Sea of Thieves Review – A Dip in the Shallow End

Right now, the primary attractor for Sea of Thieves is its social play. But that, too, has its share of issues. From a purely cooperative perspective, Rare needs to look long and hard about the flexibility of the game. You can start in a sloop-class ship with one or two players, or in a galleon-class ship with three or four. You can’t invite a third player to your party of two, though, or create a party of four with an empty space to invite your fourth player later when they get home. If you have three players, you make a three-player game, and then you all log out when Joe gets home and log back in to make a four-player party. There’s no “drop in” with Sea of Thieves.

And then there’s PVP and the rose-tinted glasses with which Rare seems to be viewing it. Sea of Thieves is a fertile garden for griefing – harassing other players for the sake of it – with no relief.

To some degree, this is in the spirit of the game’s theme. Pirates are supposed to be mean. Some of that risk is exhilarating. Getting your ship full of treasure pulled into an outpost and anchored and unloading all your treasure before the galleon on your tail can end you can be a blast.

But the game offers no incentive to punch upwards and every reason to punch downward. To a galleon crew of four, a little sloop with one or two players on it is easy pickings. It’s a buffet of violence with, often times, a tangible reward at the end in the form of the dead crew’s treasure. Even the community raid events that intend for players to work together aren’t free from people looking to cause misery.

Even if your tiny crew of two is skilled, there’s not much you can do. Galleons have many more cannons than sloops, and are just as fast as the smaller ships. Further, those bigger crews respawn just as quickly as your smaller crew, so even if you manage to take them all down, they’re already respawning by the time you finish off the last one, making it an endless onslaught. Those bigger crews don’t have longer respawn times, and they don’t lose any of their hard-earned gold for attacking smaller ships and getting out-played. There’s no bonus for going after another full galleon, either. The game is virtually encouraging players to engage in their worst tendencies. Those of us there to explore the world and hang out with our friends are out of luck.

The art style – again, my favorite part of the game – makes this a tonal problem, too. Everything about the art design screams that the team intends for this game to be approachable by people of all ages. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine my brother sitting down with his kid to play this game knowing that the game is overrun with griefers who, more often than not, accent their griefing with colorful language. It feels like Rare is saying, “hey kids, come play on our whimsical playground crawling with racists!” In other words, it’s a confusing, mixed message.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/sea-of-thieves-review/