GameSpy's review added to the beginning of this thread:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-pirates/737252p1.htmlAnd to say the least, the review ain't pretty....
The "deeper" concept sounds like gaming gold: your individual pirate has a series of stats and skills relating to swordplay, naval tactics, navigation, etc. You'll handpick a crew with their own skills and abilities, assigning each to fulfill individual roles on your ship. Even your fleet can be customized, outfitted with different hulls or cannons, supplied with an assortment of ammo, flying flags of your choice. Naval battles put you right on the deck of your vessel, trying to get the weather gage on your opponent, loading and firing broadsides in a fairly deep naval simulation.
Sounds good, so far...
But the lofty promise of the game, like so much pirate treasure, remains buried under a poor implementation. All of the above elements are in the game, but jammed into a clunky interface, and spaced out between plodding and sometimes frustrating gameplay. Age of Pirates isn't a total wash -- it's certainly a good-looking game -- but only the most patient of players will be able to overlook the many flaws.
That's a shame.
Aarrrrrr!!
The open-ended nature of the game is a real positive -- there are lots of ways for a player to pursue profit and promotion.
Sweet!
However, Age of Pirates doesn't ease the player into the world. You're literally dropped onto a dock, given half of a map that you can't do anything with yet, and turned loose on your own with no guidance about where to go next. Your starting island may have only a couple of missions available, with seemingly random difficulty.
Nobody complained w/ San Andreas or other GTA's when you start off w/ a small world open to you, yet the huge rest of it ain't open to you at the start. This doesn't sounds like a big deal.
Though, the random diffuculty don't sound hot. Maybe they should've taken a "Scaling" system like Oblivion and put that into effect. Or, they could be like Dungeon Siege 2 and in your journal, the game suggests what you level you should be to take on a certain quest/mission.
And the game isn't very friendly when it comes to just exploring and figuring things out. The interfaces are often needlessly complicated. For example, the shopping interface takes up the whole screen, yet nowhere on this giant dialogue is there a description of the item you want to buy. To find that out, you have to mouse over the name of the item and hold down the right mouse button to see what it does or if your character can actually use it. It's especially frustrating because all of the mid to high-level items are identified by nicknames on the shopping screen, so you have zero idea what's actually in the store at first glance.
*raises my eyebrow....*
Sometimes important information is hidden. For instance, if you're walking around a town and you go to visit the governor, there's no indication which nation the governor represents -- no flags, no text, nothing. You can talk to the governor and he'll recruit you to join his nation, not bothering to identify which one -- it's pretty comical to accidentally join the French Navy when you thought you were in a Dutch town.
ROFL!!! Ummm.....this game sounds like it needs a PATCH.
Speaking of hidden information, the game doesn't come with a paper map for reference, so you'll have to rely on the in-game map, which by default doesn't actually list the city names on each island.
Many games don't come w/ paper maps; no big deal.
Though, the in-game map should list city names....so, that's not good...
Passengers will request to go to a specific city, but as a new player you won't see the city on the map. This is needlessly frustrating. Assuming you DO take a passenger to the correct island, he disappears -- you have to find him in the inn in order to collect your reward, which I only discovered after wandering around the docks for a while trying to figure out how to get my money.
Okay. Shouldn't you be given the reward once you get there w/ the passenger?!?!?!
Tales that Dead Men Tell
Players with the patience to slug through the interface and the slow parts of the game will discover an overarching story, allowing them to reunite with lost family members and even conquer the whole of the Caribbean under one flag. There's a lot of promise in Age of Pirates -- there are some great game mechanics under the surface and the game engine is beautiful -- but the final product just isn't that playable. It's a shame that Akella wasn't able to take this game that final mile
Ouchieeeeeeeee....
