Yarr harr anchors away!

THE game about piracy and not digital, but open seas one.

You get to be a captain of a ship of one of the great Caribbean players (England, Spain, France etc.) or a pirate who will face many a broadside before finally reaching the fabled City of Abandoned Ships. Though be warned, for it is not an easy game and you will fail many, many times before becoming the next Blackbeard.

The game itself is rather unpolished, and the activation process is a pain after you've used up activations, but those are technical mostly and not gameplay related problems.

Any potential pirate should consider downloading "Gentlemen of Fortune" mod, which basically is a fan patch with additional content.

Very nice game, a bit buggy but fun.

There is a huge lack of pirate games out there so this one is good.

Very disapointing game. The games looks to be build on the same (very outdated) controlling/graphics system as the first version.

Better buy the first game story and playability is a lot higher.

I haven't played many of the missions in this game... I have too much fun just sailing around shooting my cracked 4 pounders at things.

Worth the few dollars for it. Much better then many other "pirate" games out there including the East Asia Trading Company ones (or whatever the correct name is).

If you like pirates and loves to roam free in a gigantic gameworld this is your game.

There are three characters to play. I recommend that you start your game as Peter Blood. Then you will have to solve a number of problems before you can go into the more free style of play. The game is rather challenging to start with but ones you get the hang of it you will be stuck for hours and hours.

Sack colonys, board ships, engage in swordfights and become a wealthy, famous and mighty pirate. The Caribbean world is at your feet.

One of my favorite simulator game, I played this for a long time and after a while I decided to buy it, a little overpriced for my wallet. In the beginning the game will be quite hard for some players, it has no tutorials so I recommend to read the manual before you start playing.

The important thing is to install one of these two mods: Combined Mod or Gentelmen of Fortune, you can find them on http://forum.piratesahoy.net. This will enhance your gameplay, add content and fix almost all the bugs (less crashes).

In conclusion even with the lack of support and patches from the developers, with a little "help" from the mods you will have one of best sandbox pirate simulator with great RPG elements.

Firstly it is uncommon charm accompanying this game. Secondly it is sandbox style game with living world. The living world complexity is not like in "Space Rangers 2 Reboot" but still sufficient. You can play as sea wolf with fast, agile and strenghtful ship, or own a Man-o-War full with loyal crew (of course not immediately).

You manage three things: Developing and training your character and also its officers. You can be powerfull swordsman, while needed ship skills are supported with hired officers. Or using officers to protect you on land and remaining points spended to become the helmsman of the year :) Secondly, you manage the ship. You must take a care of the ship crew, supply them with rum, food, medicines, muskets. Same things like ammunitions, gunpowder for ship cannons, bullets for the officiers if they use guns. Repairing ship in port if needed. Later you be able repair ship on sea with planks stocked at ship! Sometimes random citizen give you strange question and you can obtain special item if you answer correct. And a other lot things can to do in the game.

The game difficulty is easy and settable, what a real challenge are nationality quests and the main quest resulting from the title. There are also infinite random generated quest from citizens for example.

Quest are to difficult? OK, then look there: http://sites.google.com/site/skodacoas/home

I hear about early freaking bugs avoid players to finishing the game. But at this patched state I never have problem and game is fully playable.

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PROS: -you can roam around the ship also inside the ship, officers in their ward and you will love the cabin where you can also store stuff -ships stats are generated in their class limits, so they are much variable and maybe is impossible found exact same ships stats like same speed and room storage etc. in the same class

CONS: -rats! they are everywhere and they eat even gunpowder! Fortunately it is not so annoying as it seems -when it is raining outside and you are in the ship cabin, it is a bit visible rain in the cabin (graphic glitch which ruin a bit the magic) -a bit confused keyboard setting

Attention: The play is not comparable to games like "Commander: Conquest of the Americas" or "East India Company" rather to "Oblivion" with ships :)

I recommend mod "Gentelmen of Fortune!" but please wait for 1.2, due to cutted down vanilla ingame things in version 1.1 like ship surrender ability which break one nationality quest

http://forum.piratesahoy.net/index.php/topic/17530-gentelmen-of-fortune-v11-faqbugsinstalling/

its predecessor "Combined Mod 3.2" which is pretty stable and bugless

http://forum.piratesahoy.net/index.php/topic/16817-combined-mod-v32-faqbugsinstalling/

no more mods here, but this two are big, so no other mods do not needed.

Game looks promising, but the learning curve is very steep and the difficulty level is very high in the beginning. No reasonable tutorial to start you out or anything. Lots of bugs, so i would recommend the fan made patch on pirates ahoy.

Very good game. The land combat feels a little awkward but if you played any of the other Akella pirate games or POTC then you'll feel right at home, combat is basically the same. Regular crashes with the stock game and lack of variety lead me to recommend the Combined mod for the game, but for $20, it's worth it.

This game is a very good age of sail game though I highly recommend getting the latest Combined Mod, as other stated as well below.

You choose one of several pirates to play as well as a profession. You can walk in and around ports and towns.

I would consider this game an age of sail simulation of sorts, since there's so much to it that really seems like a simulator. For example you must buy all the cannonballs for your ship that you're gonna shoot as well as the food and rum to feed your crew, and if you're using Combined Mod you also have to buy the black powder used to fire your cannonballs. You can hire officers for your crew as well as crewmen themselves, they all have to be paid after a certain amount of time, at which you can choose whether or not you wish to pay them.

My two favorite age of sail games are Age of Pirates 2 and Sid Meier's Pirates! I like Pirates! a little better simply because it's a little less complicated and easier to play, but this game has a very high level of playability and re-playability, being a fully sandbox game. I highly recommend this game to anyone who like age of sail games or simply wants to have a good time playing a ship captain.

The problem with this game is that there is no tutorial and that you might feel overwhelmed at the beginning. and you tend to give up after a while.

Also the Technical side of the engine might leave you in the cold, with lots of glitches. a broken melee combat system, and frequent crashes.

It is almost essential to use the combined mod you can find on moddb

wich will turn this game into a polished gem.

when you can overlook its flaws you are left with the best pirate sand box game on the market

A hard game to master, but worth while.

You will need to be able to put up with some of the bugs it throws your way now and then. You can fix the issues and most of the crashes with Combined Mod v3.1.5. However stock game although glitchy is the best pirate sandbox game ever made. And with the mod its perfect.

Overall a very enjoyable game with good graphics and gameplay, however it can be a little unforgiving at times. The only downside is the fact it is a little buggy at times.

Hi i would jusy like to say this is a great game,but sadly only with Combined Mod v3.1.5. This unofficial patch adds new ships fixes most of the bugs and adds some great new content.

The game is fun in general. A lovely mix of trade/sea battles/fencing/romance. The pirate system of character developing brings you some motivation to develop your character. The less fun thing is a load of bugs you encounter constantly!

Like its parents (seadogs, pirate of caribean) this game has a huge potential. Its a sandbox game.

You start in a tiny ship that barely can sail, you first goal being of course to get a better ship as fast as possible. And you have many way to do so : trade, mission (from governors (leading to privateing in the end) from citizens, merchants...), privatering/pirating and so on...

The character is based on a skill system like in its predecessor, you get experience sinking or capturing ships or killing ennemies while on land (throu sword battle) that allow you to choose various attributes after levelling. Experience is also spread among your officers, that you can hire on land or from captured captains. Each officers can be assigned a specific role (navigator, carpenter...) to boost the captain's skills. Each ship also require a minimum experience to be used, so if you dont have the prereq to sail it, you will suffer huge penalty (but still able to use it).

Sea battles are good, and realistic (so slow sometime, because of wind, but there is a time accelerator), but at start the game is a bit hard because you can meet large band of ennemies while you have just a tiny ship and almost no fire power. Ship spawn is related to your best ship level so each time you get a better ship, ennemies will be stronger.

The only downside of this game : its control on land. This might be my own feeling but since seadogs i never liked how you "steer" your character on land.

Also in Age of pirates 2, the main story (if there is one i'm not sure i've done it thou i played over 100+hours of the game) is hard to get. There are a lot of quests, a lot of them really, and various. But the mainquest is lost among them i think :)

This is a pretty decent game. It had a ton of potential but suffers from a lot of bugs. Its playable but everything feels a bit like the developers rushed it out the door and then just abandoned it.

The martial combat "feels" fun but the battles lack a lot of game balance. Some opponents will drop with 2 or 3 swings and others will kill you before you can even dent their health bar.

The Naval battles *are* fun but take WAY too long and you can often find yourself in a pitched battle with 6 opponent at once. More often than not this is the case. In the early stages of the game its almost impossible to find a like strength opponent you can battle rather than just run from. (My suggestion is to turtle in a friendly town and pop out to take a look at possible targets. If nothing is available then redock before they catch you and stay overnight. Repeat until you can find a defeatable opponent.)

All that coupled with regular crashes leaves the game a bit frustrating.

Now, having said that, the game can really be fun. It may not have received the attention it deserved from its developers but it still manages to draw you in and make you want to play it. I have spent several weekends on it now and still find it entertaining. If you like sandbox style pirate games you should give it a shot.