Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Feb 8, 2022

  Despite it's lengthy development cycle this game fails to bring experience that isn't constantly wading through gargantuan amount of bugs, godawful translation and demented AI. Akella's sailing games aren't known for being bug free but despite it's shortcomings pirates of caribbean was at least charming and it's jankiness could have been excused by it's age, after all it's a 19 years old game. 19 years and few games later, the developer not only shows next to no increase in quality but it seems to me like the games are actually getting worse. The most profound feature is bugs and broken quests. There is for example a feature where you can send a boat to a captain of a non-hostile ship and ask them to trade (you can sell contraband). I tried this five times and I had the game freeze FOUR times on me when I initiated the dialogue with the captain. The game also got stuck on me when a bunch of slaves/convicts approached me, refusing to let me leave area, nor refusing to allow me to talk to them, effectively locking me out of any progress. The game is rampant with such issues, it downright demands that you save CONSTANTLY because it craps itself on every little convenience. I started a quest to escort merchant to a town. Pirates attacked us near the end of the journey, but I could not moor even after sinking them, the sail to options just disappeared and no, I was not in combat. The music is alright, but terribly repetitive. There are some genuinely nice tunes but their constant repetition is going to drive you insane. Every nation needs at least one more variation of music for their cities and there need to me more combat themes for naval warfare, which is especially painful due to how it tends to drag. Speaking of the gameplay dragging, holy crap this game feels like it's built to annoy the ever living crap out of you. There are constant enemy spawns homing in on you that basically never despawn. I leave the port and immediately have 7-9 groups of ships on me, that constantly chase me around, with others joining in frequently preventing me from landing anywhere without having to fight or picking up stuff like floating barrels in the sea. It doesn't help that the combat is slow and tedious. I get it, it's a 17th century sailing game, I'm not gonna cry how it's not like AC black flag but for the love of god can I NOT get chased by million ships the moment I leave the harbor? The quests are ridiculous too. Often they don't give you the first idea where to go or what to do, I had to refer to a guide because the journal not only often has insufficient information, it often also doesn't often update at all. The journal isn't the only problem here, oh no. There is a quest where you, after joining a certain trade company, are asked to moor your ship in the harbor. Not only you can't moor any other ships in your fleet during the quest in that colony, you also have to dump all of your sailors away. I had two ships at the time, a fast as hell xebec, and a corvette. Total crew count was around 400. Whoosh, you have to dump it all away, bye bye experienced crew. After you finally moor the rest of the fleet in another city and come back in a single ship, you can finally moor it and proceed the quest, where you get a different ship under your command. Two parts later you come back and are informed that the port was assaulted and your ship was thrown into battle and sunk. MARVELOUS. Not only they make you dump off your entire crew but they take away your goddamn ship too. Is this supposed to be some goddamn joke? No, it's not funny. Oh you get a unique ship which was actually worse than what I had before, so to recapitulate, you lose your ship, your crew and are given a piece of crap as a compensation, without being warned in ANY way at all. Your fleet AI is completely retarded and I can't count how many times I have seen crash into each other or board a ship and then, instead of staying on their own ship or you being given an option of what to do with the ship they succeeded in boarding, they just swap to the ship they just boarded, no matter the rank or quality of the ship. You can't rely on your AI captains in any capacity at all. You tell them to sail away? They sail right into enemies so that the enemies can board them. Funnily enough this doesn't happen to the AI enemies. They always sail with reasonable cohesion. The game contains trinkets called talismans and amulets. The problem is that not only they have trade-offs (10% bonus damage for firearms but your enemies have higher chance of critical strike with their firearms, for example), but they also only last certain period of time. What is this a bloody MMO? Likewise the selection of personal effects like weapons, firearms or armors are basically non-existent in this game. The street vendor stores are consistently borderline EMPTY and devoid of anything of value. Yes, sometimes you find something interesting, once in several months for example, but frankly this game gives you basically ZERO incentive to make money, because the purchaseable ships in the shipyards are ass and you can't buy cool weapons and armor with your cash unless you get REALLY lucky and something appears in the store. Even then, don't expect anything much. Leveling sucks too, the game uses some arbitrary exp point system and I have to this day NO idea what provides me with ability points, because increasing in the rank gives you NOTHING. It only makes enemies more difficult and supposedly makes new items appear. The graphics are mediocre in this game. Honestly I don't see much of a step-up from pirates of the caribbean, a 2003 game, so I have to question what the developers have been doing all these years. If the game was better gameplay-wise I wouldn't give a damn, but the problem is the effort is lacking EVERYWHERE. Not only the game is broken as hell in basically every facet but they have the gall to make half a dozen DLC's. No developers, I bought a game called sea dogs, not EA dogs. I really wanted to like this game, despite it's shortcomings I enjoyed the pirates of caribbean, but I just cannot recommend this broken excuse for a game with clear conscience. Shame on you developers.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 11, 2016

  First some most usefull hints for newplayers : Check the keys config first, tutorial is weak on explaining those. R key : time acceleration x 2, press again to return to normal, cant be key-mapped so dont override. + / - : time acceleration/decceleration (up to 8 on sea mode, 3 on land, 2.5 on map, and down to 0.5 everywhere), cant be key-mapped. Decceleration is usefull for hard sword fights. Fencing mode to feint : SHIFT key (default) + LMB = group attack, + MMB : feint + counterattack, + RMB = feint, can be key-mapped in config. Normal attack mode : LMB : slash, MMB : heavy attack, RMB : pierce SPACE : block (default mapping) E : draw/hide weapon (default mapping) Q : fire pistol (default mapping) Enter : action menu key (some people completly miss it to open worldmap when in sea mode ie), use arrow keys to navigate within action menu, left/right for choice of actions, up/down to select ships (when on sea mode). F2 : all purpose game menus (like the inventory menu -> items) on world map TAB : free camera map scrolling ------ - pirate game - open world - deep background - hundreds of hours of quests - great variety of ships, weapons - skill based, rpg like - exploring, privateering, pirating, trading, crafting, upgrading, escorting, boarding, looting, stealing, plundering towns, flag sneaking and much more... ----- Having played all title from Seadogs licence since the first one in 2000 (enjoyed all exept AOP1), this one is probably the best. This is THE pirate game if you want to experience deep adventures, ships and sword fights. Graphics havent changed much, but the background is there, atmosphere is great and it is what matters. Much more stability, less crash, less bugs, that is already a lot compared to previous titles! The game runs very smoothly. In 100+h i experienced a dozen CTD only. A lot of changes compared to Age of Pirate 2, no more skillbooks, but now you have amulets that give temporary bonus. And there is a new crafting system. Also ship rank requirements have been revised, but you will still need to work your way in navigation before you can afford those huge deck guns. In general the ergonomy of the game is much better, a new key for looting corpse, no more crew following and blocking you everywhere on deck when it is cleared from ennemies, new muskets and carbine... After a long wait the game is now in english, sometime very poorly translated and you cant understand anything, but devs are improving this with every patch. For newcomers i strongly suggest to read the community forum here since the game has no manual, and many features and commands arent shown in tutorial or cant be keymapped (like time acceleration). The game can be frustrating if you never experienced Seadogs, but once you master all its tricks (fencing mode...) it is a very enjoyable game and will bring you hundreds of hours of fun.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 1, 2016

  For all of you who don't know it yet: this is the fifth game in the Sea Dogs series (originally named "Корсары"). The previous games are titled as follows: Sea Dogs 1: "Sea Dogs: An Epic Adventure At Sea" (2000) Sea Dogs 2: "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003) Sea Dogs 3: "Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales" (2005) Sea Dogs 4: "Age of Pirates: City of Abandoned Ships" (2009) Back in the day, "Pirates of the Caribbean" (which got the license of the Disney film) was my favourite pirate game of all time. I had played the classics "Pirates!", "Sea Legends", "Big Sea", "1869: History Experience" and many many more before that, but "Pirates of the Caribbean" was the one to keep me entertained for... well... years, actually. It just had everything: sailing, naval battle, exploration of many different areas of the isles on foot, trading, raiding forts and much more. The soundtrack was absolutely enchanting and while the game had a bit of a console feel to it (and a few bugs), it was just amazing. The two "Age of Pirates" games were great as well, but they had no real main story (at least not to the extent of the predecessor) - instead you could create your own character and just be free in the caribbean. Sounded nice on paper, but playing the game felt a bit redundant. (My REAL problem with those games was the atrocious StarForce copy protection on the disks. I just don't like rootkits on my PC, so I installed them both exactly once and when I grew tired of them, I uninstalled them, never to turn back to them again. "Better go back to Sea Dogs 2", I thought for many years.) It's been SEVEN YEARS since the last instalment in the series and now there's finally a brand-new game! And thankfully, it offers everything the great "Sea Dogs 2/Pirates of the Caribbean" offered. Here, we FINALLY have the good old feeling of being back in the caribbean. There's only one character to choose, just as in Sea Dogs 2, and it's great because it comes with a strong story hook (no pun intended). Of course, the game's engine feels exactly like the one from 2003. Yeah, the voice acting is borderline silly. And yes, apart from SOME(!) high-res textures, the graphics seem like they are from 2006 or something. And yes, instead of video sequences that tell the story, you get most of the exposition by dialog boxes (almost like in those anime visual novels). HOWEVER: This really *IS* what the perfect pirate game should feel like. It's a bit wonky, yes, but it's worth every second of your time, without a doubt. Here's why: Want to sail your ship from island to island with the possibility of switching to real-time every second? You can! Want to buy and sell ships, freight, loot and other items, equipping the best weapons and armor to improve your stats? Then do that! Want to explore all the different islands on foot and discover exciting areas? This game has that, and it's gorgeous! Want to engage in exciting naval battles with the option of boarding enemy ships, attacking the enemy sailors with swords and guns, advancing to the captain's quarters in order to finish him and take over the ship? That's what this game is best at!! :) Want to raid cities/forts the same way - by attacking them with your fleet and then finishing them off with swords and guns? Heeeell yeah, go for it!! Up until now, this game hasn't had all that much of attention (let alone media coverage), which is an absolute shame because it clearly deserves it! These developers DESERVE to finally have real success with their creation! So even if it's a pirate game: don't pirate it! Support these guys!! If you've ever thought "A pirate I was meant to be, trim the sails and roam the sea...", THIS is the perfect game for you!
• gamedeal user

  Apr 23, 2016

  Very OLD Akella Pirates game player here when "dinosaurs ruled the earth". I basically played the entire game in Russian (no DLC) before it was released in English offline. I recently went back and have been playing the DLCs online, and my immediate review is still valid in any case. The game series has been around since 2000. Published by Akella, and eveloped by various studios. This is actually the SIXTH game in the series. Sea Dogs, POTC (Sea Dogs Modification, SD2, the bad disney production), Age of Pirates (AoP) , Tortuga - Two Treasures, AoP2:COAS (City of Abandoned Ships) , and POTEHO (SDTEHO). Black Mark Studios has most of the original modders and designs from the original games. SDTEHO has MANY of the same landmarks as COAS and similar quests. Personally, I am partial to COAS for many reasons, but predominantly the freedom to do whatever the hell you want very early. There are several other distinct subset series mods as well both from Russian (Ukraine), and the the generated POTC Build Mod, Gentlemen of Fortune and "Eras" mods. The one that is most notable is the "Gentlemen of Fortune" (GoF) + Eras which makes the game even more massive in terms of gameplay, but "cryptic" terms of controls and difficulty. In order to enjoy THIS game, a player has to be willing "take the pain up the bunghole", at least initially anyway. It is rogue style, you die, you are DEAD. Yes, you WILL die. The game STILL MIGHT crash at the worse possible times, especially in large sea battles. You will get frustrated. You will get angry. You will probably curse at your computer. You will probably curse at Akella / BlackMark Studio developers. You might even curse in Russian if you know the language. Save your game, OFTEN. I do mean A LOT, especially before LEAVING ports. You may even have to revert to an earlier stage save (and more likely than not) because you missed something critical for a mission. If you do not save and end up on the main screen staring and saying "WTF!" because you just lost 10 hours of gameplay, it is YOUR fault. I REALLY mean that. This game can be incredibly unforgiving at times. This game is hardcore (especially from the standpoint of game mechanics), and not meant for new players. Many aspects of the game are not well described such as warehouses, and ship upgrades. Even a background in naval terminology helps. I was part of the design production team of the original English release of AoP2: COAS, but passed on the English translation of SDTEHO, because even the updated Storm Engine is not aging well and problems with the original English release. Currently the translation to English is absolutely insanely laughable at times, but most of us left that understand the game engine are probably not going to fix this game in the series this time round as Akella still has not learned their lessons. Additionally, the entire source is not available inside the game anyway as it is ENCRYPTED, unless you go elsewhere and obtain it "underground", and use some additional modifications. Thanks Akella, as this is somwehat pointless. There are quests on this particular game that will give you more game rage that you have ever experienced in previous series. "Sea Marathon" (Regatta) comes to mind, sailing in "real time" and even with time compression is laborious. Most people have not seen the endings of the later games due to difficulty or just throw up their hands and go, "I quit". The "Dutch Gambit" midgame also has reputation and fame restrictions, and you can only choose ONE path as the stories overlap for continuity. The only time the game crashed and I "raged quit" was during the "Flying the Jolly Roger" DLC, beacuse it can be painful. "Silly gamers, SDTEHO is not for kids..." Basically the gameplay provides a very solid RGP single player experience, but the controls are still ARCHAIC, graphics are aging (lack of intiial DirectX 9 support is UNACCEPTABLE this is 2016!), hit detection is average, and this game WILL NOT HOLD YOUR HAND. There are no "arrows" to guide you. You need to WRITE DOWN things in order to remember them. You need to do some research on how to do things, because the game will not tell you how to do them even with the extra long tutorial. There are a lot of game mechanic concepts that have to be understood UPFRONT. Combat can be unfair and brutish for the unprepared. Landmarks and graphics are RECYCLED from all previous games (with some small expanded list of new areas and features such as ships decks and cemeteries). Items are GREATLY expanded, which magic and alchemy all over the place. It adds a new twist to the game series. There are NO FULL VOICE OVERS (that are unrelated to dialogue), so get used to it, or move on. Failure to read dialogue can result in game failure, and some things are ONLY said ONCE! You are not in a "Captain Blood" novel here. You need to earn your place in order to be successful. You will need to spend a LOT of time in order to build up your skills. Once you master the mechanics you will have a great time, but that will require about 24 hours of your life at least just to understand basic game mechanics, if you have never played the series before. Mastery will take HUNDREDS of hours. Age of Pirates Words of Wisdom: "Rewards come to those that are patient". Can you pass the test or sink to the bottom of the ocean to Davey Jones Locker?
• gamedeal user

  Jun 8, 2016

  This game has its issues. Unlike other games I play the developers seem to pay attention to our complaints as to bugs, crashes, translations and such. With that said, this is a great game. No it is not as polished as "The Witcher" series, but the potential is there with future updates, fixes and releases. There is a serious learning curve, which only enhances the playability. Understanding all you can and can not do, makes the game interesting. I enjoy a challenge. Some of the missions are close to impossible untill you understand the game mechanics along with your abilities. I like the AI that controls the sailing aspect, seas, wind, weather. I actually sail and that part of the game is fun for me. Getting the map of the Caribbean Sea, for the game's time period is valuable. As all things in the real world, names of places change, the geography pretty much stays the same. Different ships, weapons and core crew members make for interesting choices you need to make. Some will come back to haunt you others were splendid choices. Of course save often in open slots, follow the developers suggestions for a smoother game, and when all else fails and your frustrated, start over choose different options and see if they fit your style of play. No, this game is not for everyone. I am sure eventually with luck and persistance you will become the feared pirate "Roberts" with a devastating ship, but till then play and enjoy. Be part of a game still being tweeked and developed by a group of developers who, IMHO get it.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 24, 2016

  I have a love/hate relationship with this game. The graphics are good, sailing has a relaxed realism to it, land and sea combat are generally good. But you start the game having to complete 6 quests before you can buy your ship. The quests aren't always straightforward, and it's the only way to make the money required to buy your ship. If you complete all of them, you'll have 60,000 pesos, far more than enough to buy your ship, provision it, and hire a crew and navigator (necessary because you don't have the sailing skill to manage your starting ship). If you miss a quest or two, you might come up short of cash. The various quests range from fairly simple to overly fiddly, and if you make some wrong decisions you can fail a quest or get paid a lot less. Expect to save and load often, but do not overwrite a save, always save in a new slot... otherwise the game can get unstable (according to the developers). You can add an explanation to the name of the save game, which is quite helpful, and you can delete older saves when they're no longer needed, but keep saves at strategic points "just in case". You'll have to sail to another island, do a few quests there, then sail back to the original island before the "sandbox" version of the game is unlocked. Once it's unlocked, the game is a lot more fun. All the starting quests function as a sort of extended tutorial, so you really need to do them anyway. There are guides and walkthroughs to help you with the quests, not only the initial ones but quests later in the game. These are essential reading. Some of these are better than others, so keep reading. You may find yourself starting a new game a few times until you learn your way through. That's ok, the quests are a lot easier the second or third time through and figuring out the optimum path through the quests can be a lot of fun. One major drawback is that there is no README file or manual with the English version of the game. I've written a guide that should provide all the information you need, so check it out, and I've posted more information on the forums, including my own walkthroughs of the initial quests. Even with all the problems, I'm really enjoying the game. Even if I do use colorful language fairly often. :D ------- Ok, time for an update. I've finally finished the sandbox portion of the game. The timer on the saved game says I've got almost 160 hours at this point, with 530 hours total in Sea Dogs because I started a lot of games. This is the first time I've finished the sandbox. It turns out the tutorial quests, before you get to the sandbox, are really necessary. You do a bit of everything that's in the rest of the game, and it prepares you for the sandbox. But it would be nice if these were spread out a bit more and you got your ship a lot earlier. The sandbox is pure open play. You can do pretty much whatever you want. You have 3 game months to earn 1 million pesos. It gives you time to level up your character, build up your skills, find a good set of officers, and hopefully find a good ship or two. The sandbox is a lot of fun, and it's exactly what I was looking for in a pirate game. The tutorial is one game, the sandbox is another, and now I'm starting the story quests, and there are 3, possibly with some branch paths as well. This will be 3 more games, and playing the story quest is different from playing the sandbox. You'll see what I mean when you get there. By this time, I've "won" the sandbox and there's not much left to do there except start a new game. The balance is just about perfect. I've been told that the story quests are very good, with lots of depth. I really didn't know what the game was about until I got to this point. Some of the forum posts about the story line quests made it sound like something I didn't really want to do, but I'm quite looking forward to this now. Getting to know the game makes a big difference. I don't use colorful language any more, since I've learned to save the game at strategic spots. :)
• gamedeal user

  Jul 29, 2016

  The game is boasting that it's from 2012. Well it was completed that year but don't be fooled! The game can be traced back to Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) a. k. a. Corsairs 2 or Sea Dogs 2 and manages to look and feel much worse. TEHO in essence is a stand-alone DLC for Corsairs 3 a. k. a. Sea Dogs: Caribbean Tales (2006) which also was a huge step back compared to PotC. The developers tried to make a joke with game's abbreviation: PO:TEHO (PO standing for Pirates Odyssey) which looks like a transliterated russian word "fun" but it only makes them look even worse 'cause this game is anything but fun. The first quest is atrocious. I couldn't leave the starting island for 6 bloody hours! And that's after playing the previous 2 games for at least a thousand hours. In PotC you can complete a similar tutorial and learn all the basics in 5 minutes or skip it and learn the game as you go. In TEHO they make backtracking a key game mechanic. You will be going the same paths for hours in a series of lazy uninspired fetch quests. Naval battles are ridiculously brutal. You start with such low stats that it may take a couple of hours to capture the weakest ship. And let's not forget about "glitched" ships that you can only sink by aiming manually or by boarding. I'm pretty sure that it was easier to become a real pirate than play this game. It kicks in after about 100 hours once you reach decent skill points in Navigation and Cannons and becomes more playable but those hours will chase you in nightmares. Music is a huge disappointment. I still listen PotC soundtrack sometimes but TEHO's music is the most generic and annoying thing I've heard in years. Overall TEHO is a bug infested mess with hugely reduced playability to make it more "realistic" - yeah, good luck making it to another island in time while the wind is blowing in opposite direction. Also you could choose a female playable character in Corsairs 3. In SD: TEHO you can't, which is a pity 'cause you're stuck looking at guy's rear for many hours.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 24, 2016

  I want so badly to like this game. And I do, on the surface. But out of the many, MANY games I've played (not even just counting pirate games), this has to be one of the most stressful, painfully frustrating games I've ever played. After putting 22 hours into this game, I still felt like I was in a tutorial, and just got sick of it. I'll just put this into pros and cons: Pros (I'll start off as optimistic as I can): - Cool weapons; also accurate for the time unlike some pirate games - I think this is the best pirate game I own GRAPHICS-WISE, yet also the one I run at highest FPS out of all of them! Sid Meier's Pirates and Blood & Gold: Caribbean have slightly worse graphics tbh, yet I get about 10-20 FPS more on this game, averaging at 70-80, even in large battes and highly populated areas. Hats off to whoever optimized this game, you did the one thing AC4:BF could not! - Acceleration, otherwise the game would be so slow it'd be unplayable. And I don't mean slow as in FPS, I mean the ships crawl like turtles unless you have it as 6x-8x speed. No idea why the devs intentionally had ships sail in real time by default, since every other pirate game I've played has already figured out that it's way too boring. - There are surely other good parts of this game, but none of them are apparent to me after my 22hrs playing, meaning they're too much of a pain to get to in the first place. Cons: - The English translation is HORRIBLE! Run-on sentences, uncapitalization, misused phrases that don't make sense, etc... literally one of the lines is "hello I need an information". It's so weird too, because it's just stuff the player says, most of the NPCs have near-perfect English, as if they're uneducated like they would be in that time. At least 40% of the dialogue looks like it was written by a 9 year old. - The average player, including myself, will spend AT LEAST 4 hours... ON THE FIRST ISLAND! You don't even get a ship until you get a TON of money, and you have no choice but to do a lot of quests (some are okay) and steal from houses! And even if you find anything good, you have to sell it all just to get all of the supplies necessary to leave the island once you get a ship! On top of that, once you've sold all the things you'd rather keep, you ALSO have to sell most of your cargo! For at least 2 hours I was thinking, WHEN CAN I GET OFF THIS DAMNED ROCK?! I thought this was a pirate game, where's my damned ship already! There is also no tutorials, no manual, nothing. I've had to write discussion posts pleading for help at least 15 times before I even bought my ship. It's ridiculous. I only started getting a hang of the game maybe 10 hours in, and I'm usually good at getting into a new game. - Bad combat system. Your crew gets in the way during a boarding, even on a huge ship, and they get killed off by the eliter troops, leaving you surrounded by 20 angry pirates. The worst thing is, if you die, you restart at that boarding, and unless you win, it's impossible to abort: basically, save every time you do something major, or you could get stuck very easily with a ship that's too good for you, and dying over and over will get you nowhere, so you'll have to restart. Over my 22 hour playtime, I've gotten trapped like this two times, totalling to about a 3 hour set back each -- and I do NOT like redoing things. - Little to no gear upgrading. In my 22 hour playtime, not ONCE have I seen another sword or pistol or armor besides the ones I had in a store. All I got once was an arquebus from a special quest, but then I got stuck and had no choice but to go to a previous save, about a 3 hour setback. Damnit was I pissed, and I never saw the quest again. - Map navigation. You can't go anywhere without 5 pirate ships after you, and they usually outsail me, and you can't avoid fighting with them. Also, most quests give half the days I need to get to where I need to be, and if I'm just 2 days late, the quest not only fails, but my reputation with the quest's nation becomes HOSTILE! How the fuck does missing a single shipment of cargo make a whole nation think I'm their enemy? That'd be like a kid having his homework in a day late, and then he gets expelled. Then if you wanna build the rep back with that nation, either THEY'LL be trying to kill you, or a governor for that nation will give you another quest -- that's twice as difficult! Speaking of difficult... - The EASIEST DIFFICULTY is what I've been playing on. If this is the easiest difficulty, then whoever plays the hardest difficulty will quite literally throw his computer out their window in rage and proceed to punch their tv multiple times... in the first 2 hours. - No cheats. I'm no cheater in most games, but this game needs it. This game also needs modding, which it can't be yet. All I need is a few extra pesos and maybe I could get somewhere in this game. If I could just have a large ship and crew, some good weapons, and enough cargo, maybe I'd actually continue playing this game. But for now, this game is just such a piece of crap. TL;DR: There's a part of me that just wants to play this game, thinking "maybe things will be different today?" but they never are. I want so badly to just have fun with this game, but alas, it's quite impossible. For this reason, this is the first game I am not recommending, which is so sad since this game has so much potential, and I've played many stupider games than this one, but this is the first on steam that I've truly needed to dis-recommend. For these reasons, keep your $20 in your wallet. If you want to ignore this review completely and buy the game anyway, I beg that you at least wait until a sale and spend only a few dollars on it, else you'll very likely be missing that $20 shortly.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 7, 2017

  I really want to like this game, I really do. I adored the original Sea Dogs, and Pirates when it came out in 2008 - This is the exact same engine, made to be a little more pretty. The game itself is good, and priced at $10 I don't feel i have been cheated for getting it. But here is the problem - The English translation for this game is broken to the point of nonsense. The game journal doesn't make proper notes for you, and what it does is in the same broken nonsense that the NPC's speak. Getting through just the Tutorial in this game is one of the most infuriating things i have ever had to accomplish. They basically break the mechanics of the game for the tutorial which forces you to do quests in a certain order without actually telling you what you need to do. After reading some guides, and maybe watching some play throughs on youtube - You will figure it out, but by that point you'll be pissed off already and have probably spent 10 hours accomplishing nothing much at all. Here is my biggest peice of advice - Make a save file the moment you complete the Tutorial shit, and save it - Save it forever so you never have to replay any of that garbage ever again. That being said, - If they fixed the translation which i am almost positive cause half the tutorial confusion. I'd give this game a thumbs up. Update: 30 Hours in and I have to restart the game because i did one step of the tutorial out of sequence. --- I wish I was kidding. Again, I really want to like this game but HOLY FUCK. Update #2: Restarted game - got into the heart of the material and despite everything was enjoying it, encountered a game breaking bug that has left me stranded in a town with all the buildings locked and a character who is supposed to activate the next step in the quest won't open his dialouge box, so i need to load a 5 hour old save and avoid ever going back to that town. So save often, and run multiple back up saves so you don't end of losing hours of successful game play. Update #3: Got to the sandbox portion of the game, get frequent crashes. I tried, I really did. But i'm done. Spare yourself this game ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Months later --- I see a large patch has dropped for this game promising fixes to much of the above original review. Guys, I'm going back in. Wish me luck. Well I don't know if they have fixed the tutorial - but there is now an option to skip the tutorial, so that is a major inprovment -- no crashing, I've had to restart once now because i thought skipping the tutorial meant i could actually play the game, which lead to me spending money i'm essentially not allowed to spend or you can't progress in the game. But! Having memorized the introduction i was able to crush that out of the way in about 40 minutes -- Might actually get to really play this after all. Final Edit: The translation is still broken in some places, which can be very frustrating, and there are some gaping holes in the information you get for quests. But with a little help from a guide here and there, buried under it all - is an actually good Sailing / Trader / Pirate game. Paitence will be a virtue, if you're easily frustrated I would recomend skipping.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 7, 2017

  I see a lot of other reviewers have down voted this game because it is too difficult. Yes, it is difficult. Yes you suck at doing anything at the beginning. Yes the graphics are old. Yes the tutorial is long. You are not Captain Jack Sparrow who can just boopity-boop his way through all the challenges without any care. Having a long tutorial is necessary if you are to have any chance at this game without previous experience. This is one of those games where you just have to bite your lips while taking the pain and learn from it. Eventually you will discover good ways to play the game and challenges that seemed hopeless yesterday you now breeze through instead. Your character ingame are after all Charles de Maure, a guy who up to the start of the game have only been enjoying himself in the salons of Paris. He knows nothing about being a captain, and you will take part in his journey to becoming one. Therefore if your cannons don't hit - hire an officer who has a high skill in cannons to command the gun deck. If you are bad at trading - hire a purser! Same goes for all the other skills. Eventually you will become skilled enough yourself that you don't need them anymore. There is of course very little you can do about bugs that might happen ingame. How do you remedy this? A good save game policy where you make fresh manual saves (no overwrites) often and in key points of the game. If something were to go wrong you can always go back even though it is slightly annoying. More content is on its way but there is only a handful of people working on this so everything takes time. If people need help in the start phase of this game there are guides on the games community page you can read. It has a bit rough english translation but it is better than nothing. Quickly summed up - buy this if you are up for a challenging, rewarding game not for the faint of heart. ☮ EDIT: I have since writing this review made a guide of my own on the games tutorial along with a few helpful gameplay tips. Definately recommend any newcomers to read it. Cheers :D http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942607685