"Arrrr ..."

In this era of wild hybridization and genre convergence, we at Just Adventure+ find our interests piqued by new games that attempt something new and interesting. Bethesda's Sea Dogs caught our eye at E3 last year, and lately I've been giving it a spin.

Designed by a talented group of maniacs from Russia, Sea Dogs is a pirate game that blends strategy, role-playing, action, and adventure elements into one wildly ambitious whole. The action takes place in the Caribbean and begins on the small island of Highrock, where your character has just escaped from being imprisoned by the Spanish. The game follows your experiences as a sea captain in a world of competing international influences and unscrupulous cutthroats.

The game consists of many different parts. First, there's the adventure/RPG part, which has your character roaming around the various island villages meeting people, buying supplies, hiring crew, and acquiring missions. This is done in over-the-shoulder third-person.

Like most RPGs, you gain experience points, which allow your character higher and higher levels of abilities. In Sea Dogs, you gain experience points in various ways, from completing quests to conquering ships to simple conversation. This flexible approach to experience building reminded me of Planescape Torment, which of course is a very good thing.

Character Building, Plank by Plank

Specifically, the reason you build your experience points is so that your character can command more and more ambitious ships. At the beginning of the game, you're only qualified to handle a piddly little "pink," which is not exactly the scourge of the Seven Seas.

The strategy elements of the game first come into play with resource management. Everything costs money, and the world of Sea Dogs is an expensive one indeed. Ship repairs, supplies, crew salaries, and especially new ships--everything's got a price tag. When the game begins, you can't help but focus on the issue of building up these precious resources.

A very interesting way the game combines strategy and RPG concepts is in the skills tree. As a ship's captain, you have skill ratings in nine areas: Sailing, Defense, Repair, Commerce, Gunlaying, Reloading, Coordination, Boarding, and Grappling. When you "level up," you're able to spend hard-earned points improving these skills, but you can also improve them in another way: by canny hiring of ship's personnel. In other words, if you're willing to drop the change to hire a truly expert Master Gunner, you'll get a significant increase in your Gunlaying skill.

This system has a curious and very interesting result: It sort of creates an RPG in which your ship is the main character.

The game has excellent full-screen displays for hiring, character development, and resource management.

Pardon Me, but We'll Be Taking Your Ship Now, Thanks So Much

Once at sea, the game completely changes. The view is that of your ship, as you navigate it through the treacherous, sultry waters of the pirate-infested sea. When ships are sighted, they may be allies, neutral, or hostile, and it's up to you and your crew to decide how to respond.

Though it has an underlying story, Sea Dogs also has a great deal of flexibility. Want to play as an honorable merchant? No problem. Want to become a vicious pirate? Go for it, but make sure your Boarding and Coordination skills are good enough, because the going gets quite tough. While boarding a hostile vessel, the game turns to action as you have to learn to win swordfights a la Prince of Persia 3D.

You also have the choice as to which nations to ally yourself with. Feel like cuddling up to the French? Fine, but be careful around those Spanish Islands. Feel like making a deal with an English lord and then betraying him to the Spanish? Proceed at your own risk.

Swept Away

The visuals of the game are simply breathtaking. And in a game that has so many "modes," this is quite an impressive feat. The talented designers have gone in for so much realism that your ship actually sits lower or higher in the water depending on how much cargo you're carrying!

A warning about system requirements: Though the specs are listed as Pentium 233 or equivalent, don't believe it. Even with my hotshot Voodoo3 accelerator card, the game was very chunky on my PII 350 machine.

This is definitely not a "strategy lite" game, and so could be intimidating to adventure players not familiar with that genre. That caveat aside, I can recommend Sea Dogs to players interested in seeing yet another happy example of the new breed of genre-busting games.

Final Grade: A

If you liked Sea Dogs:
Watch: Captain Blood
Play: Sid Meier's Pirates
Read: Scaramouche by Raphael Sabbatini

System Requirements:

PII 233 or equivalent
64 MB RAM
4X CD-ROM
3D Accelerator
4 MB VRAM
800 MB disk space
Mouse
Sound card
DirectX v.7.0
(But don't believe them; see above.)

This review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link back to Just Adventure.