Co-op Days: Sea of Thieves

What will we do with a drunken sailor?

Co-op Days is a series where I write about the multiplayer/co-op games I’ve played with my friends and let you know my unfiltered thoughts. While I usually play games with my brother and our childhood friends every Sunday, I may also talk about games that I’ve played with my partner or with my other friends.

You can check out the other entries on this series here.

Play time: 47 hours
Played on: PC & Steam Deck
Difficulty: Default

It’s been a while since I wrote a Co-op Days post, so I’m here to amend that! This time, we have the ultimate pirate game: Sea of Thieves!

Sea of Thieves is a smash-hit pirate adventure game, offering the quintessential pirate experience of plundering lost treasures, intense battles, vanquishing sea monsters and more.

I’ve always loved pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up, and I always liked the aesthetic. There is something about the frilly shirts, corsets, boots, and the many accessories that they use.

The first time I played Sea of Thieves was back when I first started dating my then-boyfriend-now-husband. Because of Covid, we had to stay apart, so we wanted to find a game to spend time in. He told me about this game, and I bought it for my PC.

My PC didn’t run it that well, but we still had a grand old time in the game. With him as the captain and me as the first mate, we took our little ship from adventure to adventure, found treasures, and escaped from other ships.

Recently, we got back into it as we were looking into a game to play together, and we wanted to relive those times. With him on the PS5 on the big TV and me on my Steam Deck, this time we played it side by side.

Then we got our friends to join us for our sessions, and it became one of the coziest and most entertaining gaming experiences I’ve had recently.

What is Sea of Thieves?

Sea of Thieves is, first and foremost, a social game. You are encouraged to play it with friends. Since I’m very used to playing co-op games with these friends, and my husband is a very easy-going guy, our teamwork is pretty good. Except for when my friends, who are brothers who bicker a lot, start fighting among themselves. But as I grew up with them, I’m pretty used to it; it’s their thing.

It has a pretty distinct art style - very cartoony characters and models, along with probably the best sea I’ve ever seen in gaming. Seriously, I don’t know how the hell they managed to achieve this level of detail, but because you spend around 90% of the time on or near the sea, it makes sense that they paid so much attention to it. It looks absolutely gorgeous on the PS5 compared to my LCD Steam Deck, but it still looks amazing on the Steam Deck.

The GIF is a little blurry, but look at the level of detail of that sea!

You can play this game any way you want: You can plunder treasures, find random quests to complete, you can make it your mission to find and sink other players’ ships and steal their treasures, you can focus on exploring and discovering new stuff, you can complete Tall Tales, and much more.

Tall Tales in this game serve as story-focused quests that can have pretty elaborate stories and puzzles. It is my favorite thing to do in this game, and I always push my crewmates to go for a Tall Tale. Usually, you are given a book with some vague instructions, and it’s up to you to solve what the clues in the book mean. These quests are pretty lengthy, so they are good for longer sessions.

Your ship might get attacked by some other players as you casually make your way to your quest. I don’t like it in other games when other players try to hinder your progress, but the ship battles in Sea of Thieves are actually pretty fun. You need to work together to either escape or fight back. The ensuing chaos after a battle starts is very entertaining.

Here is one of my favorite videos that depicts this sudden chaos, it still makes me laugh every time I watch it:

It’s so damn funny.

We quote it almost every time we come across another ship.

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Teamwork in this game is essential. In our game, one of us is the captain, I’m the one in charge of repairs and the maintenance of the deck, and the other two are responsible for navigation and setting the sails. Our roles can change depending on whether we are in battle or not.

If it’s chill and I have nothing to do, I usually grab some grog from the tankard, start drinking, and playing some pirate tunes. Yes, you can do all that in the game. If you drink enough, you actually get drunk and can even fall off the ship, much to the captain’s dismay (don’t ask me how I know). It’s especially funny if everyone except the captain is drunk.

Cheers!

Technical issues

The game is not bug-free, but we had a pretty smooth experience - for the most part. The most challenging part is having to log into your Xbox account, no matter the platform you are on. Trying to play a game and having a login screen open is not a fun experience, especially if you are playing on PlayStation or Steam Deck.

The second most challenging part was to actually invite friends and bring the crew together. Our two friends were on PC, my husband was on the PS5, and I was on the Steam Deck, which made it a tad more difficult to find each other.

But both of these are mostly a one-time thing, and they did not affect the rest of our sessions. The rest was pretty smooth-sailing, if you don’t mind the pun.

Overall Thoughts

Sea of Thieves can be defined in many ways, but for me, it’s an entertaining game that gets chaotic at times and cozy at other times. Piloting a ship together with your friends is definitely fun - just make sure that you play with the right people.

Pretending to be a pirate and navigating the high seas is a priceless experience. If you are looking for a co-op game like this, Sea of Thieves is a definite recommendation.

I’ll finish up this post with my favorite sea shanty of all time:

What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the mornin’