ความคิดเห็น

• 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
• 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

  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

  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

  Jul 25, 2019

  I really, REALLY, REALLY wanted to give this a thumbs up. The game is quite fun. I have played a few Akella pirate games (OG Sea Dogs, Pirates of the Caribbean) and loved them all. This one probably has the best visuals, most variety of ship types, and most variety of missions. BUT.... and its a very big but: This game is just very broken, both mechanically and logically. -First off, there are a LOT of "typos". In a game that relies completely on text to relay information to the player, I would expect the text to be at least mostly readable. It is not. It reads like a Russian 3rd grader wrote the dialog and then used Google translate to put it into English. Sentences were laborious to read. I often had to try to decipher dialog, and there were some very obvious (and sometimes humorous) mistranslations. Now when I say a lot, i don't mean more than average, or even way more than average. I mean easily every other sentence. It affects all text in the game. Dialog, journal entries, item and skill descriptions, everything. It makes the game really hard to play sometimes. -Second, this game is challenging. I don't mean Dark Souls challenging, I mean the game is so bad at communicating things, and things happen in the background without informing the player, leading to very unexpected and sometimes game breaking results. Examples in next paragraph. -Third, the gameplay highly HIGHLY encourages save scumming. Some examples: The tutorial is basically "earn a bunch of gold to buy your first boat". There are a fixed number of ways to earn gold while in the tutorial, and most of them are failable. If a guard asks me to give him booze while on duty, but you are roleplaying a good guy and decide to rat him out to the captain, you lose the chance to earn that gold. You find some earrings out in the jungle and if you sell them you get a pittance of gold, but if you bring them to the governor, he recognizes them as his wifes that got stolen and gives a huge reward. You get the idea. I "failed" the tutorial 3 times before finally caving and looking up an online guide. To top it off, there was no "oops, you failed" type of prompt or screen. I was just stuck, no boat, not enough gold, no more ways to earn any. The entire game is like this. After finally passing the tutorial and playing for a few hours, i had a mission to arrive at some port within 10 days. Well, my ship was shot up, so I repaired it and saved the game. I didn't realize the repairs took 3 days, so now I'm down to 7. The destination was on the other side of the map, into the wind, getting harassed by pirates and the Spanish the whole way. I save scummed probably 30 times before realizing I was SOL. The penalty for failing this mission was France (your nation and the nation with the main story line) becomes hostile and you can no longer dock at their ports. This particular mission was not any type of "high risk-high reward" type of mission or anything like that. It was the second or third mission of the MAIN story line! Here's the catch-22: If I hadnt repaired my ship, I probably still wouldnt have made it since damaged sails and hull reduce speed. I was forced to restart the game, this time repaired before accepting the mission, had strong tailwind, and still only had about a day and a half to spare. Overall, the game is fun and addicting, but more frustrating than anything. The text in game makes it near impossible sometimes to figure out whats going on. Mission objectives are vague. Nearly every mission is timed, even without telling you (As in "thanks for accepting this missing to deliver this thing, oh, by the way i need it there in 5 days or I will hate you and your reputation will be tarnished). Once I failed a mission that had no time limit. Not in the dialog, not in the journal, no mention whatsoever of any urgency and I randomly failed it. Save scummed and completed the mission before it expired. Seemingly innocuous missions can lead to your demise. (Some rabble rouser was picking fights in the tavern, barmaid asked me to deal with him. Met him on the beach for a duel and he brings a 4 barrel pistol, unloading on me before my sword was unsheathed. Save scummed until RNG made him miss 2 of his shots). You are CONSTANTLY being harassed by pirates and head hunters so all of these timed missions are constantly getting interrupted. And more likely than not, those missions are interruptions that you didnt realize had an expiration date. Save yourself the sorrow of an amazing game being ruined by piss-poor execution and half-assed translation. It's fun, but I've started realizing I was dreading playing the game because of its issues.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 14, 2017

  Not a huge gamer in any way, but have logged over 1000 hours in GTA5 and over 3000 in Rift untill they took away your ability to get anywhere raiding with out constantly opening your wallet. Needless to say I am used to hard play mechanics. It's not PVP but has much of the appeal. If you are someone that enjoys game mechanics with great storylines, hugely affordable DLC's, game mods and overwealming positive Steam community support, this may be the game for you. Challenging from start to finish, with more challenges in future DLC I have been hooked for over 1400 hours of gameplay. Thumbs up to BlackMark Studio
• 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

  Mar 15, 2018

  My review will obviously be biased due to my love for the series, but here it goes anyway. Like mentioned by a lot of people before, the game is HARD. Beginner difficulty is more forgiving but nowhere near the definition of the word modern AAA-video games have gotten us used to. Don't overestimate yourself and jump straight into higher difficulties. You will cry. That being said, there is an excellent guide by the user [i]DarkEternis[/i] so don't be afraid to consult it frequently if you don't intend to restart over and over again just to grind through the tutorial and early story quests. Even if you do end up restarting dozens of times, don't skip the tutorial. You get more stuff and dosh by doing everything by the book. Plus, the tutorial kinda grows on you after a while :) There will be bugs. The game will crash. It's pretty much built into the engine, so keep multiple saves at critical points [b]AT ALL TIMES[/b]. Although, on my latest playthrough I've only broken one scripted quest (fixed by a save before the quest, hooray!) and crashed once while boarding. I don't know if the last patch fixed a lot of things, or if it was Hook's mod by [i]LHookins[/i]. Gotta give it to the man, that mod makes the game a lot less frustrating so I highly recommend it! Link can be found on the discussions page. [u]What's good[/u]: +The setting. If you love pirate games set in the Caribbean, the atmosphere is just right! +Sailing mechanics are smooth and naval battles are enjoyable. You don't need the biggest first rate ships to terrorize the seas if you play your cards right when it comes to wind direction and positioning. +Alchemy system is nice. If you're like me who loves hoarding stuff and hunting for rare ingredients in every game possible, this will scratch your itch. The talismans you can craft REALLY come in handy, too bad you can't craft amulets :( +Weapon mechanics. It might seem complicated at first, but blade's weight, length, curvature and balance all affect it's performance. Some depth in it, so you can end up with a rapier masquerading as a heavy sword. Depending on the sword you might cry out of sadness or joy. +The sandbox. Once you get to free-roam without worries, the Caribbean is your limit! The generator quests are plentiful and not too repetitive and offer some great rewards. I personally love the treasure hunt quests! I will touch the "worries" a bit further down the line. ++The quests! This is of course very subjective, but I've really enjoyed the story quests. Some cheesy bits here and there but it's a good journey with memorable characters woven in between power struggles of major Caribbean powers and pirate shenanigans. Toss in a fairly generous hint of supernatural mystique and you're in for a ride! [u]Neutral[/u]: ~The power curve, the age old problem of sandbox RPGs. In the beginning you will struggle and in the end you can obliterate punitive squadrons and forts. You can seriously overlevel some quests if you spend too much time in the sandbox. I was pondering whether to make this a negative or not, but I decided to just throw it out there since some people enjoy blitzing through content and the power creep can always be avoided by restraining yourself a bit or upping the difficulty. ~Roleplaying. I know the game is currently focused on the adventures of Charlie boy, and immersing yourself into the plot is easy, but there isn't a lot of consequences to choices. Despite being an admired hero to 3/4 of the factions people still treat you like a nobody. You actually can't "side" with anyone but France and even so the consequences of being literally the only person doing **** for the crown and colonies are negligible. At least I got an uniform? Cool. Why this isn't a negative is the fact that the skills and P.I.R.A.T.E.S system are solid and sort of believable. It takes time to "max out" everything and even then you can't do everything by yourself. You can't change your base stats (outside of two quests) so there is some meaning in your initial choice. ~Customization. This might be nitpicking, but it is important to some people myself inculded. Ship upgrading is and the ability to swap cannons is good, the selection of ships and equipment is decent but in my opinion further ship customization is lacking severely. Changing your sails is an option, but the colours are too **** bright and ugly to ever consider anything but white or in some cases black. There isn't that much variety in the appearances of the ships so unless you change your sails your super-upgraded, awesomely fast tank of a line ship will look like every other line ship that was stolen from the mooring. Thankfully the unique ships are the ones you are most likely sailing with and you can really make them stand out with some texture mods. Dust off your Google Translator and plunge into the depths of some Russian forums to find most of them, not going into any detail about them. ~I'm surprisingly okay with the outdated engine and graphics, but that's just me. [u]The bad and the ugly[/u]: --The land combat! Ugh. There is no way to make it sound pretty since it's pretty **** archaic and clunky. The good thing is, you'll get used to it. The bad thing is, you'll be engaging in a metric boatload of it before you do and it's required in most quests in difficulties ranging from [i]"That's it?"[/i] to [i]"WHY THE **** AM I EVEN TRYING?!"[/i] depending on the settings and equipment you choose. Listen to the NPCs and master your rapier skill. I am lucky I was used to the combat system from waaay back the earlier games so it wasn't as jarring as it is for those who experience it for the first time. -Speaking of boarders, the AI can really immerse you into a world of drunken sailors. Try not to rely [i]too much[/i] on your boarders since they can sometimes make astoundingly asinine decisions. I've reloaded so many fights to preserve my native American friend because he gets himself surrounded by a horde and runs out of energy. A lot of the time it's a Baby Sitting Simulator 1654. Your sailors WILL block you ALL THE TIME while boarding and you'll have to sheathe your weapons to wiggle yourself to get a piece of that action. Sometimes you boarder will shoot the damsel in distress. Ship AI messes up too from time to time. I've witnessed enough naval battles between nations where the AI just ends up ramming their ships and sinking both somehow. I didn't even want to seize that heavy frigate with 54 32lbs guns, it's okay, it's okay... --“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery." Except that it really doesn't. Not in this game. Once you get your career rolling, you can pile up so much money you'll end up being disappointed by any sum that doesn't have six digits. At least you can keep your officers on board forever despite their dreams of a hut by the beach by forcefully shoving pesos down their trousers. In short, nothing to do with the money you earn. Colony management when? -Time limits that restrict gameplay. They do create a real sense of urgency but without Hook's mod you sometimes can't complete the first quest out of tutorial without sailing on the battle map if the wind ****s you over. Applies to any quest that requires a lot of sailing. And god forbid you end up with simultaneous deadlines forcing you to a quest battle with a damaged ship because you had no time to repair it... -Little things like left click advancing the boarding stage. Seriously? THE most used peripheral button? That alone is the cause of 90% of my reloads because I miss out on cabin chests by accident. Jeez. -Persistent little buggers on the world map. Sometimes that one pirate lugger won't stop chasing your frigate until you actually engage the battle map and watch it sail away in terror. Apparently chasing enemies take priority over quest encounters when going to battle map... That's all I guess. Reached the word limit yarr!
• gamedeal user

  Jul 2, 2021

  This is a redo of a previous negative review. WARNING! there are huge stipulations required to recommend this game. 1. Get Hook's mod/active map Seriously, it makes the game playable and reduces tedium and the frantic pace to something manageable. Without this mod, the game is mostly hopeless. 2. Read one of the great mission and game guides on steam. you WILL miss dozens of scripted missions without realizing what you are getting into unless you know or can reference the missions ahead of time. I missed 4-5 missions because I already had active missions when I ran into the mission script and would fail said mission if I took a detour. You cannot pause (most of) these missions, so you actively have to plan mission order to not give them up or fail. 3. the first 4-8 hours is a tutorial without warning you. most features are locked in some way and nothing warns you about this! why can't I drop cash at the bank? why can't I hire crew? why are there no officers in taverns? Most people get fed up and quit because the game does not explain almost any of these roadblocks or tell you how to remove them. once they are gone from you finishing the secret tutorial, the game opens up and is a hell of a lot of fun, but until then, it is worse than a standardized test with a nasty hangover. 4. The Game is unfair at low levels, you can't fight, you can't trade, and ventures are frustrating for beginners. after stats get to around 30-40 the game becomes much more playable. suddenly you can do more than 3 damage from a sword swing, you might hit a barn door with 20% of your broadside (as opposed to 1%) and loot can be sold to actually pay for your crew. I personally think cheating a bit of skill rank, or cash in the beginning is not cheating per se in this game, but just bypassing unnecessary frustrations. after the low-mid ranks, progression is much smoother and honestly fair. 5. Save constantly and take personal notes. the game is not particularly stable, the engine is over 20 years old, and the journal keeps about 70% of the useful or vital info, the rest is on you. Write notes, take pictures, and reference the guides or you are going to miss or fail a lot. if you take these stipulations to heart. know: this game is basically 18 years old engine wise (seadogs 2 AKA Pirates of the Caribbean) thus it looks crappyish by modern standards. the english is broken and misspelled. Small russian game developer with little resources (or inclination) to do proper translating Sailing mechanics are significantly more realistic than in most "pirate" themed games. large ships are sluggish and hard to manouver and fore-aft sailing ships have better into the wind sailing characteristics. this is a huge plus for many, but a detriment to people looking for arcade like play. crew salaries are overly expensive and trade is impractical until you or a purser get high enough trade skill. keep a small and manouverable ship to run courier missions or capture ships early on. more profitable ventures will open up to you as you become higher skilled later in the game. ultimately, if you want a game you can dive right in to, is simple to learn and play, and polished. go somewhere else, this game will bring you pain. If you are willing to abuse your self and struggle to find out the quirks of the game, it really can bring a great deal of satisfaction. but damn do they make you work for it to get anywhere. Honestly, this offers more than the previous entries (Seadogs (2001) Pirates of the Caribbean, Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales, and Age of Pirates:City of Abandoned Ships) but is absolutely hostile to new players and people in general starting out. If you haven't played any of the above games, I highly recommend playing one of those first. If you have, just be ready to slog through the mud to get to the good stuff in this game, but when you get there, it is pretty fun.
• 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. :)