Sea of ​​Thieves Review - Cool open world

Sea of ​​Thieves was shown for the first time at E3 2015. The game was received positively in the knowledge that Rare was at the helm of this game. The graphic style was unmistakable from the developer from Twycross and was seen as the promise of Rare to show once again what made them so famous. We are now a little three years later. A Gamescom game session and a Beta further, the game is finally launched. It has yielded divided opinions within the editorial team, but now we can finally attach conclusions to this game. Will Sea of ​​Thieves know a safe journey or will it be shipwrecked?

The beginning of a pirate life

The game starts as you might expect. You start by choosing your character from a randomly generated number. You choose the one that best suits your taste. Unfortunately there is no real create-a-character, but that should not spoil the fun. Then you choose the way you want to play the game. Are you a Piet Piraat and do you go solo, or do you choose a gang of moons to make the seas unsafe with four men? This choice does not influence what you can expect in the game. It does affect how you experience the game.
You then start in a tavern on an island, a so-called outpost. With this post office you get your missions at three factions (The order of Souls, The Gold Hoarders and the Merchant Alliance). These factions also determine what your reputation will be as a pirate. Are you a treasure hunter for the gold? Are you the feared pirate who does not fear undead or are you just a simple but clever merchant? You will thus again receive the treasures you deserve and thus you buy outfits, cosmetic adjustments and weapons. It also serves as a social hub before you choose the large open sea. Pretty soon I ran out of the tavern, pooping and drunk looking for my ship.

I did not have my crew for choosing. You are immediately placed with others. On your ship you choose the mission that you have purchased, which involves voting. When the mission starts, teamwork really comes into play. You speak to each other through the headset or you can communicate with each other via context-sensitive texts that are placed on the d-pad. One man mans the helm, the second crew member sails, the third the anchor and the sea chart, and a fourth keeps an eye on the crow's nest. You have to operate everything for sailing. That is really a requirement on a large ship. Guns must be operated with two men, if you want to be efficient and deadly in a fight against another gang of pirates. The one loads the gun while the other points and shoots. Recharging must be done by the other because there is only room for one cannonball. Adjusting the sail also makes a world of difference, because this ensures that you stay agile, even with wind. This works just as brilliantly as it creates chaos. Exploring the seas is really an event in itself and really works soothing. This gives us a kind of satisfied feeling, but of course we come here to hang out the pirate so quickly to the missions.

The game with two faces

Missions themselves vary from finding a gang of (un) dead pirates and taking the captain's skull back with them, to treasure hunting on the various islands, or to find bottles with a treasure map. The coolest missions are actually when you have to take over a heavily armed fort, encounter a squat or get a so-called Cloudskull in sight. These are special places that are temporarily in the picture, with valuable treasures. It was really fat to perform all these kinds of missions with 3 other players. You really do treasure hunting together. The treasure map you have can be shown to your teammate so that you can figure out where the treasure is buried. The game gives you no hints when a way pointer or graphic compass in your screen that you can keep.

This brings me to the gameplay in its entirety. The steering is tight and usually straightforward. The chance sometimes become frustrating when you have to use the choice wheels to choose a weapon or item, but soit. The cool thing I think is that the game does not take you by the hand. Your bucket, for example, does not only serve to remove the water from your ship if you suffer shipwreck. It also helps you to wet the skeletons, with gold attachments on their clothing, and to let them rust (although this completely undermines my physics lessons from the past). Becoming drunk is not only funny, your puke is also a formidable chemical weapon. The undead are harder to defeat in the dark than in daylight. It is based on a certain logic. It makes the game cool in my eyes, because teamwork and thinking together.

Let me however make it clear that the game has a completely different face. In your opinion it does not get any easier and certainly not more fun. In fact, I get the impression that the game is not actually made for soloists. Sea of ​​Thieves has just been made to play with superiors. While playing the beta, it felt empty and abandoned at the moment you were playing on your own. In terms of content there was not much required, so really playing missions was not there. That is of course different with the release. And yet it is not exciting when you are alone. This is because when you play alone there is relatively little (inter) action. The game becomes difficult because certain enemies are quite spicy. If you are on your own at sea, you should also hope that you are not pitted by a bunch of opposing teammates. This happened frequently I can tell you, despite my guns pointing up. Games likeThat is why Destiny and World of Warcraft have PvE elements, so the einzelgänger among us can also have a fun game. Even the apparent repair of your ship is very difficult if your ship makes water. I hope that Rare will think about content for this target group for future updates. Of course you may wonder if that is the intention for this game, but this can make or break the game.

As beautiful as a set of sounding golden coins

Being graphical and sound technical, it's all a mustache and I only briefly think about it. The game is really beautiful to see. The cartoony style sometimes hides some flat textures, but it runs very smoothly. The light effects are to be feasted and the islands are generally very lively and colorfully designed. The water is truly fantastic and all animations are sleek and beautiful. The sound is very good. Music is known to be high Rare level. Sound effects are almost perfect. The sea sounds soothing and the weapons sound very convincing. The lumbering weapons of the past come into their own. Music is not interwoven in the game in the usual way. Music is made by an accordion and guitar. This creates an old-fashioned pirate atmosphere and again this invites you to do it together because everyone plays his own instrument. All in all, this is exactly what we can expect from Rare.

Conclusion

The game makes me lean worse on two legs than a pirate with a wooden leg. Sea of ​​Thieves has a lot of potential. That is why I wanted to take a closer look at the elements that it has to offer and how it plays. That the game is going to get a lot of support, I'm not afraid of that (paid or not). However, I am afraid that the game will not get an early sailor's grave. This is because it is the first in the content that is now available. Although there is quite a lot to do, it seems very fast at a gravel session with the risk that boredom is lying in wait. Items are pricey to get and there does not seem to be much to boast. Everyone has the same attributes, so everyone is and remains equal in terms of skills. In other words, there is not much to play for except the cosmetic tweaks and simply a cool title that you can wear. That everyone is the same, makes it a game that follows the 'easy to learn, hard to master' principle. That's good, because a number of games likeThe Divisionjust have the problem that you are very underpowered when you are just starting out. This is to a lesser extent with Sea of ​​Thieves, because you prefer to play with superiors. But, as soon as you play in your uppie you have to watch every pass you make. The enemies of some missions in your uppie are tough to not do. But then I'm not even talking about the most important thing: you do not start anything against a group of hostile players on your own. This is my second reason why I am divided. Because the latter is going to determine whether you are going to like the game or not. Add to that also that Sea of ​​Thieves has not escaped the well-known server problems (which were not solved at the time of the review), the game can not get more than enough. Perhaps even more important (and more painful).

The Plus and Minus Points

✔ Gameplay generally solid
✔ Cool open world social experience
✔ Requires cooperation and use of intellects
✔ Graphically and sound technically very strong
✖ Boring, empty and harder on your own
✖ Grinding and monotonous content boring
✖ Servers down
✖ How will support be in the future?

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