Rise of Piracy

[B] Not Recommended - at least not at the current price [/B] Rise of Piracy is fun, and you can clearly see the inspiration from Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Mount & Blade. The issue is that the game borrows ideas from both, but does not fully know what to do with them yet. Naval combat is probably the weakest part for me. Sea battles do not really feel like age-of-sail battles. The ships move more like steamboats sliding across the water, waves do not seem to affect them much, and the ships feel strangely lifeless since you do not really see crews on deck like you would in something like Empire: Total War. Boarding also feels unfinished and sometimes broken. Land invasions are interesting and have some cool ideas, but right now they feel more like concepts than fully developed mechanics. Taking islands is fun at first, but eventually there is not much point. You can capture an island and assign ships to defend it, but that is about it. You cannot really build a full naval military, change governors, send forces on raids, or meaningfully manage conquered territory. The diplomacy system also feels odd. You can take letters of marque and seize land for a faction, but they do not seem to provide real military assistance or meaningful rewards. It makes the system feel disconnected from the rest of the game. Ship balance is also confusing. Being able to put more soldiers on a sloop than on a Man O’ War makes no logical sense and hurts the immersion. FPS can also be a major issue, if you use a Man O' War be prepared for your PC to stutter a lot. I respect that this was made by one developer, and there is definitely potential here. But potential is not enough to justify the current price. The game feels like it should have stayed in the oven longer before being released. There is a solid foundation, but right now too many systems feel unfinished, shallow, or not fully implemented. Fun idea, undercooked execution. Wait for more updates or a sale.

This is an impressive game, especially considering it's from a solo developer. The amount of game modes and systems blew me away. Tutorial starts you off in a top-down strategic view of the map, where you can navigate to different settlements, hideouts, engage with factions, intercept other ships, collect treasure maps, and interact with the games various systems. I thought that was the game, but the next tutorial drops you down to your ship for navigation and ship-to-ship combat. After that, into an RTS mode for land battles. There is a cinematic flyover mode where you can 'visit' the different locations you come across as well. You can even draw/design your own flag in an in-game paint mode. Pretty cool. It has the making to be a LOT of game, for sure. I will say it is definitely an early access game, lots of work to be done still. Definitely some polish needed and some bugs to squash, but the foundation is solid. I'm looking forward to more campaign and story-type content being released over time. If this is your type of game, I definitely recommend. It isn't for me, and I still enjoyed myself and will be coming back to try it again as more content comes out.

It may be a good game in the future. So far it is early access and it shows. * Ship combat is the heart of the game for me, and it is just barebones. * Wind is just cosmetic, but it was very important in history, who had the wind used to control the battle. I hope it will be improved. * "Ultimate Admiral" ship combat is what developer should look into, able to select targeted salvos, to masts to demast or to stern to devastate a ship, even bigger ones. And of course wind is very important. * Small enemy ships may have 2000 crew inside, why I do not know, so it is unrealistic and boarding is not an option. * Some open world missions unbalanced, I could do 15k profit with just passenger mission, to 30-40 nm distant islands, a frigate is sold around 17k, so total nonsense. Just doing the basic trading and pax deliveries, I had around 450k in few hours of my gameplay, which can buy 3 ships of the line with 74 guns. This is end game and easy to achieve. Game is over generous. * Open world speed, enemy ships fly by like jets, if they are enemies game should pause at some set distance. Every escape should not mean auto damage. *** I think game has potential, it may be a good game in future, but only one developer is a problem. So far this game has infilated review score, it is meh, and I give negative, with improvements I should update this into a positive.

This game grows on you fast. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite games, and it's hard to believe it's only four months into Early Access. It feels like three games in one: a third-person naval combat game, a grand strategy game, and an RTS. The only thing it's missing is turn-based strategy ship boarding... although I'm pretty sure that's just me trying to sneak a fourth genre into the game. One of my favorite features is the ability to create your own custom flags that actually fly from your ships. Since there aren't any friend-or-foe UI markers (which I actually prefer), having a distinctive personal flag makes it much easier to identify your fleet in the middle of a chaotic battle. It's a small feature, but it adds a lot to the immersion. Another great sign is how responsive the developer is. They're active on Discord, quick to respond to bug reports and suggestions, and constantly improving the game. I reported a bug today, and within minutes the developer had responded, thanked me, and said they'd investigate it the next day. If the current pace of development continues, I can only see this game getting better over the coming months and years.

This is a great little game that has so much potential to be even better. Since it is a single dev working on it, it probably will take some time, but it scratches several itches for me as it is. I love pirate games and this one has it all: cannon duels, boarding actions, a diplomacy system with several colonial nations and factions, the ability to amass a fleet of your own, create a pirate kingdom of your own, a trade system, a lively game world with (IMO) the perfect amount of AI ships, much more, and the game is not even fully released! When the full game eventually releases, I think that this could be one of the greatest pirate games of its generation, and it's already pretty great now.

Its a great game, but there are far to many issues with the game. My play through is as a trader. Now at the start there were pirates everywhere and i had to spend a good amount of time dodging them, but as time wore on i noticed the frequency in which i ran into them dwindle to never ever seeing any. I didnt mind cause it allowed me to freely trade to the point that i built a massive fleet. Now that im in a position to focus more on conquest and war i figured hunting pirates would be a good start at getting used to combat cause after 40 some odd hours of just trading i have had to really scrap and if i did i just outran the enemy. Well after some time trying to complete contracts for pirate bounties i have discovered why there are no pirates. Theyre all off map, everyone of em. Over a period of 2.5k days they have all sailed outside the map border, which is massive. i suspect the overall size between border map for the player vs actual end point of the map to be 500NM, which is massive and that goes in four directions so around 2,000NM of unplayable area is where all the pirates go. which sucks for me cause ive made allies with every faction other then the pirates. Game is good, fighting is good though it does go pretty fast when in an actual battle which makes management a challenge but overall game is good. Just has some major flaws.

What can I say? This has to be the BEST game of its type for me. Rise of Piracy is Tradewinds for the modern age. There is a certain freedom allowed in how you play the game, with limits that feel less limiting in the end. You should probably get the game and try it out for yourself. My positive reviews are typically result from a loss of words or anger- This title provides both.

Ahoy, landlubber! I be Pirate Arrrrrhgnold and I'm hear to tell ye about my adventures!!! Don't worry, I won't type like a pirate anymore, that was just for the intro :D I've captured a port, destroyed ships, traded bananas, olives, and other assorted goods, retreated from a battle that I never should've engaged to begin with (14 ships vs 1), insulted various government officials, claimed victory in over some small fleets, and done just about everything you can think of apart from swabbing the poop deck. Now, given the sheer depth of this game, it wouldn't surprise me if that's something I'll find myself doing in the near future. Yeah, there are some rough early access edges and some quirks, but the game is receiving frequent updates, and given what this solo dev has already accomplished up to this point, have full faith that the game will continue to improve over time and be buffed and polished to a shine. I'll also add that, as a long time player of Age of Empires 2 (back in the day and still) the RTS (this is just one of the modes that you play in) controls feel very comfortable, which really helped me with getting started. Can't wait to see where this goes, can't wait to play some more, can't wait to grow a huge pirate fleet, and conquer the high seas, and can't wait to find a fair buyer for all of these daggum PEAS I bought! Keep up the good work!!! 07