of your head, but you're determined to see everything this game has to offer. You see some ships on the distance but they seem lost just as you were on your first hour "It's an exploration and discovery game bruh!" echoes on your head. You need to get that damn chicken into the cage. You get to an island called Chicken Island and find pigs as far as the eye can see and thank god you got this game on Gamepass! You get one of the damn birds after 3 islands and 4 ghost ship trips and takes it to Warren in "Rare should be closed" Island. Now you just need to repeat this for 2 more chickens and you have completed a quest. You see the achievement list to wonder how hard it will be to get a nice 1000/1000. You visit TA, laugh, free the 30Gb of space this aberration occupied on your HD and installs Banjo-Kazooie from 2017 E3 free Rare Replay.

"Wonderful with friends!"

"Doesn't hold your hands!"

They will add content over time man!"

"You just played 10 min, what do you know?"

"This isn't a Review!"

Non-ironic review: So I'll sumarize everything in the game without being over-dramatic or ironic. Let's see if people get it now.

Visuals (3/5): The game enviroment is beatiful and the water physics is truly wondrous to see. The island. biomas are well done and the passage of time does affect the mystic of the world. The ship details are a nice addition too. The characters design (friends and foes) are very basic, very catoonish but it doesn't affect the gameplay too much. You character design is one of the weakest points as it's random and relies on customization for differentiation.

Gameplay (0.5/5): There is no introduction to the game controls: not a tutorial, not a prompt on how to do things, not a "help" or "how to play window". You enter the game without any story and don't know how to control your characters. On PC I had to keep checking the controls in the options menu to know what every button could do. The gameplay loop is repetitive and the quests are uninteresting: Fetch quests or Defeat enemies quests. Control of the ship is ok and there is a thought process behind the mechanics but that's about it. Weapon variety is cosmetic only. The enemy variety is low (lower than Ryse: Son of Rome for example) and the bosses are either random or require a complex quest line to Spawn (and the rewards are one time-only meaning that there is no incentive to do it again. The contract interaction window is overly complex and completely unintuitive. Definitely got the impression that solo gameplay was an after thought.

Sound (3/5): The music in game sets the tone for the world and it's not very intrusive and isn't very remarkable too. The sounds of guns and enemies are okayish, not very real nor very fake. The sound of Wind may be heard from time to time which is a ncie touch. The music you can produce with your instruments is varied but again hints to a multiplayer only game and not a solo experience.

Progression (1/5): The game progression is very slow. You need to complete multiple contracts at the spam of multiple days to get the pirate legend rank. The quests, as I told before, are not very varied and mostly resume of doing the same thing over and over. As everything is cosmetic only there is no real sense of progression . The lack of content is apparent after a few hours in and it hurts the game. Achievements progression is slow, really slow and requires long grinds.

Multiplayer (2/5): The game was built with multiplayer in mind. There is no denying this when you atually play the game. The problem is that while the competition is releasing single-player games every month with lots of content this game comes off as empty and rushed. The lack of content, the repetition of everything, the necessity of online connection and friends and that you are punished for playing it solo makes Sea of Thieves a very boring experience. This game should not be relased in the state it was. State of Decay came 2 months later and it's the better exclusive game of the year for Microsoft. The playerbase has plummed too since its release meaning that an online experience will be toughter to get the later you get in the game.

World (2/5): Lastly, let's look at the world of Sea of Thieves. The ratio between water and land is ridiculouly high. The number of islands and it's size are a very good indicative that the focus of this game is the voyages with your ship. And that is very limiting of what a pirate do. This game could have so much things in land and backstory to the NPCs and the islands history that it feels very empty and devoided of life. The frequent updates promise to spice things up but product that we have as of 18/07/2018 is not very compelling.

Final: Sea of Thieves tried something new, something that should be applauded. Rare still has that creativity that we know of. That said, the game lacks polish, content and a gameplay hook to keep a great number of people playing it. The updates should fix this in the coming years but right now the game doesn't give a reason to play it. I would give it a higher score if Gameplay was deeper but it's probably the shallowest part of this game.

Final Score: 1/5

So I was waiting for this new Microsoft exclusive to come out, and I thought "god I hope this one doesn't suck like all Microsoft exclusives do nowadays". Im so glad to say that I was wrong.

So right off the bat this game has no story. Who needs story right when we have 'games as service' right? Im sure people can make their own story by doing the same quests over and over again.

I had the pleasure of playing the game when it first came out, to my suprise it seemed like Rare forgot to include a server that works. It's okay, I love sitting in a lobby until I die from boredom. Thats what games are supposed to be about, right guys?

After Rare finally realized they needed something to run this 'MMO' on besides a potato, I came to another conclusion... Achievements won't unlock. YAAAYY! I love playing games with broken achievements.

This game is amazing, as a matter of fact it is so amazing that the Kraken, you know that big thing that they used for marketing purposes, it has no body. Its just arms that come out of the water, isn't that just a sign of polish and effort put in by Rare?

Finally the best and most important thing about the game, the achievement requirements. You know I don't know what the big fuss is with these requirements. "Get rank 50 in all 3 factions" Cmon guys this is possible, if you have no job or other commitments and play nothing but this all of the time. I mean despite not 1 person on TA has completed the game, that doesn't mean that the achievements are bad.

This game is 100% perfection and deserves nothing but the highest praise. I will fight anyone that disagrees with me because I can't handle the thought of this game not being good.