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Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 33 / 34
Date: August 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

You have to get this game. That's all there is to it. Sea Dogs is a great free-form pirating game. You start, naturally enough, as a would-be buccaneer with a wimpy little ship and no idea what's going on. Never fear, that changes rapidly. You can roam towns in a 3-D third person view, talking to inhabitants, recruiting crewmembers in bars, collecting orders and quests from local governors, and generally having a great time. You can align with the British, the French, the Spanish, or be a rogue Pirate (Pirates are effectively a 4th country). The pirate lands are sort of neutral territory for all, and there you can buy letters of marque from agents of the other countries to fight one another. This is necessary because, for example, if you're allied with the British, you can collect quests and information from the British, but if you go to a Spanish town you tend to get blasted out of the water by coastal batteries. Yet often the bigger quests require you to visit the islands and towns of several different nations.

But what is it, really, that we all want from a good seafaring game? Ocean battles.. and you get them here in spades. Beautiful graphics, highly detailed ships and combat effects, and even the ability to switch between steering your ship from afar like a racecar, or walking the deck and using a spyglass to view your enemies make this game totally amazing. The graphics are so good that I was shocked to learn that this game came out years ago. Holes appear in sails as chain kippels fly, waterspouts ring your ship from missed shots, planking flies in the air and badly damaged ships smoulder, masts blow completely off from critical hits, and cannons explode off the walls of fortresses as you engage them with explosive rounds. The weather effects are amazing..fight a running battle with spanish frigates in 20 knot winds and waves so high your ship nearly flounders, or hound your foes through fog so thick the first warning of contact comes from the creak of timbers as you run into their beam. Sinking ships go down with great fanfare and often leave a floating debris trail of cargo you can salvage, although if you want the big hauls, grapple your foe and go hand-to-hand on the quarterdeck to take the cargo and even the ship intact.

Other great aspects:

1) RPG EXP system allows rewards for everything from sinking or boarding ships, persuading governors to give you new quests, recovering items, or even just hang out in bars and chatting. As your level increases, you are able to spend points on everything from improving your sailing skills and sword skills to learning how to duck incoming cannon fire. Hire unique NPCs like a First Mate or a Surgeon to augment your skills, although it will increase your crew costs (don't pay and suffer a mutiny or two). The higher a level you are, the better the ship you can command, although this is not as restrictive as it sounds; each class of ship has a half dozen to experiment with. Build your own fleet by hiring NPCs with their own vessels, and placing your First Mate aboard a captured war ship.. command them in battle by telling them to sink specific targets, board others, or follow you and provide covering fire. Complete quests to gain rank and esteem from your allied country, such as a Barony from the British, replete with a fancy new coat and breeches.

2) Great graphics, can't emphasize this enough. Occasional cutscenes add to the flair, such as when you and your mates invade a town with bloodied swords held high.

3) Merchandising. You don't even have to be a pirate or a naval officer, you can just run goods from town to town, taking advantage of local prices and preferences. Most folks will do some of this anyway to pay for repairs, upgrades, new ships, and crew, but you can make it your job and it's still fun. You can even sell captured ships for huge profit.

A few other things that I've found helpful in playing the game:

1) The default difficulty is 'Hard'. You can change this in Options at the main screen. A lot of folks seem to have missed this, and get discouraged when they get blasted from the start. It also seems to cut down on the number of times you get attacked in general.

2) High wire act. There aren't a lot of do-overs in this game.{Anger} a governor once, chances are you won't win him back. So save a lot, and really pay attention to your dialogue choices because if you just say the wrong thing you might miss a quest permanently. For example, one quest was to destroy a fort and pillage a town. I destroyed the fort, but accidentally agreed to be paid off by the mayor after running amok, rather than claiming the island for Britain. This effectively 'broke' the quest, since whenever I returned to that town, it was already pillaged, yet I was not able to officially claim it or pillage it again. Also, occasionally things will get buggy with the letters of marque; at one point I was operating under a British letter of marque, yet the British were hostile to me, and the British agent in the pirate town was willing to sell me another. Yet at the same time the Spanish reacted as if I already had one.

3) You sail between islands on a world map, and interact with encounters in the 3-D sailing setting. Time compression options let you zip into friendly towns if you want instead of tacking around the island, or chase down slow fat merchantmen that tried to sail off while you destroyed their escorts. Learning how to use the time compression menu will shave hours of relatively tedious chasing off your fights, and occasionally even let you sneak up on enemy forts and ships without taking damage.

In short, get this game.

Not perfect, but nothing else like it.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 20
Date: December 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been waiting for a game to do justice to the Pirate's genre for years. Sea dogs makes a valiant effort, though not succeeding on every point. For those who enjoyed Sid Meyer's Pirates, like myself, you may find a few things lacking in Sea Dogs. The setting is an imaginary group of islands, not the Caribbean as I had hoped. The number of visitable islands is also fairly limited. The towns you can visit are pretty, but limited in their scope. Gameplay is limited to one character so I don't believe this is a true RPG, but the game does deal in experience points, hit points and skill points in your character's progression. This game does have a steep learning curve, with novices getting blasted out of the water on a regular basis. So why did I give this game 5 stars? The sailing sequences are breathtaking with beautiful waves, ships, and environmental effects. Battling other ships and forts is also great 3d fun and the gameplay in between is solid enough to keep me playing again and again (much to the irritation of my wife). The makers are developing patches as I write this, so hopefully the game will only get better. Until then, there's still nothing else out there like it.

Patience a must

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: August 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Sit down, get comfortable and turn on your thinking cap. this game will take you to the limits of your creativity. I strongly suggest a notebook just for information of your travels and missions in action. This game is very difficult and I am pretty sure that it is a "smart game" because it seems to catch on to my strategies and correct itself to increase the challenge!!
You must be patient and try many strategies to overcome the challenges. Overall this game is fun and good for hundreds of hours of fun!!

This is Great!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: January 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I just got this game a week ago, and I can't stop playing it. I had some trouble in the beggining because you start out with a really small ship. I learned that if a big ship attacks you, it will probably be slower, so just run away. Make sure to get a lot of money and talk to everyone in a town to get experience points.
This game is a lot of fun once you get a bigger ship, so work your way up and you'll love it!

Sweet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: December 24, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game rocks. It's graphics are excellent, the story is fun and engaging, and the combat is exciting without being totally simplistic. I'm sure it's full of historical inaccuracies and lacks the perfect ship sailing model but if I wanted a history lesson I would watch the History Channel, right? The playability is pretty good. I think I could play this game for quite a while before I would even consider it repetative. The only complaint I have manuvering my character while in towns. The controls seem a little sluggish, but aside from that, I have yet to run into any other bugs. Awesome game, buy it, or you'll be sorry you missed out on it!

Great Pirates Game!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on a whim and love it! The graphics are good for a 3 year old game. The ships rock and creak in the wavy sea and seagulls fly around. The key to starting the game is to avoid combat until you do some trading (BTW: Coffee sales for high price at Dead Island). Once I did this and amased enough money to hire a crew, I was able to fight pirates. Just dont take on more than you can chew. The gun battles are fun and you must use srategy to win, especially when you are outgunned (Buy Bombs!!). The NPC's give you information and quests. The voice overs are pretty good too. The game gives you the freedom to fight for Spanish, French, or English, but you will have to find where to get the letter needed to fight for them! I have dueled several times now and won over half of them! The key is to read the manual and talk to a local about sword fighting. The controls are simple and easy to learn. My only suggestion is to download the patch from Bethsoft.com before starting a new game, so that you have all the patches in! I have played for 15 hrs now and found no bugs yet!!

Slap on an eyepatch! Board'em in smoke!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is a worthy successor to Sid Meier's classic, Pirates! An entertaining, almost-great game which takes a "Hornblower-Bolitho lite" approach to the genre.

GOOD + Enjoyable ship-to-ship combat; + Lovely 3D modeled ships and environments (great sunsets and storms); + Interesting onshore RPG interactions with NPCs; + A good variety of quests, missions and career paths (running errands for the English, French or Spanish, or full-bore pirating, capturing ships or forts, etc.); + The pleasure of developing step-by-step into a rich and successful pirate commanding an armored 90-gun man o'war. Yar!

BAD OR UGLY - Relatively steep learning curve (stick with it!); - Rrather unrealistic sailing model (wind effects minimal); - Buggy (first patch is out, though); - An odd ahistorical gloss to late 17th century/early 18th century adventuring (O'Brian fans, you are warned!).

Good thing you found this, buy it before its too late.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: November 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Before you dismiss me as some pirate loving freak who has only played this game and therfore thinks its the best ever, hear me out.

I was givin this game as gift about 6 years ago and I play it to this day. Its quite simply the most fun I've ever had in an RPG, I've played all sorts of games and this is definitly the best overall.

There are several different factions you can join, English, French, Spanish, and Pirate. These mean different things obviously. You begin as English. English are at war with Spain so Spain is Hostile. French is neutral and Pirate is hostile to all. France is at war with spain though, but not allied with English. So turing to Spains Side would make you hostile to all.

Each faction has its own unique story as well. Four different games there, if thats what you want.

Sea Battles are amazing, want to slow the enemy down? Load your guns with Chain shot and aim for his sails, aim high thought, its range is less then solid shot or bombs. What to kill his crew? Load grapeshot and blast him! Now that he cant move and his crew is in ruin, board him! Attacked the ship and if you win, you gain control of his cargo and even his ship, only if you hired a first mate to captain it, of course.

Killing not for you? Start off buying coffee at highrock and sell it at dead island for twice the money. When the time is right, buy a tradeship and sail all over exploiting islands needs and whatnot.

The action, politics and quests availible on land I cant even begin to capture in words, so I wont try.

Want to stop Spainish harrasment of english ships? Attack a spanish fort and plunder their town, it will be weeks before its repaired.

Want to drive the cost of hard-wood down at Belfore? Raid a French Treasure fleet and make off with millions. Watch out though, they are guarded by 100 cannon floating monsters of ships called Man O' Wars.

Dont care about the story? Become and Pirate and do anything you want, I cant overstate how great this game is.

If you like RPGs and dont own this game, if you dont order it right now, you are either recovering from major trauma to the head or simply an idiot.

If ye don't like this game then ye should walk the plank.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Hey this is a great game. It is very entertaining and fun. I can't stop playing it. A very good game, highly recommeneded, although tutorials would have been nice.

Good Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Great game amazing graphics a few flaws thats patch fix the second sould be better

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