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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sophisticated and Addicting Game that Needs Some Polish, January 23, 2008
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
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.
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Avast!, January 28, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
(update)
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.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Voice in the Chorus, February 7, 2008
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
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-)
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