Right: Teamwork
Things Sea of Thieves Gets Right and Wrong
Sea of Thieves is primarily about teamwork, and boy does it get it right. Unless you’re heading out on single-person Sloop, you need to use teamwork to get anything of significance done, and I’ve even heard stories of Sloops deciding to team up to take on larger Galleons.
In Sea of Thieves, the workload of sailing a ship falls to players themselves instead of mindless AI followers, and if the players don’t work together they won’t get far. The teamwork required to get a ship to its destination doesn’t feel like work, though. This is partly due to the fact that each individual job aboard a ship is fairly simple, so they’re easy to learn, and even if one crewmember is slacking off, bad at their job, or spending time in the brig, the team will still be able to sail the ship. Especially with the proper communication, sailing a ship is fun as long as work gets taken care of, and players keep an eye on their surroundings for other ships, skeleton forts, and kraken.
Wrong: On-foot Combat
Things Sea of Thieves Gets Right and Wrong
It becomes very apparent after the third or fourth land-based combat encounter that there’s just not that much variety to it.
Swinging a sword never really looks or feels different, and the three guns that are in the game get old just as quick as the swordplay. The very limited ammo and long reloading times ensure players don’t purely use them rather than the sword, but the low damage output makes them feel useless at times.
While skeletons fall at the wayside after a few hits or shots, players take slightly longer to kill, but are hardly tanks. The quick kill times and basic combat mechanics take a lot of strategy out of fighting situations, and it almost always comes down to whoever has the element of surprise.
