King of Seas

Played for roughly 16 hours, completed the main quest as well as several side quests as well as exploration. Overall King of Seas is a mediocre title that feels like it drowns itself in tedium. The combat sections can be fun due to the addition of voodoo abilities though nearly every activity in the game is dragged down by its slow pacing and unnecessary timegating. Respeccing stats requires you to not only find the shaman but also complete his quest, fishing node use requires a pole from the fish restaurant which you must find first, uncovering map quadrants requires finding weather stations, etc. All harvesting nodes are click-and-wait. The main quest literally stops and requires you to level up to a certain point... Maybe worth getting when its deeply discounted if you just wanna sail around however if you're wanting something deep and indepth in regards to mechanics or story or gameplay there are more fulfilling games on the market. Full video review with gameplay footage is available here; https://youtu.be/8Bm7k_wEOTU

[!!!IMPORTANT: There's a ridiculous bug that I'm not sure how it passed GOG approval. The game's saves are always deleted when you exit unless you delete galaxy64.dll from KOS\Plugins\OnlineSubsystemGOG\Source\ThirdParty\GalaxySDK\Libraries. If for some reason you choose to play this game, make sure to delete this file or your first session will be wiped.] Even for free, this game isn't worth playing. It's an unfinished prototype. This is most likely a game that was in development and canceled by the publisher, then they gave 2 junior gamedevs a week to add a tiny veneer of content to sell it in case it makes a couple of dollars. It's not really worth a review so I'll just summarize the points: The good: -Decent 3D graphics The meh: -OK combat, though it's pretty kiddie, not realistic. You get magic abilities and whatnot. Your starter fast unarmored ship is better than a galleon since it can just circle an enemy ship while shooting at it. The magic abilities trivialize the combat. Even if you ignore abilities, the combat just isn't well-designed enough to "scale" to a full game, your strategy is exactly the same from your first enemy to your last. The bad: -The story is barely existent, and what does exist is awful and clearly not written by someone who writes for a living -The random equipment system is basic and more fit for a 30min gamedev tutorial than a game. It's not worth expanding on this. -The random quest system is just as basic and unfit as the equipment system -The character portraits are absolutely hideous and extremely repetitive (a total of 10 portraits, I believe?)

[1.0] Release Review There is no contender to Sid Meiers Pirates and this game wont change that, however it has a good foundation to offer fun, for some time at least. The graphics are average - bad but the gameplay works. You start with a Sloop that cant kill enemies and, unless you instantly understand the system at hand, will die in a few hits. Once you get some gear and especially the overpowered but often fun Abilities you are able to overcome your enemies. Still, I found myself using damaging Abilities exclusively since using cannons exposes your ship to getting killed by return fire. The game is in need of some more balancing. Trading is possible but doesnt really work since ports only buy 1 ware and sell you 1 other and there is far more profit to make by salvaging wrecked ships found around the map or killing enemies once youre stronger. There is currently no map in that ports arent marked anywhere so trading just doesnt work. The story is nice - you can play as male or female - but it isnt a driving point. The gear / loot system seems to be the main focus of the game, yet I didnt find as much good loot as I hoped and was most often than not selling what I got and buying the best gear in ports as opposed to looting it. There is a skill tree that works but since there is a level cap most players will stop at that point. For games like this there really needs to be an incentive to continue playing the game. Borderlands gave you small % boosts on top of your skills and it worked for every character you created thereafter. Ship selection is average, with only 5 possible ships, but items change the look of your hull and sails so there is variation to these. I hope the developers got the means to improve on this foundation. A few patches could improve the games looting and fun moments and bring it closer to what Sid Meiers Pirates offered. Id currently rate it a 3/5 but its reasonably priced.

I didn't get far in the game: barely 2h. But the experience was terrible. The reason: extremely poor save system. The game saves only when you manually dock into town: which is fine. However, if you are docked automatically as part of a mission (let's say deliver something), it doesn't count. There are no checkpoint saves as you progress through the story, and you can't skip cutscenes (only dialogues). So, if you go back in time (failed mission for instance) you have to sit through the cutscenes over and over. On top of that I've lost my progress several times. Save games would simply disappear when I start the game. Luckily I also backup manually, but this definitely shouldn't happen.

I've completed the game once with most of the achivements. I invested 30 hours. It was a GOG giveaway. The graphics and music are ok. The controls are good! (with controller) The gameplay sometimes feels quite grindy, but at least it hooked me for a bunch of hours. I didn't had any technical problems with this game, so that's perfect. I think it doesn't have any replay value. It says it's procedural and you may main any of the 5 ships and playstyle (magic or cannons). But unfortunately it's not interesting enough, and it doesn't add enough variations to play another 30 hours. The story is quite simple and predictable. Anyway, I had some fun. There are also few extras, like legendary monsters, treasures (with maps) or fishing which are welcome, but again, they're not interesting enough. The mechanics I found interesting was conquering islands, but it's in its barebones, they could improve it. Anyway, I had a good experience in general. Few boring moments, but it's ok.