Akella is a small Russian developer who have worked on many successful
pirate titles, including Sea Dogs, Age
of Sail 2, and Pirates of
the Caribbean. Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (AOPCT) is an open
ended game, similar to Privateer by Origin or Freelancer by, that
let the game player play the free form game of being a cargo ship,
a privateer, an escort for other ships, or to even join the service
of a local island governor.

The promotional material says that the game has total freedom without
constraints. Players can literally do what they like whenever they
like in an open environment. There are a ton of things to do in this
game. You can conquer and manage colonies or islands, ferry passengers
for a fee, build fleets, trade goods, and plunder merchant convoys.

The game is also a role playing game in that the player can learn
to fence from the skill based system. Skills include leadership,
navigation, tactics, fencing, pistols, cannons, accuracy, boarding,
defense, repair, and luck. When hero or heroine goes up in levels,
the player allocates skill points to these skills to increase their
values.

Hiring officers of sufficient skill is important. The skill of the
officers will supersede the skill of the hero/heroine in performing
repairs, firing cannons and other actions. Officers should be assigned
to appropriate positions on the ships.

Abilities like berserk gunner, sail maker, and merchant become available
and are selectable from a list. Once selected the abilities add to
the overall skill in these areas. Some skills precede other skills,
for example sail master proceeds wind catcher skills.

Reputation or faction is also important. There are many colonial
powers that the hero/heroine can win or loose favor with. If the
protagonist attacks Dutch shipping, be prepared for the Dutch to
start attacking on the high seas. Depending upon whether allied,
friendly, enemy or neutral depends upon the welcome that the captain,
ship and crew will receive in encounters on the high seas and ports.

As seen in many other games, the events of your captains career
are tracked on a career screen. The faction or relations with the
various nations is shown on this screen. Letters of Marque are shown
in the career screen.

Since the time of the game Sundog on the Atari ST, upgrading the
small starting ship to a larger ship and upgrading the weapons and
other aspects of the ship has been an exciting aspect of this type
of game. Size of ship, number of cannon, and even type of hull, sales
and cannon are all up-gradable.

While on land the player character moves like most on land with
a third-person rear-view perspective. The captain can enter shops,
the governors office, the tavern, the ship wrights, and other locations
to do business. Similar to other games, a yellow exclamation point
appears above the head of characters that have quests. A blue upside
down exclamation point indicates that the character wishes to talk
to the captain to impart wisdom and experience.

One aspect of the mission system is disappointing. The player can
only have one letter of marquee at a time. If the player talks to
another governor about a letter of marquee he will immediately loose
the letter of marquee with the first governor and not be given additional
quests by the first governor. In fact the first governor will never
give the player a letter of marquee again.

Many games of this type are not so punitive and allow the player
to be friendly with everyone as long as the player is careful not
to take missions that conflict with the other nations interests.
Game design of this type detracts from the game rather than enhances
it. Many players, myself included, like the challenge of balancing
the factions of competing interests, this game (AOPCT) denies that
challenge of the game within a game.

There is ship to ship combat where the player controls the ship,
fire your guns and eventually board the enemy. Once on the enemy
ship melee or hand to hand fighting breaks out between the boarding
party, the captain and the enemy crew and their captain. If you are
killed here the game is over.

The sea map shows a smaller map where the local area is portrayed
a large map which shows other ships nearby. Early in the game, the
player is advised to avoid enemy ships vigorously or the player will
find himself restoring a save game. The pirates early on have you
outgunned and outmanned. You cannot win.

AOPCT has all the elements that you would like for a game of this
type. It is free roaming, has role playing elements, allows you to
capture and manage towns, and many other features that stand it apart
as a well designed game system.

This game is reminiscent of Activision when they came out of bankruptcy
and worked hard to resurrect the Mechwarrior/Battletech line of games.
After working on the game for over a year, the game was fully designed
but did not gel. It was missing somethingan undefinable refinement
of the game which would grab the game player and hold his interest.
AOPCT has not gelled there is something missing even though the evidence
indicates that the game has all the features a player would want
in this type of game.

I believe that if the
developers took the game back and worked on it a bit more they
could find the missing balance and bring out a
truly great game. AOPCT is missing something.
Even on easy mode it is far too lethal preventing you from getting
into the game without
many failures and game restarts and reboots. As it stands I have
to give the game a grade of C, since it is missing something.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP
• 1.5Ghz
• 256 Mb RAM
• 1.1
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