I don’t typically enjoy multiplayer games, at least aside from ones my friends also have, like Halo. Griefers, campers, squeakers, wailing babes, it can all just ruin the fun and take you out of a game. Once in a while though, I’ll take a notion to play something, and I’ll spend the next weeks of the forseeable future with my friends in that game. A good thing then that I found this one since the Destroy All Humans! 2020 remake is still about ten months out!


When I first saw Sea of Thieves at E3 a couple years back, I’ll be honest, it flew completely under my radar. There were other games I was way more excited for, and after playing Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag through again for the third or fourth time, I just wasn’t ready for another pirate game. Not to mention Rare’s reputation at the time for being developers of Kinect shovelware.

Indeed, the intial reaction at the game’s release seemed to validate that reputation with harsh criticisms of unplayability and nothing to do. So what made me want to try it out today and why should anyone else?


My favorite Youtuber for bombastic hilarity is TDKPyrostasis, who is in my opinion a severely underrated Youtuber in a sea of gaming Youtubers, but unfortunately YouTube wasn’t making him enough money to do gaming videos full time, so he had to get a full time job. About a week or so back I saw him go live for the first time in ages, playing Sea of Thieves with his co-workers. I liked what I saw and downloaded the game, managing to convince my buddies Tim and Justin to download and play with me as well.

Justin and I had so much fun with it on the first day we payed for six hours straight, and that only ended because our pitiful human bodies need sleep. We went in completely blind, and I honestly think we were better off for it.


So what exactly IS Sea of Thieves?




Ye are hereby forewarned, the seas beyond be full of gameplay spoilers sailor! Cross ‘em at ye own peril!

Sea of Thieves pleasantly surprised me going in almost completely blind. There was something fun about no tutorial holding our hands and our subsequent trials by fire. Er, water, rather.


Since 2013 Assassin’s Creed IV has been the definitive pirate adventure game... except for the fact it’s the sixth entry in a franchise heavily driven by its complicated sci-fi framing story. That and the fact that anytime you have to stop being a pirate and need to be an assassin the game just flat out stops being fun and starts being aggressively frustrating. Tailing missions are the devil.

Sea of Thieves basically takes all the fun of being a pirate from ACIV, cranks it up to eleven, adds in multiplayer and throws out all the shitty copy-pasted tailing missions and everything else even remotely related to assassins.


It’s first person to start, increasing immersion, which is pretty much what Sea of Thieves strives for. You need a crew of your friends to crew a ship bigger than a sloop, one at the wheel, some working the sails, some working the cannons. You need a cook to cook fish so they heal more and don’t make you sick, you need someone ready at all times to fix any hull breaches and someone to bail out water to keep the ship from sinking. There are six pirate alliances you can take contracts from to do anything from digging up buried treasure to catching live animals to sell them off. There’s also a huge storyline adventure to follow.



To summarize, if you like anything to do with pirates, Sea of Thieves is the most immersive, definitive pirate-simulating experience out there. In order to properly convey how good it feels to play Sea of Thieves, I shall now describe a few of the play sessions I’ve had in the game in-character as journal entries from my pirate persona, Cap’n Black Bill Barbassol. (And yes, that IS a play on the shaving cream. Because y’know, pirates have a thing for beards. Blackbeard, Redbeard, Shortbeard, Nobeard, etc.)


Day 2



Arrr, our first day at see be mostly unprofitable. We did take on a contract from the Gold Hoarders to find buried treasure. A fun time but those penny-pinching land lubbers paid us only pennies for our troubles. I heard tell that the Merchant Alliance pays well, so we accepted contracts from them. Our first contract was to capture two specific pigs, pink bristled and pink and black-spotted. When we landed upon the shore of Devil’s Ridge we didn’t know how to work the cages, so we caught a pig we didn’t need for practice and needed to drown it because we couldn’t figure out how to set it free and neither blade nor pistol could kill it in the cage.


We finally caught the two pigs we needed after about 48 hours, with four days left to bring them into port. We ran out of fruit on the journey and one of the lard lubbers died of starvation, forcing us to stop and catch another one, as well as scavenge more fruit. Just when we though we were home free, we were attacked by other pirates within spittin’ distance of the outpost, the lubbers killed me first mate but the fools sank their own sloop trying to ram our galleon. I couldn’t fix all the damages of their cannon fire, so I grabbed our valuables, loaded them into the rowboat and abandoned ship.

Rowing to shore I grabbed our booty and ran inland, losing me pursuers in the wilds. Eventually they gave up and set sail, be first mate sailing back to the outpost to pick me up. The effort was in vain and ended in tragedy though, for the Kraken beset upon him on his way back. All hope of getting off the outpost now seemed lost...


Day 3



A new crewmember signed on with us, Navigator ‘Shiver Me’ Timmins. A good lad if a bit green around the kills, but he proved to be a fast learner! During his first contract with us, we were beset upon by a ghost ship crewed by skeletons! We took a lot of cannon fire but the fools got wedged into some rocks and we hit ‘em hard with a few broadsides and cursed cannon balls, sendin’ ‘em down into the briney deep! We got all their booty and loaded it onto our galleon in me cap’ns quarters, but on the way to port the mighty Megalodon shark attacked us and sank his pearly whites into our stern. We couldn’t fire and fix the hull at the same time, we were going down!


Thinkin’ on his toes, Timmins loaded the rowboat with our booty and made for the nearest island while me and Maui the Masticater made a valiant last stand, going down with the ship. Stepping off the Ferry O’ the Damned me and Maui made haste to pick Timmins up, for enemy pirates had spotted him and landed ashore to give chase!

Though the Meg made for us again we ran it off, just the two of us, makin’ our way to the island and rescuing Timmins. ‘Twas smooth sailin’ to the outpost, our bounty netting us well over five-thousand gold pieces. We even managed to succeed at an animal contract after another failure. Yarr harr! Damned if we didn’t toast a few grog tankards to that victory. Though we were all too drunk to move and the ship was full speed when she ran aground on a sandbar. Don’t know what we’d do without the altruist mermaids carrying us off to a new ship...


Day 6



Ominous clouds n the shape of a skull have appeared on the horizon since we took to the seas, but we’ve always been too afraid of them to sail in their direction. That is, until I heard tell of treasure hoards kept by skeletons so valuable they could set ye up for life! So we pointed our galleon in the direction of a skull cloud and set sail for The Devil’s Roar.


We came across another galleon besieging the fort when we first arrived. The lubbers offered us an alliance, but then immediately stabbed us in the back and opened fire on our ship. Arrgh, pirates after me own heart, I wasn’t planning on sharing any of the booty meself either. But the lubbers still caught us off guard and we went down.

After we stocked up on supplies again, we set out for the fort once more and immediately attacked our aggressors, yarr we let ‘em have a broadside and cursed ‘em with a barrelball, bleeding out all their surprise. But these lubbers were crafty, on a whole new level to us. Their most skilled crewman was a pirate clad only in glowing tattoos from the waist up, with a golden pegleg I’d not seen the likes of in any shop before. It soon became clear to me this crew’s adventures likely outnumbered ours by the hundreds. Yet still we persisted.


We spent hours in a stationary battle at sea, their ship practically in splinters as we gave no quarter and fired broadside after broadside. The masts were splintered an fallen, the hull like swiss cheese, but somehow the lubbers kept her afloat! Then two of their number snuck aboard while we were distracted and keel-hauled us, well-played strategy it were indeed. With our entire crew trapped on the Ferry O’ The Damned until the portal to the world of the living opened for us, our ship was left to their mercy.

Down but not out, we appeared on a small isle and began restocking yet again, this time adding a rowboat and a keg of gunppowder to our arsenal. Having killed us twice, our rival crew’s ship was marked with a bounty, allowing us to track their movements on our map. As we suspected they were just as low on supplies as we were, and had broken off their siege of the Skeleton Stronghold, limping off to a nearby island to lick their wounds and resupply.


After formulating our plan, we waited until nightfall and snuffed our lanterns, sailing to the other side of the island our rivals had anchored. While Timmins and I carried gunpowder keg across the isle, me first mate Maui The Masticater sailed the ship around as a distraction. The lubbers fell for it and Timmins and I blew holes on an entire side of their ship with the keg! Arrgh ye should have seen that bloated bathtub list, harr harr!

Yet still, it was for nought. Even with an advantage, we still lost out to our more experienced rivals. They haven’t seen the last of Black Bill Barbassol, one day we’ll be back on the save level as the lubbers and we’ll send them to Davy Jones’ Locker! Until that day, nothing else be keeping me from the bountiful booty in that Skeleton Stronghold! Arrgh, mark me words...


(As of the time of writing, last night Justin and I took on a skeleton fort, won, then fought off both the Kraken and the Meg in nothing but a sloop.)



These are just a few examples of the emergent adventures and gameplay that can be experienced in the game. If you like pirates to any degree, you will definitely have fun with the game.


Okay, the game actually sounds pretty fun. So what’s the bad news?




No game is perfect, obviously. There are always design decisions that come off as annoying or just plain bad, and Sea of Thieves is no exception.

- The game barely tells you how to do anything.

While I genuinely appreciate less hand-holdy games, I still like to be told the basics at least. Sea of Thieves features a rudimentary tutorial, but beyond that you’ll be sailing cluelessly unless you look up a guide and/or patch notes.


- Respawning and Spawn Killing

The only reason we lost to the rival pirates in my story is because there’s barely any penalty for death. Anyone who dies in combat can basically just respawn right back on their ship. This means that it’s impossible to kill a ship’s crew and loot their hold as a reward for having more skill. It also means that more experienced players can camp spawn points on a rival ship and spawn kill their opponents, which is frustrating and unfair. This also happened to us, and it’s a good way to have the experience utterly ruined for new and/or solo players.


- Strict Inventory Limitations

This one I understand to a degree. You can only carry up to five fruit of any kind at a time, and five wood planks at a time. It’s understandable, players shouldn’t be able to heal indefinitely if they have three full stacks of 99 coconuts, and they shouldn’t just be allowed to carry enough wood to build an entire new ship for patching breaches either. But it also means that when initially stocking up on supplies, you’ll be making several trips back and forth to your ship before you can actually get to playing the game.


Guns can only hold five bullets at a time too, and with their reload speed their usefulness runs out very quickly. I feel ten bullets would be a much more fair bullet count. Maybe let us buy a bandolier to carry extra bullets and cannonballs?

- It’s just a teeny bit too grindy.

So most of the purchasable items in the game are purely cosmetic, even the weapons. Which is fine, but some of the prices are ludicrously extortionate. I can only assume the game’s economy is accounting for inflation, because a hook hand might cost you anywhere from 4500 gold to 6800 gold. The cheapest purchasable items for your ship are 49000.


The most profitable thing to do in the game is the Skeleton Forts, the loot from which will net you roughly 20000 gold. For one ship customization item, you would need to raid three skeleton forts, which is like doing three different MMORPG raids to get the most basic of mounts.

In Conclusion



That all said, Sea of Thieves is a game where I don’t actually hate the grind or feel that it’s predatory. One, because the moment-to-moment gameplay is always emergent and fun, and two, because there are precisely zero microtransactions. If you like pirates, MMOs, playing with your friends, immersion or any combination of the former, Sea of Thieves is the game for you.


I give Sea of Thieves my highest recommendation, I typically hate playing online, but Sea of Thieves hooked me like a hungry shark and I haven’t gotten bored or tired of it after a week. Do yourself a favor and play this game.

If you’re interested in Sea of Thieves, you can download it through Microsoft’s Game Pass service on Xbox One or PC, and it’s cross platform. You can also buy the game at a discount through Game Pass, should you want to own it. I know I definitely got my money’s worth!


Sea of Thieves Learn about Rare’s multiplayer experience Sea of Thieves. Discover your inner pirate and plot your… Read more

ADDENDUM: I shared the review with the Sea of Thieves reddit community thinking they might appreciate it. Though a couple people seemed friendly, I was downvoted and my work was called cringey and childish. These kind of ‘gamers’ are the reason I avoid online gaming. If you’re looking for a place to make some mateys for your high seas adventures I do not recommend looking in the Sea of Thieves su breddit.

