Screenshots :.
Pirates of the Burning Sea
PC
Jay
08-02-2008
"Oooh, lovely!"
"Have at thee!"
"Debauchery afoot!"
"Argh, cramp!!"
"You might want to look behind you, love..."
Pushing the boundaries. I remember doing that a lot as a kid, I don’t really think that changes much. Kids, dogs, Michael Jackson – it’s all about seeing how much you can get away with. Is that, in effect, any different than pirates, who spend a lot of their time doing things the way they want, by force if required. Even the top knobs of the Armada were jumped up ninnies, repetitively bullied as children and then given a boat to play with. So, here we are, setting the historical province of Playgroundsville with all of the nations townies out on the open sea. Yeargh, phat bass mate.
As you no doubt have guessed, Pirates of the Burning Sea is a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game that lets you delve into the life of a sea loving Naval Officer, Privateer, Freetrader or Pirate depending on what you favour. After an element of character customisation, one that’ll stay with you to a degree of permanency due to a lack of item customisation, you jump into the tutorial. You’re on a ship under fire, and must quickly get your act together to fend of the aggressors and take charge of your vessel (said with a ‘v’ and not a ‘w’ as some Star Trek employees might argue) to crush your enemies under a volley of canon fire.
Ahem, anyway. It’s not a bad game as MMO titles go; it’s got a lot of what seems to meet today’s needs for an online-only game. We appear to have branched out and embraced our darker Player Vs. Player side, or indeed, players of that orientation have amassed to overrun this category within the genre. Personally, I hope for a balance in the game I buy. I have to appreciate that for every MMO there are single-player, multiplayer and P.v.P orientated players out there, and some that want a little of everything. In my eyes, Pirates of the Burning Sea is very much a PvP MMO with the possibility of having a stronger economy than most - in a few updates time that is.
As you progress, you’ll come to learn all about your initial career choice and how it’ll affect your life in the game. As a Naval Officer your main focus is on defence, and fighting in a very forward, broadside-to-broadside manor, which is probably why they get access to some powerful ships in the later game. Privateers rely on utilising smaller ships to their advantage, hoping to run circles around their enemies, with additional bonuses to boarding ships. Freetraders - as it might sound - specialise in trading and the economy, also gaining skills that help them gather resources and produce goods. Lastly, we have the ever-loved (nowadays at any rate) pirate that can hold his own in combat and has the ability to nab defeated vessels.
The ship combat is what everyone’s here for. Obtaining new, more powerful ships as you level up is what everyone strives for on their path towards blatting their respective enemies in high-level PvP war. I have to agree, as far as this part of the game goes, it’s enjoyable. You have the ability to not only customise your boat’s appearance in colour and with customised sales, but further, more personal statistic alterations can be made with upgrades to the ship depending on your playing style. Upon buying a ship, you’ll be presented with a vast array of statistics that represent your ship as a whole. When in combat you’ll notice things like your hull armour being eaten away by cannon fire, or your sail strength being diminished by the enemy’s grapeshot. Therefore, having a stronger hull or higher sail strength will prevent getting sunk or having your sails shredded to the point where you’re sat there like a right nonce. Your upgrades can help enhance these various factors depending on your playing style. If you like charging in and trying to board a vessel then you’ll want to focus on sails, and if you like broad-siding your enemies, big canons and lots of hull baby!
Where the game falls down a bit is in the boarding combat’s monotony. You and your men take on the crew of the opposing ship - both of you have reinforcements depending on your prior ship combat crew levels - and then are given the extremely interesting job of…clicking a button. It really doesn’t come down to much more than that. All of the fun and ingenuity went into the ship combat, and this was sort of tacked on as a side idea. Although you get the option to follow down the route of Dirty Fighting, Fencing or Florentine, the fighting just doesn’t get that interesting. The most enjoyable it got was a skill to allow me to use a pistol in my off hand. Shooting someone in the face on occasion gave me something to look forward to in the whole affair.
Another less interesting part of the game is the quest system, which lacks a depth that’ll make you want to come back for more. Additionally, since the XP has been cut for quests, a lot have turned to open water combat and pounced on a few enemies there – which again leads to a lack of diversity. So, in short, the quest system is there predominantly to help you level and get you into the fight. Which is, as I guessed from the start, what the game really is about.
Port Contention is the system used to tell which nation controls which port of the Spanish Main. You can go for completely specific PvE quests, unbalancing the economy or killing NPC ships around the port and gather unrest points for your nation. As a nation reaches a certain amount of unrest points, the port will go into contention. At 5,00 unrest points it’ll turn into a Pirate PvP zone that’s shown up on the mini-map. Pirates and Privateers (with a skill) can attack any of the nations in PvP combat, although the other nations can’t attack each other at this stage. At 7,000 unrest points the PvP zone for pirates extends, and a small one created for all nations to attack each other. At 10,000 points, the port becomes contended and is considered to be under attack by the nation with those points. 48 hours later, if all goes well for the nation, the final Port Battle initiates and an instance of 24v24 ships will occur, with the winning side claiming the port as their own – unless you’re a Pirate in which case you can look forward to ransacking the place for a bit. Yeargh.
After playing Pirates of the Burning Sea a good long while, I came to realise that for it’s lack of hand-to-hand combat, it all came down to the ships, although in future updates I expect they’ll find ways to enhance what’s already there. It certainly has a rich environment of potential, and I think the 55 ship types and PvP related gameplay will keep gamers hooked for some time. Whether it’ll pose any threat to other vehicular-based MMO’s such as Eve, only time will tell.
As you no doubt have guessed, Pirates of the Burning Sea is a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game that lets you delve into the life of a sea loving Naval Officer, Privateer, Freetrader or Pirate depending on what you favour. After an element of character customisation, one that’ll stay with you to a degree of permanency due to a lack of item customisation, you jump into the tutorial. You’re on a ship under fire, and must quickly get your act together to fend of the aggressors and take charge of your vessel (said with a ‘v’ and not a ‘w’ as some Star Trek employees might argue) to crush your enemies under a volley of canon fire.
Ahem, anyway. It’s not a bad game as MMO titles go; it’s got a lot of what seems to meet today’s needs for an online-only game. We appear to have branched out and embraced our darker Player Vs. Player side, or indeed, players of that orientation have amassed to overrun this category within the genre. Personally, I hope for a balance in the game I buy. I have to appreciate that for every MMO there are single-player, multiplayer and P.v.P orientated players out there, and some that want a little of everything. In my eyes, Pirates of the Burning Sea is very much a PvP MMO with the possibility of having a stronger economy than most - in a few updates time that is.
As you progress, you’ll come to learn all about your initial career choice and how it’ll affect your life in the game. As a Naval Officer your main focus is on defence, and fighting in a very forward, broadside-to-broadside manor, which is probably why they get access to some powerful ships in the later game. Privateers rely on utilising smaller ships to their advantage, hoping to run circles around their enemies, with additional bonuses to boarding ships. Freetraders - as it might sound - specialise in trading and the economy, also gaining skills that help them gather resources and produce goods. Lastly, we have the ever-loved (nowadays at any rate) pirate that can hold his own in combat and has the ability to nab defeated vessels.
The ship combat is what everyone’s here for. Obtaining new, more powerful ships as you level up is what everyone strives for on their path towards blatting their respective enemies in high-level PvP war. I have to agree, as far as this part of the game goes, it’s enjoyable. You have the ability to not only customise your boat’s appearance in colour and with customised sales, but further, more personal statistic alterations can be made with upgrades to the ship depending on your playing style. Upon buying a ship, you’ll be presented with a vast array of statistics that represent your ship as a whole. When in combat you’ll notice things like your hull armour being eaten away by cannon fire, or your sail strength being diminished by the enemy’s grapeshot. Therefore, having a stronger hull or higher sail strength will prevent getting sunk or having your sails shredded to the point where you’re sat there like a right nonce. Your upgrades can help enhance these various factors depending on your playing style. If you like charging in and trying to board a vessel then you’ll want to focus on sails, and if you like broad-siding your enemies, big canons and lots of hull baby!
Where the game falls down a bit is in the boarding combat’s monotony. You and your men take on the crew of the opposing ship - both of you have reinforcements depending on your prior ship combat crew levels - and then are given the extremely interesting job of…clicking a button. It really doesn’t come down to much more than that. All of the fun and ingenuity went into the ship combat, and this was sort of tacked on as a side idea. Although you get the option to follow down the route of Dirty Fighting, Fencing or Florentine, the fighting just doesn’t get that interesting. The most enjoyable it got was a skill to allow me to use a pistol in my off hand. Shooting someone in the face on occasion gave me something to look forward to in the whole affair.
Another less interesting part of the game is the quest system, which lacks a depth that’ll make you want to come back for more. Additionally, since the XP has been cut for quests, a lot have turned to open water combat and pounced on a few enemies there – which again leads to a lack of diversity. So, in short, the quest system is there predominantly to help you level and get you into the fight. Which is, as I guessed from the start, what the game really is about.
Port Contention is the system used to tell which nation controls which port of the Spanish Main. You can go for completely specific PvE quests, unbalancing the economy or killing NPC ships around the port and gather unrest points for your nation. As a nation reaches a certain amount of unrest points, the port will go into contention. At 5,00 unrest points it’ll turn into a Pirate PvP zone that’s shown up on the mini-map. Pirates and Privateers (with a skill) can attack any of the nations in PvP combat, although the other nations can’t attack each other at this stage. At 7,000 unrest points the PvP zone for pirates extends, and a small one created for all nations to attack each other. At 10,000 points, the port becomes contended and is considered to be under attack by the nation with those points. 48 hours later, if all goes well for the nation, the final Port Battle initiates and an instance of 24v24 ships will occur, with the winning side claiming the port as their own – unless you’re a Pirate in which case you can look forward to ransacking the place for a bit. Yeargh.
After playing Pirates of the Burning Sea a good long while, I came to realise that for it’s lack of hand-to-hand combat, it all came down to the ships, although in future updates I expect they’ll find ways to enhance what’s already there. It certainly has a rich environment of potential, and I think the 55 ship types and PvP related gameplay will keep gamers hooked for some time. Whether it’ll pose any threat to other vehicular-based MMO’s such as Eve, only time will tell.
8/10