Sea of Thieves Review: A Fun-Filled Pirate Adventure

Sea of Thieves is Rare’s newest outing since they were acquired by Microsoft. It is a pirate-themed adventure where you traverse the world in search of gold and other riches. It’s both single player and multiplayer, including one of the most creative art styles to date in any game with beautiful audio. Some may say that Rare has lost their game since they were acquired by Microsoft, but Rare proves them wrong in their latest outing, as Sea of Thieves is an excellent adventure that is incredibly rewarding.

I’m a Pirate, Mate!

At the beginning of the game, you are given a choice to choose what your pirate will look like. They are pre-set, so you cannot customize them, but there’s no denying the uniqueness of the art style. Each NPC is also unique in their appearance and it is this uniqueness which makes the world of Sea of Thieves special. The character designs are wonderful and fit the pirate theme. It would be a crime to not mention the music. It’s incredible. It sets the atmosphere perfectly.

When you begin the game you can play alone or with a team. With a team, multiple players have roles to play in sailing the Galleon, a rather enormous ship. If you play by yourself, you get to use the Sloop. Playing on your own is much more difficult than playing with a team, although playing with others requires a certain amount of cooperation, especially when sailing. You start out in an initial area and it is from here that you can accept quests to set out and find hidden treasures scoured about the various islands across the sea.

Quest for Treasure

There are three main sources of missions /bounties (seems like something out of Destiny). These are the Order of the Souls, which asks you to slay the undead, the Merchant Company, who wants you to deliver livestock, and my personal favorite, the Gold Hoarders, who want you to find buried treasure. You can only carry three missions at a time. If you are by yourself, you choose the mission. If you’re with a group, the group votes on what mission to undertake. Sailing in this game is incredibly fun and my favorite part of the game. It does, however, require a high attention to detail. Sailing alone is very difficult, but sailing with a group on the Galleon requires quite a bit of cooperation; each player must fulfill their role, or else you’re bound for failure.

The most rewarding thing I found while playing is using the map to find the island the treasure was on and subsequently recover it. The map somewhat pinpoints where the treasure is, but it may take a bit of digging to find it. You then take the treasure back to your ship and sale to the main island. This is where things get tricky.

The seas are perilous, and there’s no telling when you will encounter an enemy ship. If you are on a small ship and battling a large ship, you have almost no chance. Cannons fired on me and I was sunk almost instantly. They can also board your ship and steal the treasure that you worked so hard to recover. This is why it’s so important to play with friends, as this could be preventable. While playing by yourself is the more difficult task, being fired upon and having your ship boarded is much too easy if you are playing by yourself. After all the hard work and effort you put into recovering your bounty, it’s incredibly frustrating to have it stolen.

Combat

Sea of Thieves allows you to use four different weapons, although only two can be equipped at any given time: the Cutlass, the Blunderbuss (a shotgun), Pistol, and the Eye of Reach, which is a long-range rifle. These are very useful in the field of battle, but when you are being boarded, the Blunderbuss and Cutlass are probably your best bets. Sometimes you’ll find another player (or maybe a squadmate?) and you can actually take them down. This is fun, but it will also get you locked in the brigg in the ship if the rest of the team votes on it.

Ship combat is fun, with multiple cannons at each ship’s disposal. Once you engage a ship in combat you can sink it, yet you can also use your sheer numbers (if it’s a smaller ship) to incapacitate it and steal its loot/treasure. Once you kill the opposing players though they will re-spawn on the boat, so you have to keep alert. While combat isn’t the cornerstone of the game, it is a low of fun.

The rewards you can purchase for the gold you get for completing missions are superficial. They do not add any value other than aesthetic value, which doesn’t feel all that rewarding. They are really cool though and they look fantastic.

Ahoy Matey!

Sea of Thieves is by no means perfect. It is a fun-filled adventure and sailing and traversing the seas is the best part. It reminds me of The Wind Waker in terms of sailing, only better. PVP could use some work, as the opposing team spawns back on their own ship after being defeated while being boarded, but this isn’t the end of the world. It just means the boarding party must remain on alert. Ship combat is fun and the game is incredibly rewarding, even though the rewards are simply aesthetic (this should change). Regardless of that though, Sea of Thieves is an incredibly rewarding adventure, allowing you to voyage across the sea in search of treasure and other perilous threats. The most important thing is that the game is a lot of fun, and that’s what games are all about..

Sea of Thieves is truly a journey to remember.

Thank you to Microsoft for Providing VGCultureHQ with a review copy of Sea of Thieves