Sea of Thieves (Xbox Series X)
When out sailing the glittering waters of Sea of Thieves, there are many dangers to be wary of. While the gorgeous waters may move with impressive realism, lurking beneath the waves are monstrous sirens, hungry sharks, and even the kraken whose tentacles can wind around your ship or yank you right off of it. However, even though skeleton crews can rise up out of the water on their ship to attack you, the one thing a pirate fears more than anything else out at sea is the sight of another crew of pirates. No greater threat to your latest haul of booty exists, but Sea of Thieves is also intelligently balanced, the game designed around mad dashes to protect your treasures and a battle system fair to all parties, all while still including plenty of engaging story quests and organic events outside of player encounters to make its stretch of ocean rife with opportunities for exciting play.
When you first create your pirate in Sea of Thieves, you’re actually given most of what you’ll ever need to engage with the world and remain competitive with other players in this always online first person action game. You are given a cutlass and every type of gun so you can fight, you are given equipment like a shovel for unearthing buried treasure and a bucket for bailing water off your ship, tools for messing around during the stretches of sailing between islands like a fishing rod or a range of instruments for sea shanties, and even the entire pirate ship is provided gratis and comes stocked with cannonballs, food for healing, and boards for repairing. You can find things like firebombs out in the world and special supernatural cannonballs that can force a ship to drop anchor or force its crew to dance when hit, but there are no special tools to buy to give you an unfair advantage. The size of your ship and crew can definitely impact your effectiveness, a solo player likely to struggle with ship battles since managing repairs, attacking, and navigation alone is rough, but if you have a crew of two to four players, you can also get differently sized ships. Sloops, brigantines, and galleons are all balanced in turn with their expected player count, a sloop an agile and small ship with only one cannon on each side, but the large galleon that is much easier to hit in turn takes longer to sink than its smaller counterparts. This balancing also impacts how revival is handled, with players who aren’t saved by a crewmate in time teleporting to the Ferry of the Damned that will return them to their ship after a certain amount of time proportional to their crew size. The Ferry of the Damned means someone boarding your ship can only do as much damage as they can manage before they’re taken out, but in a battle between crews, you can also hold your own by repeatedly springing back to life on your ship to repair damages.
The player battles will definitely color much of the Sea of Thieves experience, but much more of your time will be spent out on the sea doing other activities. Beyond some early tutorial content introducing some basic gameplay mechanics though, the world is your oyster and the game won’t shove you towards any one activity, a strong sense of discovery in finding out what is out there and what riches it can earn you making the early days of your sea-faring adventures rather special. The main thing that will connect most activities though is how earning gold is handled. Out on islands, in forts, and even in mermaid shrines deep under the waves you can find plenty of treasure types. Treasure chests, haunted skulls, crates of goods, and glowing gems just a few of the items you can discover and load up onto your vessel, but actually selling them to someone who wants them is where they’ll earn their value. There are a few different factions operating in the Sea of Thieves, groups like the Gold Hoarders and Order of Lost Souls desiring specific treasure types or you could turn them into the Reapers who operate as outlaws in a sea already full of dangerous pirates. One of the few advantages to be bought with the gold you earn ends up being Captaincy, players able to buy a ship with more customization options but also they can make use of the Sovereigns that allow you to turn in found treasure more quickly and simply, this not a huge edge over other players and more a nice convenience for those who put in the time to afford becoming a captain.
What makes the treasure delivery portion such a vital part of the game’s difficulty and gameplay loop though is the potential for interruption. The are many voyages you can undertake that boil down to something like following a map to dig up buried treasure or hunting down specific skeleton captains that would be pretty easy ways to collect loot if you didn’t have to then get it back to an outpost and one of the faction representatives. There are never going to be too many ships sailing in the same sea as you at one time, but as you’re sailing off with a recent haul, there is always a bit of nervous energy watching the horizon for the sails of a player ship. Even if you spot them, you then wonder if maybe they’ll leave you alone, or maybe they have better treasure and you should risk an attack, and while you’re wondering this, there may be other dangers that suddenly arise at sea. A battle between player crews can drift into stormy waters where it’s hard to keep in the right direction or even see the opponent at times, and out in the water a Megalodon may rise up and start attacking a ship as an unexpected third party in the fight. There will be times player ships see no need to sail to each other, other times they may be friendly, and other times they may be friendly until they’re right where they want you for the betrayal, but if not for this danger, most treasure would be guaranteed and certain voyages would feel like they hardly pack any oomph. Generally the low value voyages are meant for newer players though, and things like taking out a Megalodon or seeking out other world events like fleets of skeleton ships or fortresses full of phantom sailors are available to players of any level so you don’t need to drudge through the tiny tasks if you seek more unique and exciting action.
While the thought of losing all the treasure you grabbed on a journey sounds like it would be disheartening, here again Sea of Thieves knows how to make it so even having your ship sink doesn’t bother you for long. Beyond even ship revival being free, the main thing is that the gold you earn for turning in treasures is mostly used for unnecessary cosmetics. There are extra currencies like Ancient Coins you can buy for real money for more impressive clothing and fittings for your ship, but the gold you actually earn mostly goes towards giving your pirate a more impressive wardrobe or decking out your ship in interesting colors and finery. Some things like pets will be hard to earn through regular play but they’re again just mostly there as a nice little extra, and the gold, doubloons, and Ancient Coins you earn are locked to your character so they can’t be stolen, meaning a panicked treasure turn-in while under attack can still lead to you getting away with the rewards of a haul. There are commendations to be earned for doing certain tasks and finding certain treasures although again, they’re not necessary and instead mark your progress and unlock more things to buy from the shops. With this balance in place, you still don’t want to be attacked and still fear other players, but it’s hardly the end of the world if you do sink and some of the game’s most exciting moments can be the organic skirmishes that arise from how you engage with other players between your more structured activities.
Sea of Thieves does have a wealth of worthwhile activities to do even if you do start it in Safer Seas, a game mode that makes it so you only sail on the ocean with just your crew but with far less gold rewarded for doing so. Beyond investigating what strange things like skull-shaped clouds and whirling red tornadoes lead to, there are also more involved voyages and Tall Tales to participate in. Later voyages can be multi-step activities where you can find yourselves fighting fleets of ghost ships, unlocking ancient vaults with puzzles, and facing off with the different creatures inhabiting the Sea of Thieves. The Tall Tales though are almost like the game’s story mode, especially when it comes to the Shroudbreaker. In this game’s world, the Sea of Thieves is a part of the ocean cordoned off from the rest of the world by the Devil’s Shroud, a wall of clouds that will tear apart any ship that sails into it. However, it is said an island of riches exists in the Shroud, but to power the magical artifact to briefly peel back the veil and search for this island, you need to do a slew of clever and varied tasks. From deciphering sailing maps drawn and written by a child to searching the skies for constellations, from repeating the last actions of a doomed couple to diving into shipwrecks and dodging volcanic eruptions, the Shroudbreaker quests could make up a full single-player experience on its own that could work as a standalone game about piracy without the need for treasure rewards.
Interesting riddles, battles with unique story villains, and more make the Tall Tales Sea of Thieves’s important structured core for when you want something a bit meatier than organically occurring events, although with the ship diving feature you can also immediately appear at the start of potentially interesting activities out in the world since sailing can occasionally be slow or uneventful otherwise. Besides the Shroudbreaker Tall Tales though, you have the wonderful Monkey Island crossover where the game is turned into a point-and-click adventure essentially as you need to find the right items and interact with quirky characters to complete a tie-in tale. Funnily enough though, the other crossover Tall Tale isn’t quite so interesting despite being billed as friendly to new players, the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tale having many slow sections where you just look at things like you were on a theme park dark ride while also overusing a certain type of siren statue puzzle that was already found elsewhere in the game. It’s not an awful tale but certainly one that can give a wrong impression of a game teeming with interesting activities beyond just fighting other players, and while your sword is mainly for swinging about with little thought and your slow firing guns also mean most on-foot danger is more an obstacle than a compelling battle, Sea of Thieves still concocts some dangerous situations with some teeth and allows other elements of exploring the world take center stage for keeping your interest piqued and mind working.
Ultimately, you can spend many nights doing lengthy activities meant for just you and your crew, checkpoints in the Tall Tale preventing you from losing progress even if you do run into other players. Some nights you may not even see other players since the ocean is large and they may have their own plans for what to do, and usually you can anticipate the risks involved in doing things like grabbing certain treasures that make you appear on every player’s map. There’s an important mix at play, certain activities exhilarating on their own and thus more self-contained while others are quick to complete but some of the challenge is in protecting your loot in transit. Sea of Thieves isn’t just a game about ship battles with other players because of all the effort put into fleshing out the world with worthwhile activities that can be started as you please or might arise as their own unique interruption to sailing about. It’s easy to get sidetracked when you spot something strange but possibly profitable nearby and you don’t need to be too shy to sail the seas since outposts where you can turn things in are rarely too far from whatever island you’re investigating. Sea of Thieves would feel like it’s missing a little something for a solo player out on Safer Seas only, but save for the rare outlier like the Legend of the Sunken Kingdom voyage that seems to expect you to sail around most of the map without getting attacked, Sea of Thieves is designed so that you can do plenty of work and earn plenty of rewards despite the occasional encounters that don’t go your way.
THE VERDICT: Sea of Thieves is an exceptional pirate adventure filled with entertaining and creative quests of all sorts. You can search out action in the form of wonderful Tall Tales like the ones involving the Shroudbreaker that test your riddle solving and change how you look at a world that you could already get to know through voyages for treasure and battles against sea monsters and skeleton crews. You can get into unexpected encounters on the ocean with organic events or other players looking to take your haul, unless of course you’re the one seeking to cause trouble. While a solo player on Safer Seas might not see as much excitement, as long as you can round up a shipmate, you can uncover plenty of unique activities and experience a magnificent pirate adventure all while still having a world of riches left to keep you coming back after. Sea of Thieves is both the kind of game with entertaining structured content and the kind that leaves you telling tales about impressive and unique unplanned encounters, the life of a pirate in this world of opportunities truly an exhilarating one.
And so, I give Sea of Thieves for Xbox Series X…
A FANTASTIC rating. Even if you’re not interested in the greater adventures out on the ocean, Sea of Thieves’s Tall Tales already provide an excellent experience that hits on so many of the fantasies one would hope to live out as a pirate in a video game. Ship battles, finding buried treasure, encounters with strange sea monsters, even things as simple as getting drunk on grog or playing some shanties are all found in just the basics of the experience and the Tall Tales do wonders in building more involved activities around them. The basic sword and pistol combat would certainly feel underwhelming if it was the only way you could engage with the world, but you’re deciphering maps, parsing riddles, avoiding traps, and a good deal more thanks to the creative paths the Tall Tales take, but even still there are world events to add more spice and variety. Fortresses, skeleton lords, mermaid shrines, and then there are the unexpected encounters with monsters like the Megalodon, it feels hard to encapsulate the incredible range of activities while also avoiding spoiling too much of them because of the wonderful sense of discovery in learning what else might exist out at sea. This is all before you factor in the other player crews out on the waters, this game rich with excitement able to reach heart-pounding levels as you can fear for your own haul or get giddy at the idea of snagging the booty from some other crew. You can certainly sail the seas as a mostly friendly player, many of the game’s updates shaving away some frustrations and the rare glitch that still exists will usually not impede you much. The way gold and treasure is handled is incredibly smart in preventing losses from being devastating, especially since you can often set off quickly on another voyage and make up for it so long as you don’t pointlessly hoard treasure aboard your ship for long. Outposts are spaced well from areas of interest so there is some danger in going for big hauls but they’re never so far that it feels like you’re guaranteed trouble, Sea of Thieves even making sure the number of players on the same sea is never too much so that only once have I seen five player ships in the same general area in over 150 hours of playing. That playtime as well is a mark of how much there is to do since I was still finding fresh new activities even late into that runtime.
It would be easy to just gush about some of the most exciting moments unique to my experience here. Getting sunk by one crew while innocently doing a Tall Tale only to come back, sink their ship, take their treasure, sail off, get attacked by the second ever Kraken I’d seen as the other crew tries to sail up and get their revenge, and then making it to an outpost and turning some of it in before they overtake us is the kind of electrifying event that happens just out of organic player behavior and unexpected events triggering. Sea of Thieves also offers so many moments that can still excite on their own though that Safer Seas, despite it leading to things like the time it takes to travel by ship feeling less important despite how immersive its handling can be, can still have plenty of engaging puzzles and events to entertain a player. It still feels like a game at its best with at least two players in a crew on the same sea as others, but Sea of Thieves has grown into a wonderful pirate fantasy where its ocean of opportunity can keep you coming back night after night to see it all and make your fortune with little fear of the failures setting you back all that much.