One of the few games where you can be the captain of a (space) ship instead of the helmsman (besides Atlas, Sailist, X4 Foundations and Hazeron). I absolutely love such games where you can give orders to the helmsman to change course or fly someonewhere while walking around the ship.
It's Ahoy's sailing before Ahoy.
Positive aspects:
- You can order crewmembers to raise and lower sails and to move them in and out, or do it yourself. Basically you can have crew do everything you do yourself in Sailwind and E-sail (minus the modern things that don't exist). The crew truly makes it far more enjoyable than Sailwind imho. You can not make them raise sails halfway though.
- The helmsman can be ordered to follow a certain course, go full starboard, full port or straight ahead. Atlas has alot more options (turn x degrees left/right, turn to my facing direction and turn North North-East etc), and somehow feels more fluid because of that, despite the UI of Sail the Seas being easier to reach. (just press O) In Atlas I can defeat ships of the damned without taking the wheel. With StS ordering UI I think combat would be harder.
- When you get beached, you can anchor drag yourself out of it. Unless you sink, you can probably get out of a bad situation (though it might take a while). It's a bit like the scene in Master and Commander where they load the anchor onto rowing boat and drop it some distance away, except without rowing boats. You just throw/"teleport drop" it some distance away.
- You and your crew need food and water and the crew also needs pay. You need to tradeoff having enough supplies vs how much space you leave for contracts. The basic sloop has 40 cargo and I took a contract that needed 36 space across the atlantic. It was a race against time to find a port to resupply.
- No constant fishing, you can afford enough supplies (though just barely if you immediately take 3-6 crew for finishing a first contract). It maybe be safer, but more tedious to do your first contract without crew or with half crew.
- Ship models look better and more realistic than in Sailwind.
- Ships have full interiors
Not good, nor bad, but worth mentioning:
- You don't need to manually load cargo boxes like in Sailwind or Star citizen. Perhaps your crew or dockworkers doing it for you would be more realistic, without it being too tedious. Or maybe it's fine the way it is. Not sure.
- Sleeping increases time x30 and when awake you can speed up time x10.
- Also during sleep you can sometimes crash into land. So it's safer to not sleep when you know you might approach land soon or only sleep in short bursts. Or if you really need to sleep have crew lower all (or some) sails and sleep stationary. Either way you will learn soon what to do and what not to do :)
Bad parts
- You sometimes fall through the floor above the captain's cabin.
- Ship's sometimes get thrown on the docks when using mooring lines (and pulling in the ship to close to docks)
- Sometimes you can suddenly move at very high speed without sails
- getting from your ship to shore is a bit annoying, when jumping I often end up in the water.
- No rowboats
- When you fall overboard, the ship doesn't stop (save and reload when that happens immediately, the ship is halted when you load into a save)
- During x30 sleep sometimes the helmsman starts spinning in circles. edit I've had it happen in strong winds even without time acceleration that the helmsman just cannot hold a course and instead oversteers on each side, zigzagging forever, until you reduce sail area or take the helm yourself. [strike](fixed)[/strike] nvm still happens occasionally, but less than before
- You can't get into the crow's nest afaik.
- Ports are just a handful of buildings. They mostly look similar, with a few styles of architecture depending on the region. But I guess most cities IRL perhaps do look alike?
- It gets boring after a while, it's really only sailing, trading and eating and nothing else. It'd be cool if you could have a fleet or send ships on trade routes. Maybe aIso have businesses and capture cities. I kinda wish there was a first person game that had everything you can do in Blood&Gold Carrbibean, somewhat like an Age of Sail X4 Foundations.
But as just a realistic AoS sailing/trading simulator it is probably the best currently available due to crew and most importantly the helmsman. So if you like Sailwind, but think managing the sails and loading cargo is too tedious and don't like the unrealistic ship models, and can handle some bugs/glitches, then I recommend this game. If you want combat without being at the helm, Atlas (against Monsterships, uncapturable pirate ships or in pvp against other players) and Sailist (against NPC ships) are the best (and afaik only) options, until Ahoy! is released.
EDIT: Now I'v tried it without the gps and that is where it actually feels amazing:
- missing an opportunity to determine longitude due to a storm, clouds or just forgetting about it, then having to guess where you are and/or wait until the next noon or visible North star
- maintaining a course and determining longitude from knowing your lattiude,
- getting lost and (nearly) running out of supplies
- recognising landmarks on a map
- the euforia of seeing land or finally being able to determine your position or finding a harbour.
You kind of experience the hassles that sailors would experience before better navigation tools were invented. (Except you and your crew don't die from hunger/thirst, but you just slow down and can't speed up time while awake anymore.) Edit: I've seen a screenshot of someone having a crewmember die (from ilness iirc), so maybe it just takes more days without supplies than my crew ever experienced.
I really hope things get added to this like melee/pistol/musket/bow combat, very rare pirate encounters, hunting, expeditions to gather supplies on land, mutiny, smaller villages, fleets, hireable AI captains, warehouses, rowboats and perhaps horses, carriages and actually dying from hunger and thirst, the whole Age of Sail experience.
