Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships

Another post below mentions downloading the Combined Mod 3.2.0 to fix some bugs. I discovered that Mod is no longer supported in favor of a new Mod Pack - Gentlemen of Fortune! 2.0. Just a heads up. Link: https://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/gentlemen-of-fortune-2-0.19345/

Owned it before, and now I'm glad, that GOG makes it available worldwide. To my opinion, it's the best way to mix in one game the personal adventure of the characters, sea battles, abordage and a litttle bit of managing your ship, crew & cargo. Not too much management to become bored, just to feel connection with it. Lots of freedom. Really, why anyone needs a pirates game, if not for freedom of the open sea? You really choose yourself, what to do: trade, fight or look for adventure. But if you want a storyline, a long complicated quest - you can find enough/ Sword fighting is good. Easy to learn, hard to master. You make your way as a sword master or use just simple basics: anyway you have fun. Ships really differ. Big or fast, large room for cargo or for crew, and other ways to decide, what is best for you. Everything has its pros&contras. The only thing to be aware of: if you start the game, it takes a lot of time ;)

Well that game made many thing right, interface, inventory even graphic is not bad. BUT is it better then SID"s Pirates ? YES and NO. Its more RPG style (Gothic or Witcher series) and not so boring like Pirates when aftere 100 ship u ask why im still playing ??? ^^ It have time speedup, character have many skills many thing i want to lay RPG pirate game. BUT problematic is fighting style ^^ fighting 3 oponents is almost certan death and bcs its not Gothic, Witcher style game they made bad "fighting model". Game need only to resheap thing or 2 to have 5 STARS. But aftere 15 years studio probably dont excist ^^. Great potential for true adventure game, not so boring like Sid's pirates but far from great game.

I have a lot of fond memories with the original Sea Dogs and Sea Dogs 2, however badly they aged. I can't say that this game is an improvement. Sure, it has better graphics than the originals, more NPCs, bigger world and a new story, but it doesn't matter. This game would have been absolutelty amazing in the 90s, where this games' engine and graphics truly belong. But today, alas, it's barely playable. The interface is outdated, camera movements and fov are really awkward, land combat is unfairly difficult and clunky even at its easiest difficulty setting and the seabattles are at best slow and unrealistic. AI is both merciless and stupid: every ship uses the wind to its advantage with uncanny precision, yet gets stuck circling in one place trying to shoot you with all sides, to name one example. In other words, the game is just a mess. The most sad thing about the game, though, is that unintuitive and unfair to the player. The developers do not seem to understand the difference between not holding the player's hand and total lack of guidance or conveyance. If you start the game as a default freelance privateer, you have no idea what you're supposed to do or even where to go. The instructions given to the player are served in the worst possible way: as NPCs reading instructions out loud (and since there is no real voice-acting, it means that you are reading a manual instead of playing). Even then, the instruction are unclear at best. Last but not least, the amount of bugs, unfinished content, badly translated dialogue and patchwork design is jaw-dropping and makes the impression that this was supposed to be a side project or a coding exercise never meant for anyone except a small group of friends. The scope of the game turned out to be way too much of a bite for such a small studio to chew. Which is a shame, becasue there is great potential in it.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: For the most bugs there are fixes available. The most severe bug is the Tenochtitlan quest dialogue bug, for which the fix can be found here, along with quest walkthroughs, maps etc: http://ageofpirates.wikia.com/wiki/Tenochtitlan_Quest You are welcome! Now for the review: My first RPG was "Pirates of the Caribbean" (Sea dogs 2) and, boy, I was amazed! I did whatever I wanted: trading, boarding, looting cities... Fast forward to 2008 and you have the same game, just better! The best thing is the freedom. You can do whatever the hell you want, literally. You are thrown in the Caribbean and just do whatever you chose. Gameplay: The game has 3 sections: Map mode, sailing mode and land mode and you are free to engage in any of them at any time (for land mod you need to be near land, for sea mod you need to be near sea). Land and sailing modes is 3d person, map mode is top down camera controlling your ship over the Caribbean map so you can go from A to B. This is the best pirate game yet, but beware! 1) It's graphic are old. I dont mind because of nostalgia but if you are used to newer games, this might be a deal breaker for you. 2) This is a hardcore RPG: no quest markers, no guides to where to go, no level scalling (for the most part), nothing! You are given the directions in the dialogue (and some in your journal) and that's it! You can fail quests pretty easily!