An MMORPG I like? This can’t be. But it is. It’s actually happened again, thanks to being so different from the rest of the games out there. But it has. Pirates of the Burning Seas takes some cues from quite a few MMOs, and makes something unique and interesting with them, even if it’s not without a few flaws. Rotating, updated flaws, by nature of the genre, but still, it’s pretty solid, and oddly comparable to Sid Meier’s Pirates! smashed together with Eve Online.
Pick a country, pick a class, pick a look, get out and make something of yourself. It’s certainly not a complicated idea, and there’s fun to be had in all professions, and something to match your style certainly. Players into serious PVP will become naval officers, defending contended ports of their own and taking from their enemies. People wanting to make a name for themselves and some big bucks will become privateers, hunting pirates and, given the right circumstances, the ships of other nations. Traders make the bucks without the battle, working the economy(player driven, and so far, pretty damn good), making the goods and ships that keep it all happening. And players who don’t have any particular goals but to sail the sea, find some cool things and enjoy a few dubloons will become pirates, the wild card and catalyst of the game’s economy and contention system.
This is the Caribbean afterall, and you never know what’s going to happen. Someone might come from behind a cove and wreck your shit entirely, you might have everything stolen, or the massive unrest caused by traders dumping dirt cheap goods and pirates raiding a port gets your governor overthrown after a massive sea battle. And that’s the essence of the game, you just never know what’s going to happen. Even the game’s quests, which often seem standard enough, can take some very interesting turns in the middle of an escort or when running a blockade, and thanks to the great ship to ship combat, they stay exciting.
Ship to ship combat is a matter of knowing your ship, and knowing your enemy’s ship. Running alongside someone and firing is an easy way to get a ship sunk or boarded by a superior ship, or superior gun on a weak ship. Each class has its own set of abilities, be they attacks which rend an enemy’s sails, decimate crews or rend armor, defensive measures to repair or prevent damage, or sail away damn fast, or make it easier to board and capture a ship. Knowing how to use those skills properly, along with what points on your ship are strongest, the enemy’s weak points, what type of shot is best for the situation, and how your ship sails best compared to theirs. There really is a lot to it, and while it’s certainly complex, it’s not complicated. Battles can last a long time, but they’re intense and exciting each time because player skill is the primary factor.
Ground combat, unfortunately, isn’t nearly as exciting an affair, and it almost ventures into typical MMO works, save for the lack of an auto-attack button. Attacks are done off a hotkey set(which is a bit slow and limited unfortunately), with attacks made to increase your initiative, decrease enemy balance, and just plain deal damage. They key to avatar combat is to unbalance the opponent(s), and keep your initiative up to deliver the big blows. It’s a really good idea for a system that just feels repetitive and unpolished, but when it works right, it’s great. Sadly, it doesn’t hit that “works right” piece as often as it should. Boarding ships becomes something you’d rather not do at points, despite the profits to be gained from it. Fixing the pace and streamlining the mechanics would do a world of good for it.
For those more interested in diplomatic, relatively peaceful affairs, the economy and trade system await. Taking a solid cue from past MMOs, there’s an auction house in major cities where anyone can list goods. Plenty of things are found just from hunting down foes on the open sea, but the real production starts at the ground level. Really. Opening mining facilities and logging facilities at major ports starts the economy off, among other things. Materials are precious, and the amount harvested at once is finite. Every structure, be it for making items or harvesting resources, has a limited number of labor hours every day that are accumulated and spent on the production. No one person is going to be able to produce everything needed for, well, everything, and advanced ships can take twelve individuals to craft. It’s certainly a complex system, and if you enjoy profit for the sake of profit, the sense of achievement, and say, Ayn Rand, it’s a hell of a system.
It’s certainly a pretty ride on the seas as well. Soothing ocean waves, winds, and the occasional seagull fill in for a few minutes, and once a journey becomes protracted, music kicks in, certainly appropriate(and very nice). The open sea is a nice place to be, danger aside, and a clever system. Rather than traveling slowly across the same maps that you walk on and battle on, the world is compressed for travel, but ships and land masses remain visible and labeled. It’s very much a feeling of sailing across a map, but it works well for the game, and when players engage in battle they enter a private instance(and the battle becomes visible to others on at sea). Docking is just as simple a matter. Click on a harbor, and as long as you’re in range, there you are, back on land.
It’s a shame land itself is so bland, droll, clunky. I never felt like I’ve really gone anywhere else. There’s not a clear separation in terms of feel for the different nations ports, and all ports feel around the same size, with major features re-arranged. Much like the ground combat, it’s repetitive, the framerate is a little weak, and it just doesn’t hold up to the very high standards of the ships and sea. Most of my time on land would have been served better with a menu interface instead of wasting time walking around uninteresting places, and the ground mapping team could have put more effort into some really creative, interesting places to assault on foot, instead of what feels like MMO standard. Move forward 5 feet, pull a mob, avoid aggro by walking it back, etc. The sea battles are so dynamic and fresh that the formulaic ground battles and environments stand out horribly. The quality drop within one game is almost as much as happened to Spider-man with two games.
On top of that, player avatars, while fairly customizable, feel almost pointless. Sure, you get more items and options as you progress, but nobody is spending much time on land, so the only time you really see other players is raiding their ships, and not much then, in all the chaos. It shows severely how there were no plans, originally, for players to ever get off the boat in Pirates of the Burning Seas, though it’s at least a salvagable system.
And honestly, it doesn’t matter too much because the ocean combat is so fun, sailing around is great, and the economy has a great system to play with. It’s good enough I’m actually paying for a second month, which I haven’t done in several years of MMO trial. I didn’t even play World of Warcraft beyond the first month. This time, I want more.
There’s a definite “it” factor going on for PotBS. It’s got a fair amount of bugs currently, as is typical for the genre at launch(and sadly, sometimes, several years after), but if you can look beyond them, there’s a damn good time to be had regardless of your style, be it sailing around wrecking shit, making money, or taking anything you decide you’d like.
Pirates of the Burning Sea gets 4 stars. It suffers from some repetition and bug pitfalls, as is expected of the genre, but when it works it absolutely excels.
