This is indeed the same team which made the two old games.
They split off from Ascaron when that company imploded. This team had a reputation for reliably shipping good games at a solid pace. So Kalypso bought them their old IPs (Patrician, Port Royale, Tortuga) and provided funding in exchange for a majority stake in the studio. A few years ago they swallowed up the rest of the shares.
Their last game for Ascaron, the Sacred 2 console port, plus the IP, went to Koch Media / Deep Silver (now part of Embracer Group).
I don’t know much about the new game. The only thing I think I remember is that it’s supposed to be what their original plan for the first Tortuga was: Port Royale minus the trading plus some Pirates.
Typically, I (a)vastly prefer turn-based. But I was watching Splat play this and kept wishing it was real-time. I think being turn-based causes issues here, at least for me. I want to be able to avoid enemy shots with skillful maneuvering (or just having a more maneuverable ship), for instance. That’s not a thing here.
That video did not give me a good impression but I’m not sure if that is due to the game or the streamer. I’m not familiar with the streamer but he made a bad impression on me - not good on explanations, some very questionable decisions and an annoying attitude. (I don’t typically watch streamers so I might be biased).
Well, here’s my issue with the streamer: it’s not clear to me that your impression is correct b/c the streamer explained NOTHING about the ship battles, maneuverability or any of that stuff. I could imagine that battle he showed was between two small maneuverable ships and thus there was no maneuver advantage. Perhaps with bigger, slower ships, there’s a difference? That’s the kind of somewhat deeper impression I’m interested in. As a viewer, I was provided no clue at all as to that.
Certainly that battle seemed kind of naff which both ships pirouetting about like ballerinas but is that indicative of all battles or just battles between the early, small ships?
I’m super curious. I love Pirates!, from the original to the remake. And the videos I’ve seen make it look like an update of sorts. Minus sword fighting (bummer) and dancing (yay!). And turn-based ship combat is fine by me.
I’m just not yet ready to take the plunge. But I’d love to read about it :)
It’s understandable to want those insights. That’s simply not what this guy does on his YouTube channel. He does first/early impressions. That’s his thing.
I played a couple hours last night. This will be a stream of thought data dump as I have had no coffee yet and the kido is screaming. Real time open world exploration that turns into a turn based battle once you raise your pirate flag and get close to a ship. You can recruit other captains and increase your fleet. So far only got the one extra capt from tutorial. Othera have qualifiers to recruit of either more money or rep with a certain nation. Yep multi ship turned based battles. Combat is pretty good thus far and prolly better as you upgrade ships and level up captains and unlock skills. Lots of skills, first captain has a taunt skill, I took a ramming one and a boarding boost. Lots of good options between passive boost and timed clickies. Towns are just like Pirates. Shipmaster, market, tavern and governor. Lots of quest at tavern and Gov. About 25ish goods you can trade. No dancing, no fencing. I wish there was fencing
Boarding is a text thing with 3 options that very in success chance. Each one cost a number of guys to execute and then has a sliding scale of effectiveness. So one might be a 40% chance of success, cost 3 men but will move you 30% towards victory if you succeed but only 5% to defeat if you fail. 100% either way dictates the outcome. Amount of men effect those %. It’s pretty neat and has an accompanying flavor text to go with it. RNG can be evil here though as I failed a 90% chance one that was a duel with the other capt and it had a 100% loss. Ouchie. You can attack towns and take over pirate havens. Done neither.
Overall I’m digging it, very Pirates! like but more going on with no mini games.
I have been playing this since yesterday. I think its kind of ‘meh’ so far. It seems to just involve a lot of repetitive combat.
It also does not explain how to do a lot of things. For example, how do you attack a town? There is a crew wish to raid a town, but I have no idea how to do that. I have never seen an option when at a town to attack it.
And as I asked I figured it out. You need to be in pirate mode as you approach a town, then the dock icon becomes a raid icon.
Oh my gosh… Sailing Era looks like a spiritual successor to Uncharted Waters at first glance… I can’t believe this might be the game I’ve been looking for since 1995.
ship maneuvers do affect your chance of being hit fwiw. If you want to just circle of death you can, but you can also joust and hit and run and prevent good counter fire. there is a lot of potential depth it just is easy to move next and start trading shots which is what most people tend to do.
I think this game has a lot of work. Maybe in a year it might be really improved. It really seems like someone wanted to make a pirate game a little similar to Pirates! and then ran out of ideas.
There are also a lot of bugs and mechanics issues. IE: An enemy ship with no crew (you kill them with grape shot) still can move and attack. Similarly boarding said ship would cost you crew even though there was no defenders.
Sometimes when starting a sea battle near land it would place you ships so they must crash into something, ie: facing the beach with no room to turn around
The crew boarding mechanic is terrible and needs to be scrapped for something new.
The only real way to make money is to capture ships. The amount of cargo enemy ships have is pathetically small. I captured a convoy of 6 merchant ships. I got a less than 100 units of cargo even though the cargo capacity of said ships was like 2000.
The core mechanic of having to split up your loot to appease your crew needs to take far longer. I think after 15 days, your crew moral will tank. The real issue are all the promises you need to make and how they become more and more extreem. When I quit playing the promises were like, sink 38 ship, raid 15 cities, capture 27 ships, and things like that. You would have at best 15 days to do all of that.
Also I found the sea battles repetitive and boring after doing so many of them.
