I need some Tempest decision help. Getting that whole bundle (Main game and all DLCs) plays in my mind as follows:

I can create my dream pirate queen (or waifu as kids these days call it), run around in cities and islands for exploration and doing piraty stuff and of course have a crappy ship that I slowly upgrade/replace to the biggest most badass right out of a fantasy pirate movie super-ship that gives the confidence you could sink a modern supercarrier fleet with it.

I assume the ship part is mastered since that was the base game; but how good did they actually got on the avatar/character gameplay for your dream captain? The DLCs do appear that they did a lot in that department and getting the complete bundle looks like it will finally be the wholesome modern pirate experience I look forward too.



And yeah, I know there is a Tempest subforum but I hope to get some information about it before the current deal runs out since that forum is not really active.

Well, I will give you my opinion (and you can see my review on the base game page). It is not great. The game was built for mobile and it really shows. It is not designed for pc use, menus designed for swiping for instance make navigating them very hard. Ship battles always in the same square of water. Now I don’t have jade and pirate city add ons, so maybe that helps (I.e. only get the full pack), me I would have to say avoid unless your really desperate and it’s only a couple of quid complete, just nothing to really recommend it.

Thanks so far. It would indeed be interesting how the perspective is from someone who has the whole package i.e. all DLCs.

I would not say desperate but I'd love an Age of Sail simulation (Ship and Boots on ground) with a bit more fancy looks than Blood & Gold or the Sea Dogs series (... without avatars that look like ass like in Man o War).

Since that (sale) ship has sailed a mod could just shove it into the Tempest subforums I guess.

From what I gathered by watching various clips & reading stuff on steam the game only has that one dude w/o any customization as a player character and the lady from the Jade screens is a named NPC/crewmember.

Glad I dodged that bullet. :/

... now if Sea Dogs 2 COAS terrible level scaling would not suck ass so much together with its horrible land based movement controls...

*sigh* Why is that genre so full of games that only almost got it only to nearly comical miserably fumble in the last mile of details. :(

I don't know why you don't try out Tempest anyway, maybe you will like it. Just buy and play it, if its not for you refund it. I bought it on Steam and enjoyed it for many hours, its a very accessable game even considering its mobile roots. It also looks pretty.

I do highly recommend Man o War: Corsair, though editing your character is lacking. The game is fairly barebones and not fully fleshed out, but the gameplay loop of shooting/looting/exploring is very fun for 40 hours or so. Its a expensive game though. If you don't like it just refund it.

And not to rant too much about Skyrim mods, but there is a Skyrim pirate mod for classic Skyrim. With the Character Editor mod you can pretty much create your ideal pirate "waifu". Modded Skyrim still is the greatest games if you want to make characters. Its better than any professional sculpture tool I know about.

Anyway, I also have some issues with my own type "idealistic" thinking that often my inner wishes don't line up with the game itself. A lot of gamesare amazing on paper but they play out not-so-great, they're still fun though if you're into that sort of stuff. All in all always consider that no game really is perfect, apart from Factorio of course (:D!) and even that game can be made look less amazing if you compare it to other similarly amazing games. It still is absolutely amazing without comparing it to other stuff though and probably the most intricate game I know about.

Truth be told, its all about peoples perspectives rather than what featues a game has. Keeping your expectations low almost automatically makes your enjoyment go higher :D!

Good grief you have recommended two of the worst games one here. Tempest as I mentioned before, not sure how you even managed to play it with the dreadful mobile interface that did t work on pc, maybe one of the dlc helped?
And man of war. Ships flying or sailing half in the water. Empty towns. Bugs like when in town mysteriously teleport to middle of ocean. Animation was done by someone who obviously had never seen a human move. Limited controls, limited most things. Can’t believe I paid full price for that garbage.

I got ManOWar since InDev because of a misunderstanding that the devs would add actual character customization. If my captain already does not look to my liking the rest already does not really interest me. If I merely got the itch to see a big wooden warship fires its cannons I fire up the Sea Dogs or Blood & Gold; they are doing a great job in the ship/ocean content and have decent boots on ground content too (although a bit meh controls wise) with a decent character selection (either by mods or from customization in B&G). One of these with (land) controls that don't suck and modern visuals... I guess its wait and see if Skulls & Bones will surprisingly add a captain creator. Or wait a few years and hope Corsairs: Black Spot (new title from the Sea Dogs guys AFAIK) will hold what it promises. If it gets released. Or even started to get made :/

I'll totally look into Skyrim should it gets a public PC release outside its epic I mean steam exclusivity deal.

Different strokes for different folks.

I tend to agree with Dray2K that there is now very little reason not to try a game and see how it goes.

To OP...

It sounds like you're most interested in character creation and unfortunately that sadly is not something ubiquitous with the pirate genre.

Indeed, but that has to be some guidance, otherwise we would eat there and review that as steak. I mean these really are bad games. Not games with some issues, or a bad dev, or missing bits, they are just bad - every bit quantifiable by taking every graphic, animation, set, storyline etc. Man o war rates quite high on my all time worst list.

Oh, a final thing. I note twice here the advice is buy, try, and refund. That’s not a great idea. If we all do that GOG will end up losing out due to abuse of the refund service.

Sadly it ain't. So wait and hope one comes in my lifetime I guess. Have to agree; I don't think the new policy is for do not like - refund please, but for broken stuff.

Of course there have to be a measurements on how to determine objective qualities, but I can argue that a game like Man O War: Corsair has qualities that make the game stand out compare to a classic such as COAS, thus making the argument that COAS may be qualitatively objective less solid than Corsair.

Not only that, but you can construct a (very bad) argument that declares that older games are always of lesser quality than better ones and after a certain age is met, any game can be redeemed so bad that it shouldn't be sold by anyone due to it being old and not-competitive to the market (which again is a very bad argument to make, but it goes along with food example of subjective labeling, because if any term can be defined as such you can basically wish-wash around any argument, or that anything sort of discussion has to cease because you can call a spade a refrigerator and are still correct and thats a little bit too extreme for me).

Personally I think that games such as Tempest and Corsair are still good enough to be sold, even if the assets are half-baked. Thats because its presentation doesn't fully add to the gameplay expierence and are entirely different matter. Bugs that interfere with the gameplay are then divided into entirely different matters. You can easily argue that Corsair is a bit too overpriced, but thats for more people to consider.

My motto and just for the record, if you can quantify something, i.e. you can define the gameplay any game has in your own words you can declare it a objective axiom (or part of something that, if coming together, defines a specific factor inside a video game). For instance, if we follow that definition of defining gameplay elements you can declare games that can softlock you without much user input as broken, because they break/counter such axioms. If a gameplay is functional than the axioms can't be fully disregarded but you can also give it another label that you can relate to the usefullness of the gameplay in a objective way. This in turn is the literal opposite of eating a sausage while calling it a steak, becoming a fully subjective non-axiomatic argumentation.

To the very least we can both agree that foods can't be really compared to video games, even if the allegory kinda fits the discussion :P.

Oh, I thought it was also for more subjective stuff, like if you thought a game was something else as you've expected. If its broken then GOG is obligated to fix the problem though, either through support tickets or just change API. The most common problem nowadays I would assume as broken are random dx9 issues with modern graphics cards which is something that dxvk fixes with lots of proficiency. Games that break mid-game for no reason shouldn't be accepted into the GOG library in the first place, but thats my own opinion.

Regarding Tempest...

I have played it on two platforms and rather enjoy it. Great game? No, but I found it playable and enjoyable.

Regarding GOG's return policy...

I think many decrying it miss 2 very important points...

... simply...

1) potential customers are more apt to purchase goods -- even at higher market prices -- when they know that they have a "safety net" / the ability to return a product should it not suit their needs or interests. This encourages trials.

2) a majority of customers do not return goods post-purchase and / or trials

GOG knows these two things well or they would never have instituted this policy.