Customer Reviews

Pirates of the Burning Sea

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Pros:
Naval Combat
Music
Character Creation
Economy

Cons:
Steep Learning Curve
Character Combat
Buggy Quests
Sporadic Technical Issues

As a proud owner of Sid Meir's Pirates! and also of Bethesda's title Sea Dogs, any game the offers me the opportunity to set sail on the high seas puts a piratical gleam in my eye. While some Pirate games are hit or miss (Pirates of the Caribbean anyone?), Pirates of the Burning Sea generally creates more clangs than empty swooshes.

The highlight of the game, and any pirate game in my mind, is the ability to fit out a ship and do battle on the high seas. Pirates of the Burning Sea does not disappoint, as the naval combat, while tedious at first, is actually quite fun. Sea battles also happen to be quite breathtaking, which adds to the overall immersion into the game.

Character creation is also a plus. There are many different ways to customize your character to add your own special touches. The ability to create a truly unique character gives one more pride of their avatars, and again, adds to the immersion in the game. This is a major difference from the popular World of Warcraft, where characters of the same race and gender generally look pretty similar.

One downside is the character combat system which is a little unwieldy in the beginning. Unfortunately, like many of the areas of this game that seem weak, the character combat could have used another few months of polish because it is mostly repetitive and hard to learn.

The economy model is probably the most well conceived part of the game. In Pirates of the Burning Sea, the players really do drive the economy. If you want to buy timber, someone has to sell it to you. Even more cool, certain ships can only be built by other players, and require a vast amount of diverse resources to bring into action. This creates opportunities very similar to reality by requiring the integration of various people and professions cooperating to make a large project happen. The economic structure in this game is so well conceived, it is not at all hard to imagine many players playing the game simply to test their trading skills.

The game is not without its share of problems. A couple of times, technical glitches occurred that caused the program to crash entirely. Also, there are numerous spelling errors and quests that simply do not work. One problem I have noticed more than once is that sometimes deaths during a quest will make it impossible to complete. These annoying technical problems and areas where the game lacks polish actually do a pretty significant job of detracting from what would otherwise be a stellar game. However, since this is a MMO, hopefully many of the technical issues and problems can be addressed in future patches.

In all, if you love Pirate games, you will want to give Pirates of the Burning Sea a try. Hopefully, this game will continue to be polished and improved in the months ahead and could eventually become a truly spectacular game.

(update - as far as I know there is no longer any reason to buy the box. The game has gone Free To Play, meaning you can just download it from the Sony launcher.)

Frankly, this is the best PvP game I've seen in years. If you are looking for a good PvP game, just buy this now. If you want a fun game to play alone and sail ships around the map by yourself, get Sea Dogs instead. Not that this game can't be fun solo, but the meat and potatoes comes from fleet vs fleet action and you're not going to be a fleet of 1. Join up, bring some friends / find some friends and you'll have a blast.

I'll stand by my 4-star rating as opposed to 5-star because frankly the first 10 levels are a bore and the avatar combat (swashbuckling) needs serious technical work before it will be any good, but the ship-to-ship combat is great fun and makes for the best player vs player action you can get today in an MMO, and I've played everything from UO to EVE to WW2O to Planetside to WOW and a bunch in between.

Also, don't think, "Meh, I'd be joining it too long after release. I don't want to have to grind XP in the newbie zones before I can have fun." This game isn't like that. At level 43 I have no problem inviting level 7 guildmates to my groups, both for PvP and PvE. They get a lot of XP by helping me sink level 40 opponents, I don't lose that much XP per ship and they're actually quite helpful, allowing me to kill faster and ultimately level faster and safer myself. Even a level 7 in a small ship can damage sails, distract the enemy and, if ignored, do some nasty stuff like sailing up to rake the enemy decks with grapeshot. A level 7 isn't going to take down a level 40 player in PvP but he's far from useless in battle.

There are 4 factions: Pirate, English, French and Spanish. They are involved in a 4-way war for control of the Caribbean. The game may be called "Pirates of the Burning Sea" but more accurate might be "International War in the Caribbean (Also Has Pirates)". The three major nations are all worth playing and actually have some completely different game mechanics than the pirates, so if you wanted to be a pirate OR if you wanted to be a British fleet officer facing pirates, this game is for you.

The game basically has 3 distinct sections:

* Open Sea
In the open sea, you basically have a toy ship which you drive around over the ocean between ports and look for other ships to attack. This is a simple but nice looking part of the game for navigating on the open sea without actually taking 4 real-time months to get places.

* Sea Combat
This is the real meat and potatoes for this game and I think they've done well with it. It's not a total "sea battle simulator" as Sea Dogs was. You don't have to manually aim your guns or time your firing with the sea swells, but you do have to deal with wind direction as well as managing your sails, maneuvering to keep targets within the general firing arc of your guns, the type of ammo you want to use (cannon balls vs armor, chains vs sails, grape vs crew, etc) and bleeding ship speed during hard turns. There are various skills and expendable items you can use during combat to help repair emergency damage to sails, hull, etc. There are also skills for increasing ship speed or weapon reload time at the expense of something else. You'll have plenty of things to manage without worrying about the sea swells.

Ramming works -- although it does no damage, you can block an enemy ship, force him to turn by ramming him and generally set him up to be boarded. You can also protect an ally by getting between him and whoever is shooting at him. Really, this is some impressive ship to ship combat. If you played EVE, I can tell you that POTBS ship combat is better than EVE ship combat.

* On foot
There is a "you" in this game. You aren't just a ship. You can dock with ports and run around but there's also a melee component to the game.

Hand to hand battles come into play during some missions given to you by the NPCs but it's also part of ship to ship boarding. If you pull alongside an enemy ship, you can attempt to board it and fight the enemy captain and NPC crew using your character and your own NPC crew.

This part of the game is not overly well fleshed out. You will be disappointed if you come expecting a full blown World of Warcraft type battle experience. It's more like a fun little meta-game they threw in, and it's not bad. It reminds me a lot of combat in City of Heroes, actually.

Back to ports, though -- ports are where you'll find another large aspect of the game: crafting. I was surprised with the depth and thought they've put into crafting, but I suppose it makes sense. What good is a ship if you don't have something to carry? Because what good is being a pirate if other people aren't carrying things you can steal from them? So even if you're a full blown PvP pirate, you have to appreciate the crafting game simply because it gives you something to take from other people. (Arrr, booty.)

To get started with crafting, you go to a port and create a Warehouse. Once you have a warehouse you can create resource structures depending on what resources are available at the port. If there's "Fertile Soil" you can grow crops (such a hemp, used in making rope, or maize, used in making cheese or growing livestock). If there's "Oak", you can set up a lumber yard for farming oak. Etc. These farms supply resources based on a real-time clock. So the person who plays 16 hours a day is not able to bring in more resources from a farm than someone who plays 1 hour a day because the farm is basically working 24 hours a day whether you're there or not. You just need to swing by periodically and collect your resources.

From this, you have the basis for an overwhelmingly player-driven economy. From the start, the game encourages you to use the auction house to look for player-made goods rather than the NPC store, which sells only very basic things and sells them at much higher prices than players are likely to charge for the same things. Don't buy your ammo from the NPC "Fence" until you've checked the Auction House for player-made ammo which is cheaper.


I do think they can do a bit more with NPC AI, melee battles and PvP, but I think they picked a good time to release and the game is pretty good once you get into the swing of things. Give it a day or two to get used to the interface and get yourself to level 10 or so and don't be afraid to group up with others and I think you'll be surprised at how much fun this game is.

Add my voice to the chorus of those that 'really wanted to like this game.' I am a hobby pirate historian and own several other pirate games, computer and board. My only other MMO reference/experience is World of Warcraft; so, I'm using that as a point of comparison. The game offers a number of aspects of play, character based and ship based, as well as an economic facet; I will comment on each.

The character based aspects are limited to movement around ports, visiting shops and such, movement in missions and boarding actions. Do not expect WoW's ability to move around and over nearly everything, no swimming, no jumping over things. Missions tend to be instances, think Guild Wars rather than real MMO. The swashbuckling/sword fighting system borrows from other MMOs in the use of skills, and while in my opinion is a good feature, is still a little cumbersome in its management of readily available mix during actual combat.

Ship based activity borrows much from Sid Meier's Pirates! and adds another set of skills to be learned as you gain experience levels. Ship movement is intuitive and allows for grappling, repairing and changing ammunition. Ship to ship combat is still instance based rather than true MMO, which may be a reasonable compromise, but...

The economic aspects of the game offer the ability to build industry and produce goods, not really sure that this fits with being a pirate, but chalk it up to a concession for playability. The downside is that while you can produce items, demand seems to be limited in the extreme.

Bottom line time. There are aspects of the game that I found entertaining; however, the initial release is buggy and still needs refinement and a few more features to make it worthwhile. Others might say that every other MMO that has come out has faced the same challenges, and I would argue that I should not be expected to pay full price just to help out with the later stages of what amounts to a beta test. For myself, I cannot see myself paying a monthly subscription to play this game, and that makes me sad, because 'I really wanted to like this game.'
P-)

Reading the above comments, I can pretty clearly see that the majority of reviewers likely come from a world of warcraft or everquest experience. This game is meant to be different from the get go. The economy has more depth than the two combined and you get to start it from lvl 1 if you so choose. Which other game does that (aside from maybe EVE online)?

Ship combat is very cool, its beautiful, fun, and full of danger. Most games with PvP are kind of care bare, in that if you die, you only lose a small amount of experience, or maybe damage your armor. In this game, you have a reason to try as hard as you can to not be sunk. In PotBS, you actually care about your gear.

There are 4 nations to choose from, and quite a few classes to choose from. Many of the skills have overlap, but this helps for player balance. The swashbuckling combat is kind of odd. The players do move too quickly and it quickly becomes a big cluster of similar looking characters, though I'm sure this will all change in time.

This game has more depth by FAR than most MMO's out there, is certainly less care bare, and has a much cooler PvP system. All in all, I feel its quite good and can only get better with time! Try to remember, most MMOs ,even the ones people consider "perfect", were far from it at launch!

Good luck on the Burning Seas!

UPDATE: 1/13/10

FLS (the developers) announced that effective in February they will be reducing the 5 current servers to just 2, in order to "attain the population density needed to sustain adequate gameplay". Since they started with 11 servers in January of 2008, reduced them to the current 5 about six months later, and have been furiously changing the game almost every month since then, need I say more?


***
This is a current review of the way the game really is right now around Christmas, 2009. NOT the way it was portrayed when released, or an idealized projection by the publisher.

I would love to give this game 5/5 stars, but it is tremendously flawed, and the developers have not indicated that they intend to change the way it operates, nor that they see a need to do so. Yet, according to their own statistics, 19 of 20 people who buy the game leave within 1-3 months. As a member of one of the larger "societies" (guilds) on one of the servers, I can verify this tremendous turnover and disappointment.

This is a PvP game. It's title and the fact that it uses sailing ship combat will draw a lot of people to try it out. However, while the ship SAILING part is state-of-the-art and very realistic, the PvP COMBAT is neither. The PvP combat between ships is much closer to a space combat game or a "ships with magic weapons" game. In other words, there are various "skills" one can choose that allow "buffs", "debuffs", added damage, specific damage, etc. These skills always work unless countered by the other player -- just like in any space or fantasy game. Yes, the ships have sails and the cannonballs whiz past, but magically, a group of ships can always catch a single ship (with FEW exceptions) because of their group speed buffs. And so on.

One blurb says that there are over 80 ports to capture and control. Nope, only about 60, and most of those are never in contention -- the battles tend to target about 20 or so "key" ports, depending on the nation. Control is probably a bad word to use -- in this game control consists of making anyone with a production facility in that port pay from 20-80% more to produce anything while the port is under foreign control. The controlling side doesn't get any of the extra "tax", it's just an additional cost for someone else.

There are 4 "sides" to the nation vs nation game -- French, Spanish, British, and Pirate. The game supposedly draws inspiration from Sid Meiers' Pirates! game, but this is nothing like that game. For one thing, Sid was able to focus on your experience as a pirate, against all others. Here, pirates are merely one of 4 factions, admittedly with some interesting strengths and weaknesses, but not central players in the nation vs nation game (pirates hardly ever "win the map", and tend to come in second place a lot). Pirates DO get to capture ships and use them rather than having to grind coin to buy them. But someone does have to buy and build ships for the pirates to take, and as a national player, that's your job.

Basically, the game is designed to be fun for the people who take the time (and have the finger-twitch skills) to figure out the combat system, and get good at sinking other players' ships. It allows such players to interfere with non-PvP players' enjoyment of the RP and econ parts of the game by allowing them to impose "red zones" around ports that these players might want to visit. In order to visit a port, you must sail to it. If you enter a red zone, any other player can sink your ship and take your cargo. You then must start over again to build/buy a new ship and accumulate a new cargo. This is considered "consensual PvP" because you are never forced to enter a red zone. If you need to get to a port that is in such a zone, and you don't want to risk PvP combat, you must wait the several days to a week until it may no longer be red. However, if the port is in a central part of the map, your wait may be very long.

Admittedly, once one spends the time to level up to 50, and is able to do the daily "grind" missions, losing a ship every other day isn't too bad. The loss of the cargo will depend on how valuable it actually is and how hard it was to produce. And of course, you will take pride in the fact that all your hard work is going to provide the PvP combat players with entertainment from sinking you and taking your goods. THAT is how the game was designed to operate, and after two years of tweaks to the PvP system to make it easy for PvP players to spend most of their time doing combat, it works well.

If you want to do econ or RP (and there is an RP story arc that extends from level 1 to 45), then you must struggle to work around the PvP system. There is a set of auction houses (AH) that are actually pretty well set up to allow you to buy and sell. HOWEVER, in order to place goods at an AH or to pick them up, you must sail a ship to the port where the AH is located. This is a really good mechanic for a period game like this. However, remember that you may have to sail through a red zone, or, wait for days while the red zone plays out (minimum 4 days, max 6 days). If you really MUST have or deliver the goods (for your OWN play purposes, as there is no game reason to rush you) then you get to risk sailing through a red zone, and stand a good chance of losing your ship AND the goods. But, that's how the game was designed.

There are a bewildering, overlapping, and duplicative set of ship "fittings" one can add to one's ship to enhance various sail, cannon, and hull attributes. But why would one fitting give 7.25% more speed, while another gives 7.5%??? A guess would say that several different designers came up with several different sets of fittings, and they implemented all of them. And it's not as if these fittings are hard to get. Most can be made by almost any player (especially in societies, where groups will often form "co-ops" to pool their resources and expertise). many fittings will drop like rain from killing NPC ships, and it is rarely difficult to accumulate a stockpile of all but the most rare and tip-top fittings.

Having said that, most of these items will gather dust in your warehouse, as there are certain "must have" fittings that you will use even just for PvE missions against NPCs.

SUMMARY: This game is flawed by having a well-designed sailing mechanic, attractive artwork, intriguing RP storyline (NOT a central part of the game or even necessary to do), appealing theme, well-rendered waves (I do love just sailing on the open sea, listening to the music), well-done auction house system, combined with meaningless leveling, character skills, and a one-dimensional "game" in the game-play. ONLY hard-core PvP fanatics might enjoy this game -- non-PvP players need not apply.

Try the 14-day trial, but spend some time talking to people in chat, and DO take a boat or two into a red zone and try the PvP combat to sample the comradely ambiance (NOT).

For a look at the current status of any of the servers and the game maps,
see [...]
a web page done with the API released by the publisher.
It has a lot of game information, including port conquest history if you click on a conquerable port.

Let me just mention some of the other MMOs I've played to give you an idea of my experience: World of Warcraft, Eve-Online, little bit of World War 2 online, Tabula Rasa.

Well, this game was not too bad. The ship warfare is the best part but other than that, its just feels like yet another MMO (find NPC to get quest, complete quest, turn in for XP/gear/$$, repeat).

The hand to hand combat is pretty lame. I think there was very little strategy involved with it and found myself just spamming the attack button. Maybe sometimes pulling out my pistol to take a shot. All in all, probably the weakest part of the entire game.

For the PvP in the game, you'll need to be around a level 50 otherwise, your going to need a group of people to take down some of the level 50's that chill in the contested ports. PvP is pretty non-existent for the most part if your under level 50 though. This was kinda let down because you basically put off PvP until you reach the cap level of 50. I suppose this makes the game more realistic in a way.

The ship warfare is pretty cool. Very slow paced (think Eve-Online's spaceship battles, but a bit more intimate) and methodical. The whole wind factor definitely makes a difference during the battles. I rolled a French privateer and had access to some of the faster ships in the game. My favorite tactic would be to get on the bow of the opposing ship and then out maneuver them and just keep pumping broadsides into the bow. I think the bow and stern armor is weaker, so this worked out great, you just need a fast ship and good maneuverability.

The world in the game is pretty cool. Its very large and its cool to just sail around on the seas and attack random NPCs. The whole historical aspect makes the game seem more fun also in a way. Its also really cool how different ports can switch hands but again, theres not alot you can do with the contested ports when your a lowbie.

As far as the multiplayer aspect goes, I actually didn't really see alot of people online when I played. I played during the latter part of the prime time playing time and usually only saw about 50 people max while I was sailing around. I was playing on the blackbeard server which at the time had a Medium pirate population while the other fractions all were low population. This was kinda buzzkill for me as I like to party up and roam around with people. I ended up getting in a society with about 60 people and we roamed around sometimes together but for the most part it was me soloing. This is a new MMO though, so once people figure out WoW is getting dated, maybe you'll see more people move to something different like this game.

Anyhow, not a bad game but just feels like another MMO except for the port battles and ship combat. I'll probably try it out again but I don't think its going to keep me hooked (not like WoW awhile ago). I think for people who like Eve-Online, this will be a good game, except maybe not as in-depth as eve and the ship combat is more intimate than the spaceship battles of Eve.

Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) is a Massively Multiplayer Online game where you are the captain of your own ship sailing the Caribbean circa 1720. There are three main gameplay areas in PotBS. They are,

1. Swashbuckling - This is your avatar. You walk around the towns gathering quests, selling goods to merchants, using the Auction House, and engaging in swashbuckling quests.
2. Open Sea - Used to travel around the Caribbean, sailing from port to port and avoiding or engaging in combat with other ships. This is not your real ship view but a much quicker way to sail around. When you do engage another ship in combat you will go into ship combat mode.
3. Ship combat - Undoubtedly the main focus of PotBS where you fire broadsides into your enemy, grapple, and board.

Quest come in two forms, Swashbuckling and Ship combat. With the swashbuckling quests you use your avatar and fight with sword and pistol on land. There are three styles of swordplay you can specialize in, Fencing, Florentine, and Dirty Fighting. While they vary slightly the principals are much the same, the differences being mostly aesthetic.

With the Ship combat quests you attempt to sink or board enemy ships. If you choose to board you will go into swashbuckling mode on the deck of the ship and engage in swordplay against the enemy captain and crew.

When starting the game you can choose one of three nations, France, England or Spain, or choose to be a pirate. The three nations play the same with the pirate play style differing. If playing one of the nations you can choose to be a Naval Officer, a Privateer, or a Freetrader. Naval officers get the biggest ships, Privateers play closer to the Pirate class, and Freetraders are the "crafters" of PotBS.

I chose to make a Freetrader as my first character and this review will focus on that aspect of the game. Other classes will provide a different experience. While all classes can "craft", Freetraders get to build the most advanced structures and recipes, and get benefits to trading and other skills focusing toward trade.

Crafting. There isn't really crafting as such in PotBS. There is no need to harvest resources like in World of Warcraft, and there's no crafting mini game like in Everquest 2. Instead you find a port with the resources you need then build the structures you need such as factories and warehouses. Each player can have a maximum of 10 factories. Labour is earned in real time in your factories. So when you have enough labour stored, you can immediately make items provided you have the resources and the recipe.

The end result is to build ships but no one player can be fully self sufficient. Ships require lots of different parts and you can only hope to provide a small amount of the parts required. For instance, I decided to be a weaponsmith, building cannons for ships. Firstly, I needed a port that had iron deposits. Then I built my warehouse. I had to buy a deed from the auction house in order to build my iron mine. Then another deed for a forge so I can turn the ore into iron ingots. Of course, I also needed limestone to make iron ingots. So now I can either buy limestone from another player via the Auction House, or I can start another production line. I found a port that had limestone deposits, built a warehouse, built a limestone quarry, and mined limestone. Now I load the limestone into my ship, sail back to the other port and make my iron ingots. I also bought a deed for a Weaponsmith factory so I can make cannons and cannonballs. Making cannonballs requires black powder also, which you get from mining sulphur and combining that with another product etc etc, so you can see how complicated making an item can be. And that's just cannons and cannonballs. Ships require hulls, sails, masts, cannons, anchors, fittings.....the list is endless. It's quite costly setting up your factories, so you will need to run quests to earn money to begin with. Factories also have a weekly upkeep. Unfortunately for me I don't appear to be selling much and the cost of keeping my factories open is eating up most of my profit.

Freetraders aren't good at ship to ship combat, so if you want to focus on the player versus player (PvP) side of the game you would make one of the other classes.

Pirates play somewhat differently to the other classes. They are the only nation that can actually claim a ship as a prize and captain that ship. This gives you an incentive to constantly level and attack other ships. Their skills are also heavily focused towards combat.

The Good:
The period. I love the 1700s, the clothes, the ships.

The ships. Ship models look great, and the ship combat mode looks beautiful, with waves breaking over your bow as you sail into battle.

Economy. I like the player driven economy even though I don't seem to be making any money.

The Bad:
Load times. Every time you go somewhere else you zone. You zone into the tavern. You zone into the shop. You zone into quests. You zone into ship combat. You zone into ports. You'll spend a lot of time looking at a loading screen.

Swashbuckling. It needs work. It also loses its appeal after a while and gets boring if you're winning and frustrating if you're losing.

The open sea. I guess this part of the game is unavoidable, but you'll spend a lot of time sailing to a destination. You can spend 15 or 20 mins staring at a miniature version of your ship while you sail to a distant port. If you're a freetrader you'll want to avoid combat for the most part so this can be dangerous as well.

Your avatar. All characters are much the same. There are no character "classes". This means there's no real reason to ever group in order to do swashbuckling quests. There is no tank/dps/healer type setup. There is no musketeer that is a ranged specialist. There is also no world to run around in. There are no dungeons. The only land is the towns where you conduct your business. If you grab a swashbuckling quest you zone into and instance of that quest. While I understand that this game is not a MMO such as WoW or EQ, the whole avatar quest and combat gets boring after a few levels and seems like a worthless part of the game. I just can't help thinking that this could have been a much stronger, more important part of the game. As it stands it just seems to be worthless fluff to appeal to the masses.

Summary.
I have a love/hate relationship with PotBS. The ship models and combat mode is visually spectacular. There's a lot of satisfaction in setting up your factories and watching the goods you've made sell. But the amount of time spent travelling from port to port and staring at loading screens could deter most casual players. I pre-ordered the game and played 15 days before official release, but I don't know if I'll play beyond the 30 days included time. For PvP lovers there may be a lot in it for you, but if you're not into PvP I don't think there is much to keep you interested in the long term. Except pirates.

Pirates of the Burning sea is gorgeous: the graphics are beautiful on the open ocean, or in smaller instanced environments, and the many ports in which you may land have a variety of looks and local color: there's always something going on. It's also easy to find missions, although sometimes the missions themselves are too far above or below you to be worth your while.
The downsides are that the game is not very easy to learn, and that the players are often more akin to bullies in a schoolyard. PotBS was PvP centric at launch, but updates have tilted the balance even more so. If you have to battle someone a level or two above you, you will lose. And if you're not careful, one or more high-level characters will jump you, sink your ship, and steal everything with no shame. If you are looking for Roleplay, you might be a bit hampered: while character creation allows a great deal of creativity, the emotes interface is clumsy and weird (and don't forget that most will speak to you in movie pirate tones, complete with "Arr!"s).
If you can find people who will play with you it helps because you can be sure you never sail alone. One of the cleverest details you'll run across is the political balance of various ports: each faction can capture and dominate a port, making it difficult for anyone from opposing factions to enter. While ports are under contest, players from any side can sail to the port and jump into the fray, affecting the outcome.
Overall, this game can be fun to play, but it is not easy to pick up, nor can you survive on your own for very long. Ye be warned: thar be rich bounties aplenty for a resourceful soul, but ye belie my cautions at your own peril. :D

I got this game because I had a lot of friends playing on it. It was a nightmare trying to get it to work. I was in contact with technical support for a couple of weeks trying to get it so it would not freeze up. Nothing they told me to do worked. I finally uninstalled the game turned off all of my firewalls, ran a registry cleaner reinstalled the program and it finally worked. Once I got on it I was impressed with the graphics but the game was choppy and it did not work as it was supposed to. I could never get it to work smoothly and the learning curve was pretty steep. I do not want to work so hard for a game that I have to pay to play. I finally canceled the subscription and out the game away. Recently I have found EVE online space game and it blows away this game on all levels.

Ok 1st and foremost, the game still has bugs. Some people won't be able to play, so do your research on system specs etc..

Now

1. Ship gameplay gets 4.5/5 for me, it's fun, it's engaging, it looks pretty darn good. The only downside for me is the enemy and NPC AI. This will improve over time.

2. Swashbuckling gets 2/5 right now. It has a lot of potential, but at the moment little things throw me off... Females NPCs have a male death sound byte, there's quite a few bugs, ship combat is iffy... I see this as being fun and maybe some what fixed within 6 months, and it has the potential to be perfect within a year.

3. Graphics overal 4/5 While the graphics don't stand out, the overall atmosphere is nice. Pirate towns are run down with drunks aplenty, British ports are well put together and tidy. Ocean graphics far surpass the land based areas of the game for now. But for me the visuals are more than sufficient for now. I do have high hopes that they will add more diversity to the towns and more fluid movement to the PCs, and FLS said they are working on that.

4. Customer support 5/5, FLS has been amazing. There were quite a few hiccups at first, but the Devs have been there for almost every problem, and while they don't always fix the stuff right away, they do provide fairly accurate time-lines to fixes and sympathy. Can't ask for more than that.


In the end it's a good game, with the potential to be great within a few months, and near perfect within a year.

Give it a shot, and don't have your hopes too high. You won't be dissapointed as long as you don't come in expecting Crytek graphics and a MMO experiance comparable to one that has been out for years with most bugs fixed.