Recent reviews by captainrampage

The game is actually quite good, if you want a comprehensive breakdown of the features just buy it and run it, look at the help menu and it lays out everything and there's way more than I ever thought would be in this game. Steam allows something like 2 hours of play time before you lose the refund window that should be plenty to figure out if its for you or not.

I am an over the road trucker in the US, I like this game and would like to see it improved in 2 very simple ways that could be pushed out in a patch with little effort from the developers.

Overall not that bad. If you're a trucker, or you're from the United States you will be disappointed but if you brace yourself before the experience you may be able to forgive the shortcomings.

The environment looks decent, the trucks actually look pretty good aside from the 'class 2' thing... anyway they have an FLD that looks alright and I'm looking forward to the Western Star 4900. Unbranded of course and some of the interiors are very bad looking but you can preview the interiors before you buy which is very nice.

Major immersion breakers:

This one is simple and easy to fix, and its half the problem; there are not 2 cables when connecting a trailer, there's only one as well as 2 AIRLINES which have gladhands not electrical plugs at the end. The order is blue airline, green cable, red airline. That's it, you fix that and I'll give you a big ol kiss.

The trailers need to be slightly tweaked, take off those bars on the bottom of the box trailers, and they seem short... I find it hard to believe they'd use anything short of a 53 foot dryvan/ reefer (reefers also heat things so they would most certainly be important Alaska). There are also many tankers you'll see in the US... but perfectly circular is pretty rare, most often you see ovals or those strange big feed trucks but circular I've only really seen used for gases (not fuel) and they have a different version they use for food grade. Just do a little research, when you make a US setting for a game and ignore the things that make it the US it feels disrespectful whether its meant to be or not.

Gameplay wise you did good, beats ATS any day. But the only thing that would save this title and put you back on the map would be continued support and listening to the feedback (albeit quite negative) from all these reviews. We don't want euro trailers. We don't want jacknife simulator 2023. We just want to drive in an Alaskan setting year round with a little extra challenge in the winter time.

Cool units, the grind is very long and hard so the pack is worth it imo.

How collectibles work:
I thought I lost 2 of my e8 shermans but turns out if you assign them to one regiment, you cannot assign them to another. So with that in mind I had put 2 of them into my 1st tank regiment, moved onto the medium regiment and thought they were 'consumed'. They are not consumable they are permanent, and you can buy as many as you want with supplies earned in game in order to spread them across multiple regiments, they are also not overpowered as they are just reskins of default vehicles like the regular e8. That said the flamethrower sherman is pretty cool and good for anti-infantry would recommend unlocking that fairly quickly.

Wish there was somewhere that actually gave you the full rundown of how collectibles work but trial and error is fine ;)

Every bit as good as Men of War 2 but you can play it offline! Which means it won't randomly be made unavailable after your purchase. It still supports the scumbags from Fulqrum Publishing but this is a quality product so at the very least you both win.

Very solid start for Misc Games' new project!

This is mostly feedback but also a basic review of the very early access version of the game.

They could've pitched it more as a pre-alpha as that's what it feels like. This is more of a paid demo than an unpolished game.

SHOULD you buy it? That depends on whether you want to invest in a game or if you want to just buy it and have instant access, this is more of an investment. That said there are some ups and downs so I'll just run through them:

Pros:
-Ship customization! The customization is amazing, now in its current state you can't change the paint. However you can change the name, font and color of the name, the steering wheel, the throttle lever, the spotlight, etc. All adding significant levels of QoL if you love first person and eventually I assume paint will be customizable as well.
-The docks and land areas are just amazing, by far better than any other game to date in terms of dock detail with the floating platforms and character.
-The boats are very detailed, the interiors and wonderful!
-The awful tablet from FNA is finally gone, we get a very nice looking worn 'Ship Log' physical book instead that looks so much better.
-You get to choose an outfit.
-There are promising perks in the skill tree (not usable yet but its there to show you what the plans are)
-Multiplayer - at the moment only separate ships.
-User Interface - still very work in progress but it is very good so far the new GPS and such all feels well thought out and not overly complicated or overly simple.

Cons:
-Unreal Engine really seems to have a volatile lighting problem, I feel nauseous every time the lighting gets brighter or darker (and unless you just stare in a straight line its basically a strobe light) If this is a setting please tell me in the comments!
-Multiplayer needs client-side progress in my opinion.

Also would love to see some North American and Dutch style boats in the game as well at some point. There are some really nice boats in Alaska specifically.

Take it easy on the devs though, they didn't do any cash grabbing in the past and they could've easily made a 3rd fishing game with the same mechanics with just an extra gimick and new map so this shows their dedication and passion for making games about the maritime industries. They didn't have to do this, and they took a gamble when they did, but they're really showing the effort and progress that could lead to something really great. It already is if you look past the rough edges!

Thank you devs, hope its smoother sailing from here.

Still no true singleplayer, the lag for basic commands because you're connected to a server while you're playing by yourself is pretty infuriating. They say they area working on a true singleplayer. At the moment that's just an empty promise. On top of that I find it very likely that they are only going to make a small portion of the game playable offline if/when they eventually do. We should have every feature offline if we want to play against bots using the MP game modes, there's no reason to force us to have a high speed HOME internet when there is content that SHOULD be playable offline. I'm a truck driver, I don't play games at home and I'm barely ever home, hotspot is only so good and I've experienced quite a few hiccups and disconnects even playing solo on this game.

Otherwise this would be my favorite WWII and RTS game, it really would.

I slept on this game, played this demo years ago and forgot about it. Buddy just bought it for me out of the blue and holy smokes I was missing out. This is more fun than GTA ever was, to me. The graphics are an easy 10/10, the art style combined with brilliant lighting and color pallet is wonderful. You can do all sorts of jobs and buy houses/ warehouses and vehicles, the vehicles you can customize your vehicles by adding parts, paint, decals, etc. You can buy lights from a store and place them anywhere on your vehicle which is brilliant for lighting the bed of a pickup truck for example, as the nights are quite dark. You can buy coolant, spare jerry cans, a thermostat gun (not sure the use yet since the vehicles tell you how hot they are) you have to maintain your vehicle and repair it, but you can also lift it and soup it up. Just a really neat game with an insanely detailed map that's only getting bigger. Never thought this game was headed the direction it is, but boy am I glad to get to play it. Full multiplayer so you can play with your buddies and let the chaos ensue, careful of the cops.

Keep up the great work dev!

Update (44 hrs): This is what I wanted Sid Meier's Pirates to be, this is what you would've thought Skull and Bones was originally aiming for, this is the pinnacle of the age of sail RPG experience. Any other half decent game either lacks the RPG elements, a decent ship list or an interesting story. This has all of the above, I am so thoroughly impressed and the more I play the less I feel like I know and the more I feel like I need to discover. Easily the most interesting game I've come across in a great while, not just for a fun few minutes but a more immersive and invested long term experience.

You finally got a new ship, you're so proud and you feel like you've conquered the Caribbean and so you step on board to take a look when you notice another ship in port and suddenly the jealously hits... you can follow that ship out to sea and capture it, or you can pursue trade endeavors and buy one, etc, you can change the paint on every ship along with the sail colors and patterns and cannons. The game is 50/50 between walking around as your character and sailing a ship and its incredible. Every mediocre side quest goes from a 3/10 to a 9/10 because of all the dynamic things that happen during it. Dialogue matters to the point you save before any social interaction with NPCs, there are overarching quests and there are story quests and then there's short quests that might end up being an unexpected adventure. Tip for you is story mode is better than sandbox simply because it offers more and still gives you plenty of freedom once you get past the beginning and there are lots of unique vessels I believe are only available through story quests. The game does however require a good deal of patience as it was designed more for adults than children and I think that's for the better, its so incredibly rare you find a story or sandbox experience these days that has actual nuance and complexity and isn't an RTS.

This is probably the best pirate/ age of said game out there, but you have to get past some dated graphical and technical aspects. The game isn't for everyone but it certainly is for a decent number of folks.

General overview:

You can pay the story or jump straight into sandbox. I personally enjoy sandbox and as the story is heavily reliant on reading I can't say I'm going to get into it any time soon.

There seem to be a good number of ships, I don't know how many or very many details but it so far feels decent enough, they are very pleasing to the eye and don't look like scuffed kids toys like assassin's creed or sea of thieves or Atlas, etc, these are proper age of sail ships you can tell are from the 17th century. The attention to detail is very much appreciated.

Sailing is a very simple task there is no angling sails like naval action but there is simulated wind and optimal angles for different rigging and all that.

I haven't figured out naval combat yet, without a naval officer in charge of gunnery you can't hit the broadside of a barn. You can walk around the deck in first person though (default is holding right mouse) which is pretty neat.

You can trade goods, do tons of side quests and Gain favor with factions and supposedly Even Gain military authority in them. You can also just be a pirate and do pirate things.

There's land combat and you do spend plenty of time doing quests and shopping and exploring on land, each location is different and you can exit the settlements through the main gate to explore more of each island.

There's no real character customisation, which would be a great feature given the game is primarily 3rd person and sometimes even forces you to be in 3rd person. I would appreciate a bicorn or tricorn hat but there are no hats for the character.

Technical stuff:

On a technical level this is incredibly better than See Dogs to Each His Own (which this is a remaster of). I tell you this having played both back to back.

Graphically the game is basically a 100% remaster with all new higher fidelity textures and more graphics options. Not to modern standards but compare this to the original and it is in fact a proper remaster albeit on a budget.

And there's a lot more but that's the jist after my 4 hours of play so far. I look forward to much more time in the game.

Bought this instead of Skull & Bones, because it has single player AND multiplayer... what a novelty. Ark was fun, so is this.

If you really like singleplayer, or private co-op games, this is perfect. What you need to do (imo) is just level your character up either through console commands or make XP very easy to get, the tech tree is mostly a waste of time. Once you have everything researched there is so much to do like building shipyards, all the crafting staions, you can even make town buildings like warehouses and shops. Now you might think "Well now that I've unlocked everything what's the point?", thing is most of the good blueprints are lootable either as treasure or by sinking enemies around the world so there's more reason to explore and get out there with whatever you can get started with. The tech tree is just a delay mechanism to keep players from progressing in multiplayer, in singleplayer you can skip to the meat and potatoes... and there are a LOT of meat and potatoes. You can even shrink your ship into a bottle like Blackbeard did in Pirates of the Caribbean. There's AI crew to help you man your vessels, just make sure to get that gold flowing in or they'll mutiny. I don't understand how people hate on the devs so much when the game really tried and (arguably) succeeded to be such an ambitious and cool game. Sure most of it is designed to waste time, but that's why custom servers and singleplayer offline are the way to go, you can skip all of that. This right here is a real gem of a game and I am so glad I finally decided to get it. Odds are most people gave up with the bugs and the complicated/unorganized crafting setup that is just so massive. Its understandable but you get out what you put in and this game has so much to give. Hopefully this game lives on well after the servers are cut and more people buy it because this really was misjudged. (Multiplayer I'm sure was terrible, but SP is mint)

Pros:
(edit) A METRIC CRAP TON of building both on land and on ships, we're talking adding boat hangers to lower row boats to go to and from shore, cannons, interior, decor, etc etc etc.
Really nice looking ship models and customization
Building ships is cool
Pirate theme looks neat
Just like Ark you can customize your experience to be as easy or hard as you like in singleplayer

Cons:
Ships are named based on rigging (sails) IRL, so the fact you don't have any bow sprits or staysails is just hilariously bad, you'd never see any sizeable vessel without a bow sprit and generally a spanker or other type of wiggly sail aft. (You can mostly ignore this is first person)
Grind is pretty much the entire point, but it still wears on you.

Overall; its pretty, its piratey, and there's cats.

The zoomer version of Sea Dogs

The vanilla game is incredibly good on its own, the only critical flaw I've found is the lack of a compass or any real tools to determine precise degrees on the map. The graphics are actually insane, I don't think I've ever seen a game this high fidelity, the ocean is incredible (I play and have played almost every naval title out there from Killerfish games to Sea of Thieves, Sea Dogs, etc. this ocean blows them all out of the water) like I went first person to look at it closer and just got mesmerized, I've never seen ocean graphics like this.

Now, on its own the game has some cool features like when you zoom in on the map there's a circle that is your view range, it turns 3d and you can see your ship and its surroundings as well as spotted ships. There is no way to disable this, but mods do this if you so desire. That brings me to mods, if you want a 1:1 replication of the torpedo launch computer then you can get it right off the workshop, or you can suffice for the simpler in-game computing methods. There's a mod that removes the view range 3d thing from the map, there's a different mod that removes all ship markers from the map and the only way you can navigate is by using your tools. There's a compass mod which allows you to get a degree angle off of the compass tool on the map, as well as a UI compass with the rudder screen. There's a mod that overhauls the already great looking VIIC sub and another that adds 300+ emblems to the conning tower. Historical flags, gameplay, etc. etc. Workshop has you covered.

Vanilla I'd say it's an 8/10, modded I'd say it's a 10/10. There is nothing like this, I'm more interested in command and graphics than hardcore sims though, your mileage may vary.