Sea Of Thieves Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

3. It's Frustratingly Unintuitive

Despite seeming like a light, fun co-op multiplayer pirate game that just about any gamer can just dive into, it's jaw-dropping how unintuitive Sea of Thieves is from the outset.

For starters, aside from teaching you how to access your inventory and eat a banana, there's no tutorial to speak of. The game hurls you in at the deep end and expects you to basically figure it out yourself, or more likely, Google the answer.

As such, working out the game's voyage system, namely the process of voting for a voyage among your team, takes far longer than it should, creating confusion and busy-work where there shouldn't be any.

Even then, actually carrying out the first main quest - where you're tasked with collecting a few chickens - is more frustrating than fun because the game provides so little hint of what players are supposed to do.

Making things worse is the lack of a team mini-map, meaning that if teammates run away, there's no way to locate them without being in their sight line, and this is obviously even worse if they're not using a microphone.

Rare were clearly banking on players relishing the feeling of discovery, but would it have killed them to just hold players' hands through the first voyage at least? As a result, for many, the staggering lack of intuition will be immedaitely offputting.