Pirates of the Burning Sea

Insert nautical jargon here. Insert David Hollingworth (and a pirate impersonation) here.

Pirates of the Burning Sea

Modern game reviewing has many challenges that old-timey game reviewers never had to face. Chief of these (apart from our biggest whinge – you bloody gamers keep getting younger and younger! (Also, get off my lawn –ed)), would have to be the not so humble MMO. They’re by no means a new phenomenon, but the vastness of the modern MMO makes a quick review a gamble, while an in depth review can take more Atomic-hours than the laws of physics allows (while still allowing us to play sweet, sweet Lord of the Rings Online, at least).

It’s even worse when a game like Pirates of the Burning Sea comes along. On the one hand, there’s great ship combat and oodles of flavour, while on the other hand, a lot of the content seems either hidden or hard to find. Oh, and on the other other hand, can we just say ‘pirates!’

We’ve been playing off and on for about a month, and what we’ve discovered is a truly unique and adventurous MMO that is nonetheless hamstrung by its own efforts to fit in with the rest of the MMO pedigree.

The set up of the game is historical, which is a wonderful change from sci-fi and fantasy settings. You play as either a French, Spanish or English national – unless you choose to be a Pirate, in which case the whole world is your oyster, so to speak. If you choose to be a national, you can then pick between three classes – Naval Officer, Privateer, or Freetrader. Pirates get to be, well, pirates.

The aim of the game is essentially to dominate the Caribbean through both force of arms and economic might. Naval Officers are your brave front line types, skilled at combat with ships of the line, while Privateers are best with small ships and boarding actions. Freetraders are no less important, however, as without goods to flood enemy ports, your nation can never hope to control the game. Pirates? They’re pirates. Stop asking.

With each class working together, a faction can effectively control the entire map, or at least the majority of it, at which point the game is effectively ‘won’ and the server resets to be fought over again. It’s this unique ability to not only affect the world, but actually win in an MMO, that sets Pirates aside from the pack.

It might seem like a sparse backbone for an MMO, but when you add the fact that each player is the Captain of their own (albeit small, at least to start with) ship from the get-go you can begin to see the possibilities. Let’s just say that if your first foray into the open ocean, packed with ships of all nationalities trading, fighting and raiding doesn’t leave you gob-smacked, you’re made of sterner stuff than us.



So, essentially, the game gives you two avatars – your ship and your Captain. Your Captain you can personalise from the outset, with a refreshingly dizzying array of artistic options. Frock coat or tattered vest? Puffy shirt or leather harness? Barefoot or thigh-high shiny leather boots? Foot fetishism aside, while it’s not as in-depth as avatar creation in City of Heroes/Villains, it’s still a lot of fun.

Your ship, however, starts off pretty tiny, and you’ll need to make or find upgrades before you can start altering your pride and joy to match your own preferred method of high seas action.

Your two in-game representations come with different combat options too – the rather under-developed swashbuckling which represents boarding actions and similar, over the shoulder guff, and sea combat, which, frankly, could be a game in and of itself. We’ve played dedicated age of sail strategy titles that aren’t as fun, gripping and detailed as Pirate’s floating ?charnel house.

It all works together very well, and there are entire treatises being written and re-written online regarding the economic model of this digital Caribbean. But what lets the game down is that it lacks flow – new players often find it hard, and we had this same problem, to find the best content, and we’re sure it actually puts a lot of players off. Imagine if, in WoW, your first missions outside of your starting area were to cross the world for no apparent reason, skipping all kinds of cool stuff along the way. Sure, any age of sail game should feature some exploration, but Pirates takes it a touch too far.

Hopefully a patch or two will see the problems ironed out. It’s certainly a game worth putting up with a few niggles for.