Windrose

Yet another pirate game filled with promise, yet with game-breaking bugs and endless irritations that make it just not worth the effort. You're constantly thinking that it's about to be really fun and satisfying, but then you realize that it's just not going to deliver. My following complaints are from multiplayer experience with my friend (and I could say much more).... 1) Resources are not shared. So, you'd better have "shared quests" turned on, or you'll be doing twice the grind to get twice the needed resources to advance, which means twice the time wasted (see points to come below). I hate games that give one great weapon (by luck) to one player but either nothing or a crap weapon to the other. In multiplayer, everything should be shared/doubled. 2) Combat SUCKS! This is one of those games that pretends like you have tremendous precision with attacking/parrying/dodging. It's not true, because this is also one of those games in which once you start an attack, ONLY your opponent can interrupt you (and deal you damage in the process). YOU don't get to start an attack, realize your opponent is about to swing, and then stop your attack to try to dodge or parry. You WILL complete your entirely, useless attack motion. And, worse, this is one of those games in which you are FORCED to lunge forward during melee attacks, which OFTEN lunges you past your opponent, who instantly wheels on you to hit you from behind, while, wait for it... YOU are trying to turn around and, again, attack, which lunges you forward right into your opponent's swing, and you couldn't interrupt to do anything different, because, did I mention? Combat SUCKS! I hate this whole approach to combat. 3) Fine, I could live with all of that, although it takes away a LOT of the fun, because there's this promise of sailing and building an empire, etc., etc., but "shared quests" are totally broken. And that's the final deal-breaker for me. ANY game that purports to be "multiplayer" and touts "shared quests" CANNOT desync quest progress. Period. Not once, not ever. Full stop. This game is fundamentally broken in that regard, and the moment we discovered that fact during our last quest, we were done with it. And it's not like it's trivial to "go back" and try to figure out where the desync happened to "fix it." It takes 20 minutes of REAL time to sail between two islands. Then you hack your way through annoying dodos, boars, etc. to get to an encampment, then get mobbed by more powerful enemies. You're 40 minutes to an hour to "deal with" one island. So, "going back" throws that all away, plus another 20 minutes to sail back across to the "starting island" for that quest, the, even if you could figure out to how to resync everything, you then get to rinse and repeat the other island. Nah, not fun. Not worth it. Yet another pirate game that just CANNOT deliver on its promises. And yet another "multiplayer" game that is broken in the most critical and fundamental aspect of what a "multiplayer" game is supposed to have right. Maybe someday this will be worth revisiting. But in its current condition, there's just too much wrong with it. The frustration and tedium isn't worth hoping for delivery on the other promises. More than 2,000,000 copies sold, and quest desync is still a LONG-standing and unfixed issue. Clearly the devs either can't or won't deal with it. So, this is a HARD NO until the devs show that they give a crap. Don't give 'em any more money for a fundamentally broken game.

I know Windrose is still in EA, and I was really on the fence with posting a negative review. The game is fun to play if all you want is a Valheim clone, another survival crafter, but SET in the golden age of piracy. Alternate age of the piracy, that is. What it is NOT however, is a pirate game, like many people advertise it on YT and other social media. During character creation we make a Pirate King or a Pirate Queen, but this is misleading. At the moment there is NO piracy in the game. We can play a pirate hunter alright, and fight with Blackbeard's fleet. What we CANNOT do is hunt merchat ships. There is no trading lanes, no company ships to assault. I know they gave a reason for this in the story, but this only makes it clear how incompatible this story is with a pirate fantasy. Unless you want to play a fantasy hero fighting undead and pirates.

Wind Rose somehow turns adventure into unpaid manual labor. Combat is painfully binary: either the enemy dies, or you do, with almost no meaningful room for tactics, recovery, or skillful counterplay. A charging boar kicks your ass before you even see a parrot, much less fire a canon. The absurdly tiny inventory makes everything worse. Half the game is running enormous distances between objectives so you can collect X ores, smelt them into X bars, craft some pathetic little saber, and discover that it may or may not make the slightest difference against the next create IRL that would have a hard time killing you in 10,000 shots, much less two or three. I feel violated that I paid money to be defeated by swine and poultry before I even saw a freaking eye patch. There’s a difference between rewarding progression and deliberately wasting the player’s time. Wind Rose seems determined to explore that difference one pointless hike after hike after hike after long sail after water and more water and more water then you can hike and hike and hike and then you can deal with a full inventory. I wanted this game to be good and all the pieces were there, but if just missed the mark. It gets good reviews so it must get better later on, but I just do not have the time to waste getting to the good part. I guess if you like minecraft mindless resource gathering, then this is your game. If you were looking for something like the classic Sid Meier Pirates but for 2026 then chart a course around this shipwreck and if you want to be a pirate, I would suggest this game so you can try before you buy; but then if you did try it and like it you would be a pirate and get to play it for free anyway so it is a win/win/win because I win too knowing that someone didn't get boarded by these butt pirate developers.

Schon lange kein so ausgereiftes Early-Access Spiel gespielt. Alleine der Baumodus ist echt gut und macht nen Heidenspaß. Lediglich mehr Deko wäre super. :D

+Crafting and building like minecraft and valheim +great with friends -has a food buff system like valheim, I always found it very annoying personally to deal with -solo world does not pause -exiting solo game makes you lose food buffs -the fighting feels like you're flinging a pool noodle -every single NPC is out to kill just you, they ignore other NPCs

It's not good as it is right now. Even if it is early access, the balance doesn't exist at all. there is a lot of water between islands, promoting ship battles, nut said battles are awful, there are no strategies, you only stat-check and spend 30mins fighting a ship just to get nothing. The melee combat is hard just for the sake of being hard, guns do 0 dmg compared to them, even if you're 10 lvls above a normal enemy he still has 3 times your hp and does more dmg than you do, they can block without consuming block meter and have no stamina. You have all sorts of debuffs fighting normal mobs that you have to prepare 10mins before any fight. The world feels empty. The idea isa there, but I can't recommend it as it is right now.

The building is fantastic and fun but literally ANYTHING else is a massive hassle and chore. Combat is terrible, land or sea you will have an outrageous amount of enemies swarming you and at sea every ship in the entire map gets put in front of you and it makes the game tedious and exhausting to play. Great concept for a game and when it’s fun, it’s REALLY fun but the game makes its to tedious and frustrating to enjoy

I have played a number of survival games now, both alone and with friends, and whilst I'm not going to sit and say this is the best I have played, it does have the potential to be one of, under certain conditions. Windrose is early access, and whilst that doesn't mean it is currently lacking in content, I do think certain aspects are crying out for some balance. First off, graphically, its very good. Its looks lovely, the sky in particular is gorgeous. I dont have any issues with lag or anything like that. Loading into the server is a little on the slow side, but I've had worse. I enjoy the sailing very much, the waves are pretty realistic in their behaviour, and its quite nice just pottering around exploring the oceans. I haven't particularly done any building, minus the placing of the decor, but I am lead to believe it is perfectly fine, and no real frustrations. Different decor and building options are unlocked with faction rep, but that also hasnt proven too difficult to obtain, so no complaints. The combat. Oh boy. Was that a baptism of fire. I had heard that it was a particularly tough combat system, but I was not prepared for how tough. I have played all the dark souls, plus Elden ring, and I died more in this than any of them. Especially early on. Every single enemy hits you like a truck, and if you happen to try and solo more than one in the early game then you are done for. As we have progressed that has balanced out a bit, but its still something you have to make sure you're prepared for. The trade off is that your gear and weapons don't lose durability, so you don't have to constantly be repairing everything, which is nice. I do think that the materials system needs some balancing. For example, trees do not grow back. Standard wood can be easily obtained through sea crates, but we are currently mid game, and hardwood is less easy to obtain reliably. Same for sulphur. There is just the odd node dotted around, no where concrete to farm it, and you need it for gunpowder. Nothing game breaking, but something I would like to see a little more balance to in future. Levelling up is slower than Im used to. You dont get XP for killing enemies, building, mining, gathering, nothing. Only from quests and completing places of interest. I do like that, because I am usually the one a load of levels behind my friend, because he tends to get sunk into the building in these games and races ahead of me. It has meant we are completely synced level wise. All in all, I am having a lot of fun playing Windrose, and I hope that will continue for a good many hours to come.