COMPANY: Bethesda/Akella
If you spend much of your gaming time conning a
688 subsim, take a step back in time. No, don't stop with a Silent Hunter WWII
sub or an Aces U-boat. Go back before the dreadnoughts of World War I. Think
way back, back to the time of wind-powered naval juggernauts and men with
swords and bad attitudes. The era of pirates, buccaneers, barons, and wenches.
High technology consisted of rope, cannon, and canvas. Now you're ready to
plunge into Sea Dogs, a spirited and imaginative sailing game.
It's
quite evident that Sea Dogs is a different kind of
animal. Not a pure sim, it is a blend of three genres--part naval sim, part
role-playing game, and part strategy game--that, in total, capture the essence
and action of life in the Age of Sail. Set in a fictional chain of
islands known as the Archipelago, you play the character of Nicholas Sharp.
Sharp, a corsair who has just escaped from a Spanish prison, bears a
comforting resemblance to Mel Gibson in The Patriot. The major powers in Sea
Dogs are the British, French, Spanish, and pirates. You may choose to ally
yourself with a nation by taking a Letter of Marque. Your alignment with one
nation impacts your status with the others. Naturally, having just fled Spanish
internment, you are not very popular with them. Pirates hold no loyalties with
any nation, with you, and for the most part, each other. You can make and break
alliances with logical consequences. Sea Dogs offers non-linear, virtually
unlimited gameplay in an unexplored world where you're free to roam.
There are several distinct storylines you may
follow involving stratagem and intrigue. Or you may opt to freewheel and sail
wherever you please, plundering and sacking as you go. There is a bounty of
activities to this game: quests, swordfighting, naval combat, budgeting,
boarding, fort assaults, trading, negotiating, raiding helpless merchants—just
about everything you can imagine. It seems as though the design team took on
every "what if….?" and integrated it in the game. Sea Dogs gives
the player a lot to do. You may choose to spend
time pursuing any one of a number of quests. This involves getting to know the
inhabitants of the islands and interacting productively. Each encounter begins
with a line of speech, well articulated, followed by textual discussions and a
choice of responses. Some people merely want to whine their grievances to you
or tease with a game of "crow in the hole" while others reveal plot
elements and suggest possible actions for your character to pursue.
You begin a career in Sea Dogs as a young, ambitious swashbuckler with a very
small ship taking on errands and running
trade routes. You play in the Tomb Raider style third person perspective in
the towns with the option to switch to the Quake style first person mode. In
most towns you'll find a tavern with assorted specimens of seafaring life, a
store where you can speculate on buying low and selling high in another port high,
a shipyard where you can make repairs and upgrades to your ship, and a
government office occupied by an official. The towns are populated by a bunch
of lifelike non-character players walking about. You may stop them and discuss
issues of the day, often learning what you need to further your goals. Since
you are no match for most of the bigger ships you will probably choose to
accept errands and trade goods until you earn enough to buy a more capable
ship. It's an ignoble way to start a swaggering career as a corsair, packing
linen and seed and carrying letters from one public lackey to another, but
it's necessary to get started. To speed things along, I chose to run from
place to place while earning enough dough for a class five ship. I was mildly
amused at the constant sight of my character jogging through the towns repeatedly
like someone's errand boy--"Stand aside, here comes young Nicholas in a
rush with the guv'nors mail!". After five trips, however, it does
tend to get tedious. It would be nice it the program would send a mugger to
fight you or if someone would approach you for a change. But just when things
begin to stale, it's time to go back to sea.
Once
at sea, you can view your ship from the external view as in Fighting Steel or
click the "Q" key and you can run the decks from stern to fore (be
careful not to trip over the cannon, mate). Journeys between islands are
facilitated by the sea map. Initially you can see only the parts of the ocean
you have traveled. As you explore the map new areas and islands are revealed to
you. While in the sea map mode, you will be periodically interrupted by a
lookout who sights approaching ships. These encounters are very random. You
don't know when you will stumble into a nest of pirate Frigates and Fleuts, a
lone merchant hazarding his way to port, an angry Spanish Corvette, or allied
ships. Often you will make the scene with pirates fighting French or some
other mix of combatants already trading balls. In most
cases you are free to engage or ignore. Sometimes you are the victim of a surprise
attack and compelled to engage. When first released, Sea Dogs placed the
attacking ships too close to you and you had no choice but to fight. When the
attacking ship happened to be a Heavy War Galleon with 450 men and 36 cannons, you were
toast. Your only hope lay in out-maneuvering and disengaging. With the latest
patch you can avoid a lopsided battle by pulling up the sea map again.
Just don't dawdle to see what kind of ship you've stumbled across.
When you achieve some notable deed or
accomplishment you gain experience points, which are required to rate bigger,
more powerful ships. Sea Dogs implements a scale in determining how many
points to bestow. Attack bigger, tougher opponents and you gain
considerably
more points than taking on your equal. Of course, you won't defeat many
opponents who are significantly more powerful than you, either. You may also
earn skill points which can be distributed in the form of training to boost
your seamanship, boarding skill, gunlaying and other abilities. Your
reputation can be increased by noble exploits or you can squander it by
through evil acts such as killing an ally. Economics plays a big part in the
game. Faster and better armed ships cost gold. To hire the better officers
costs gold. Each month at sea requires you pay the crew. Life as a captain in
Sea Dogs is simple. You pay your crew or they'll mutiny and hang you from the
rigging. The result is a challenging game that rewards
bravery and daring but doesn't cut you much slack. I played Sea Dogs on Hard
and had to fight like hell for every doubloon I got.
Sea
Dogs features twenty very different types of sailing vessels, from the lowly
Lugger to the powerhouse Man O'War. Ships are grouped into seven classes and
each ship has a series of vital characteristics: hit points, turn rate, speed
rate, min/max crew, hold capacity, number of cannons and caliber sets. And
they sure look good! Watching a ship plow through the waves is a treat. An aiming reticle allows you to direct cannon fire. You
have some control over the sails and helm and free run of the deck. Alas, you aren't able to go below decks or to the captain's cabin, or up in the crow's nest. These elements aren't crucial but they would have been nice additions to what already is a great sim environment.
The graphics are nothing short of fantastic. Sea
Dogs gets a 10/10 with its beautiful islands and majestic ships. The waves
vary from choppy to swells to towering walls of water. No kidding--standing on
the deck of a ship in a storm gives you a mate's-eye view of immense waves
that completely dwarf smaller ships! The weather effects also rate high
praise. Rain and squalls blast you. The wind howls and propels your ship at
terrific speeds. Lightning bolts down around you in a photo-realistic burst of
light. And then the cyclones! The physics and damage effects are reasonably
realistic. Your cannonballs arc in flight and you marvel as they punch
visible holes in the other guy's sails or start fires. I managed to knock down
a frigate's mast in a fight and his speed diminished greatly as a result. Once
in a great while a lucky shot will strike the powder magazine and the ship is
destroyed with a critical hit. As your men are killed, your cannon
reload times suffer. The damage modeling stops short of allowing your cannons
to be knocked out or flooding to cause your ship to list. And even if you're
down to three crewmen, someone still handles the sails and rudder. The ships
handle according to their size, speed, and turn rates. The speed varies with
the alignment to the wind and the speed of the wind. The sails actually pivot
to catch the wind. The one small defect I noticed is a ship can sail slowly
into the wind. I believe the design team decided to allow this as a
representation of tacking without all the laborious course changes. If that
disturbs some purists, they always have the option of tacking manually. Better
pack a lunch because you'll be at it a while.
Developing
sound battle
tactics is crucial. With only the wind to power your vessel it is up to you
to employ mistake-free ship handling if you want to minimize your time under
the enemy’s broadsides and maximize your opportunities to shell the enemy.
Four types of cannon loads are available; balls, which have the longest range;
grape, short range but effective in thinning the opposing crews; knipples,
medium range and mostly for shredding sails; and bombs, medium range
projectiles that are equally devastating to crew and ship but expensive to
keep in stock. As you exchange fire and maneuver for position, you must stay
in the proper range for the type of ammunition you’re using while avoiding
the grappling hooks of a larger vessel that may try to board you (and make
short work of you in the hand-to-hand swordfighting). Twisting and turning,
firing at every opportunity and bringing the loaded cannons to bear while the
other side reloads furiously, you will be ever conscious of the wind. Are you
fighting a small cargo ship that is faster than your sloop? Should you try to
rip up his sails and slow him down? Or is it a man-o’-war crowded with
bloodthirsty sailors (not graphically depicted though), in which case you
should deploy grape at close range and try to mangle his men.... Perhaps you have
encountered an ally fighting off pirates—join the melee and sink the rogues
to recover their cargoes floating in the sea for an added commercial benefit. As
you fight, you will lose men and your ship takes damage, pressing you at some
point to decide if you can afford to keep fighting or should you make a break.
And trying to escape doesn't always equal escape. The possibilities for
strategy are outstanding. This game makes you think and weigh risks and
that's high praise indeed.
If you are boarded, or you decide to board an
enemy ship, you are treated with a nifty cutscene of the two ships' crews
hacking it out. After a few seconds, the scene fades in to the captain's cabin
with your character facing the enemy captain, swords drawn. It comes down to a
swordfight duel between you and the enemy captain, each representing the crews.
The number of hit points is determined by the number of crew each ship has.
Then the game switches into a real key-punching slugfest. You must block,
feint, and slash until your enemy is killed or until he dispatches you. The
problem with this is Sea Dogs doesn't have a swordfighting training or
practice mode. You learn by on-the-job training. Talk about an inspired
apprenticeship! Be prepared to get cut down a lot until you master the skills
and begin to read your opponent's moves. It is very challenging and fun! It
should be pointed out that the variety of actions and things to do by the
player in Sea Dogs is very refreshing. After the cannon firing and ship
maneuvering required to wage battle on the sea, the switch to the swordfighting
episode provides a rush of anticipation. If you succeed in killing the
enemy captain, you can take his ship and all his cargo. If you have a
first mate, you can command two ships and you begin to attain real sea power.
An
epic score is provided by the Moscow Symphonic orchestra, complete with choir.
There are more different themes than I could keep up with and they all sounded
magnificent. The pirate theme even has a background chorus of "yo-ho-ho's"
(which made me think of how small the difference is between a pirate's
trademark chortle and Santa Claus' "ho-ho-ho". Is there a message there?).
Game sounds are
accurate and well-placed but not overwhelming. Creaking planks, boots on
hardwood floors, cannons, and even the crackling fire in the tavern provide
satisfactory backdrops.
If you followed the development of Sea Dogs, you
might remember some early screenshots of the ships with several small crewmen
aboard. Unfortunately they didn't survive the final cut. All ships are
visually unpopulated. I realize it must have been necessary to forego the crew
objects to keep the system requirements in the midrange but it would have been
wonderful to see some people on the decks. There is the inevitable cookie cutter
use of some building interiors with the same barkeeper idling in the same spot in many of the taverns.
But overall the 3D world is crisp, colorful, and very conducive to gameplay.
Numerous small details clearly testify that Akella put a lot of extra effort into
making the 3D world feel right. The bored gate sentries will kick the dirt
with the toe of their boots. You might catch a glimpse of a shark fin passing
by your boat. At night, fireflies and moths circle the gas lamps in town. You
can save the game at any point and are advised to do so often. The manual is
good and gets you started, though it doesn't provide many game hints (if
you're desperate or stuck, Sailor Al has provided SUBSIM Review with his
Sea
Dogs Quest Walkthroughs). At first, there were a number of bugs that
hobbled Sea Dogs but two patches later I can report almost every issue is
cleared up and I've only had a couple of crashes (which can be avoided
easily--see Sea Dogs Tactics & Tips). There is no multiplayer but for a
game like this it isn't sorely missed.
Sea
Dogs does for sailing games what Command Aces of the Deep did for U-boat sims;
gives you all the pirate and sailing action you can handle and clearly sets the mark for any
sailing sims that follow. It manages to strike a good balance with its mix of
sim/RPG/strategy game. Sea Dogs' variety of quests and non-linear campaign offers addicting repeat
play with a breadth of activities not found in any other sim. Sea Dogs is
better than buried treasure.
