Historically, Sea of Thieves and I go way back. I played a few hundred hours of Sea of Thieves up until when the Pirates of the Caribbean update came out. I quit because I felt like 80% of what I did was a waste of time. I did soldier through, mostly because I played the game with my family. Unfortunately, after we had to cut a lengthy adventure short for the Pirates of the Caribbean story and lost a few hours of progress, we all hung it up, and I uninstalled the game.
I’m back in the vast ocean of Sea of Thieves, eager to see what’s changed. Has Sea of Thieves rectified the issues that kept me from enjoying it those years ago, or is it finally a pirate’s life for me? I'm especially happy now that I can actually play the game on my PS5. I have some nicer PS5 controllers and headsets, so I’m a happy camper.
The first thing the PS5 version of Sea of Thieves does is make you link up your Microsoft account. As a long-time equal-opportunity player of games, this was a wild thing to do on a PlayStation console. It was easy to set up, but while it keeps warning you that you can only do this once, it made me do it three times when I relaunched the game.
Thankfully, once that was set up, I was surprised to see the pirate I had played Sea of Thieves with years ago looking back at me. Yeah, Sea of Thieves on PS5 is both crossplay and cross-platform. Let me say that again for those in the stern of the boat. Yes, you can play with friends on any system, and the progress the game has will carry over to those platforms as well—well, mostly.
What is an Xbox/PS5 cross-platform agreement without a little Sony salt? I spent a lot of time playing Sea of Thieves over the years, and on those adventures, I earned and purchased a few cosmetics. While playing on PlayStation, I did notice that my Xbox-themed cosmetics were oddly missing. No, I couldn’t sail the Sea of Thieves with my OG Xbox-themed ship or use the Kameo or Saberwulf cosmetics. New players won’t know they are missing a thing, but I do.
It’s also important to note that, even years later, Sea of Thieves still really wants its players to spend real money on in-game items - it’s unmissable in-game. In fact, nearly every time I’ve logged in, I’ve been greeted with a quick commercial trying to sell me a new cosmetic bundle. There are still plenty of prompts in-game that encourage you to buy cosmetics as well. Listen, my pirate is already ugly as sin; a cool hat or a funny dance isn’t going to fix that.
Multiplayer with friends is easy to navigate. I was able to invite friends from their Microsoft accounts, and they could join my crew. Drop-in and drop-out was as simple as it could be. We also switched ships on the fly, which is a change since we all didn’t need to leave and launch a new ship.
When playing with random people, the game will drop you into a lobby with the appropriate-sized crew. While this is handy and makes playing with a full crew a lot easier, I still found it very frustrating, as it felt like wrangling cats. When you play with friends, it’s easy to coordinate, and honestly, sailing a large boat is 100% coordination. Fortunately, if you have enough friends playing the game across all platforms, getting the crew on board is easy.
There have been some very significant changes since Bradford’s initial launch review. There are some themed adventures now that do offer some pick-up-and-play options, notably the Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island adventures. I dabbled in both and will say that Sea of Thieves's potential shines in this regard. Seeing some familiar faces and sailing to new locations with different mechanics is a blast. They function as disconnected story modes that have you fight bosses, visit new areas, and discover new tools and items. This is what Sea of Thieves always should have been.
Walking the plank.
If there is any downfall to the newer adventures, they still require time to complete the chapter of the adventure you are in. What I mean by this is that you can’t go halfway through, call it a night, and come back later. If you leave the game and abandon your quest, you have to start everything over for that chapter. It will probably waste your time if you can’t put an hour or two into it. That’s still very regrettable.
Moving around underwater was still very frustrating, too, when navigating wreckage. You move very clunky, and turns are slow and wide, so while you may be able to turn on a dime above water, underwater feels like driving a large vehicle. As this is a significant part of searching for treasure, it’s an odd choice. The number of times I got snagged on something and had to execute a three-point turn to avoid drowning underwater in a ship was a few more times than I’d like.
Outside the story missions, there is now a battle pass with tons of cosmetics and items to supplement your play. I looked at it once over the entire time I played. Mostly because I already have existing cosmetics that I am happy with, and the only additional item I’ve spent money on, my German Shepherd pet, already carried over. However, if you want a little more return on investment, Sea of Thieves at least has options now.
I’ve spent a bit yapping about changes, but is Sea of Thieves more fun to play than it was five years ago? I can confidently say the game has moved in the right direction. While I find it hard to tell, as I was playing on early access, I didn’t seem to have many issues with just sailing alone. I was told I was on cross-play servers but didn't encounter many other ships.
X marks the spot… kinda.
Since the last time I played Sea of Thieves on Xbox and PC, I have jumped into it effectively blind and felt like there were some significant graphical changes. I asked both of my kids, who also played the game, and they agreed. I never heard of any graphical improvements, so I went and looked at both console versions. For whatever reason, I was running 120fps 1080p on my Xbox Series X and 60fps and 4K on the PlayStation. That would explain the looks, but it is available on both consoles (and PC). I made both games look the same after messing with the settings. PS5 does offer some slight improvements with assets, like shadow resolution, and that does go a long way.
While sailing the seas alone in my sloop or playing with friends, I noticed there was now more to do. Quests seemed to feel more abundant than when I last played, which is a major improvement. Tall Tales allowed us to feel like we were contributing to a story, which is a step up for sure. At one point, I found a shipwreck and liberated plenty of treasure from it. As I did, I found all sorts of chests, skulls, and other treasures I had never encountered before in new rarities. One thing of note was that every time I placed treasure on my ship, the game automatically logged the treasure. This is neat, as it made it easier to track.
I started chartering a boat and then used some of my extensive funds to buy and captain my ship. This is new, and I completed new quests I had never seen before. I did most of this on the smallest ship available because I am not a social butterfly. When I played with others, I admittedly had a lot more fun overall, but it was also fun to do my own thing at my own pace.
Combat in Sea of Thieves is still pretty straightforward. You can rely on your sword for quick melee damage and guns for devastating ranged attacks. Charging your melee attack can cause you to thrust, which does more damage and also can be useful for diving off of things into water at high speeds. The guns are simple. You have a scoped rifle, a blunderbuss, and a pistol, although a new dual pistol and throwing knives were also just added. I am hoping that these new weapons shake up the meta a bit.
That’s sort of the thing here. It’s awesome that Sea of Thieves is on PS5 now, and it’s also super neat that it’s cross-compatible. However, the game still skews tough towards wanting you to spend money on all sorts of outfits, cosmetic items, pets, and emotes. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like there is any feeling of lasting progression after logging off for a session.
Sea of Thieves has made enough improvements that I will likely rally the sea dogs I used to sail with back together to complete both adventures and have some fun. With the PS5 release, I can also make some new friends in the game. The biggest hurdle overall to the PS5 release is that this isn’t anything special for anyone who has played this on either a PC or Xbox.
Will the PS5 release of Sea of Thieves breathe new life into the game? Probably not long-term, but seeing some new pirates out there will be nice. In fact I may stick around to finish the adventures I was working on. Unfortunately, they will still discover that there isn’t a super satisfying gameplay loop, either. I still felt burned out after a voyage that didn’t go my way. If the PS5 version does well, maybe we will see more improvements.
Full Disclosure: A copy of the game was provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PlayStation 5
