Rating: 5/10
This game was one of the first I bought after purchasing a new computer, and I’ve enjoyed playing it off and on since. But is Sea of Thieves good for busy gamers? Let’s find out!
Drive-By Game Summary:
In this game, you play as a pirate sailing the Sea of Thieves, plundering treasure across a vast open world. You can take quests to locate and return treasure to Outposts
Save Game Convenience: 3/10
Missions can take up hours of traveling across oceans, and if you quit the game without reaching one of the outposts, you’ll lose all the loot you’ve gathered. If you’re doing one of the “Tall Tales” in Sea of Thieves, the game is slightly more forgiving. You’ll get occasional checkpoints about every 10 minutes of playtime in the Tall Tales.
Story Complexity: 8/10
Understanding the overall story of Sea of Thieves isn’t really necessary to plundering treasure from fellow pirates, but the Tall Tales do come together to tell a cohesive story. However, if you start a new quest after not playing for a while, it may be difficult to remember what happened previously.
Control Scheme: 8/10
The basic controls of most action adventure games apply in this game, and the game has a tutorial to learn the more difficult parts.
Character Customization: 7/10
When you first start the game, you can choose a base character to play as. After that, you can buy fancy clothing, swords and other tools using the gold from your adventures.
Squad Usage: 6/10:
Anywhere from 1-4 players can play the game in a group, with a different type of ship for 1-2, 3 or 4 players. Obviously, having more players and a larger boat can give you an advantage, but it’s not necessary to simply acquire wealth in the game.
Complete Game Review:
When you first launch the game, you’ll go through the tutorial to learn the basics of finding treasure, digging it up, and fighting enemies. Then, you’ll travel into the Sea of Thieves. The game features a tremendously large open world that takes almost 30 minutes to cross in its entirety.
The map is dotted with outposts, and these allow you to purchase supplies, turn your plunder into in-game gold, and purchase new quests to go on. There are also multiple factions in the game. Some, like the Gold Hoarders, simply want to buy and sell treasure, while others like the Reaper’s Bones want you to hunt down your fellow pirates. Control-wise, the game is simple, as you simply need to be able to open an inventory, select an item, and use it.
Since these reviews are aimed at people who love to game but don’t necessarily always have time to get around to it here is the breakdown on the key “time” involved elements. The world is MASSIVE, which is cool from a gameplay perspective, but tends to be time consuming as you cross oceans to reach islands dotted across the map. Additionally, you must reach an outpost in order to sell your loot and actually gain things from your time investment. And though there are several outposts, often you will have to take a long trip to reach one. When playing through a Tall Tale quest, you do get checkpoints throughout, which will allow you to pick it up later. However, you will have to remember exactly what was going on when you last left off.
As much as I love Sea of Thieves, it simply doesn’t rate well for busy gamers. The size of the map and lack of save points in particular make it hard to play in short sessions. If you have a few friends and hours to spare, I would recommend trying it out. However, for the busy gamer, it simply doesn’t do well in our ratings.
