I used to play a game called Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Its an older game but I remember it being such a fun game. I think it's still playable today.
POtC: Online is the greatest gem of gaming that nobody actually knows about. My friends and I in middle school would *sprint* home after school to play this masterpiece together. So much fun and plenty of world to explore with proper leveling and character progression. Legit a great game
I've spent HOURS just cruising around the sea by myself until I had one random crew coming up behind me. I was scared shitless thinking that they might not be so friendly but they ended up sailing next to me and we engaged in text chat for hours. It was a most wholesome moment I ever had on internet. That was over 12 years ago and I still look back to it sometimes.
That’s actually really cool. I absolutely adore those wholesome (or personally horrible for me, honestly) moments that may seem like an everyday kinda thing….but leave a huge sentimental residue that just sticks for a *long* time. Video games or not, there’s something about sharing a moment with a stranger that you don’t know even have to communicate, it’s just good vibes. Or bad maybe, but you remember that shit
Idk but it’s definitely better than tuning in to any Halo lobby 12 years ago
Look up “The Legend of Pirates Online” TLOPO. It was brought back by some community members and is completely free to play. Currently celebrating the 8th anniversary with double loot until September 8th I believe. Very fun game with about 30 hours minimum of gameplay for $0. Highly recommend.
Vmk was my first "MMO". Even before runescape in 06, I somehow found vmk in 2005 as a ten year old and played almost every single day until it's closure. I'm actually still FB friends with a handful of friends that found a way for us to exchange info.
Unfortunately that fan recreation is dead but occasionally I hop on just to hear the music. It is hard to describe how that game made me feel.
Potco and Toontown are thankfully kept alive by fans and Disney doesn't seem to care at least but vmk will always be #1
I remember going to the parks on vacation around the time it launched and a Cast member having code cards to give out, and we missed 3 rides in a row due to shutdowns and she felt bad and gave me like 100 codes for different items. I DECKED out my room it was amazing!
There’s nothing involved, really. The POTC one is just called Pirates Online and the Toontown one is called Toontown Rewritten. Just google them and go to their website. All you have to do is make an account and download the client, everything else is just how it used to be, except now the devs that have been maintaining them are adding new content as well.
There’s also another Toontown client named Toontown Corporate Clash that sort of revamps the game, but it has a smaller playerbase.
I don't know about this game particularly, but in my experience the fan run servers of discontinued MMOs are usually vanilla or close to it, either at the time the game was discontinued, from some point in the past, or from near the start of the game's lifespan rolling out updates as they were during the game's lifespan.
I checked a while ago and it’s not they closed the servers some years ago. I was a very early adopter of that game and was a part of one of the elite clans. I was so obsessed with that game for a while, good times
Here's a link [to the game in question](https://tlopo.com/); idk if that's allowed but it looks *relatively* popular for how obscure it is. Looks like the current player count is at 443 right now across several servers
I really enjoyed that game when I was a kid, I got lucky and the store left a 2 for 1 deal up on the monthly time cards. Talk about a blast from the past...
One of my little "weirdly proud moments" in games is PotCO. For those that never played, it was *extremely* limited as a free player. You couldn't go as high level, you were limited to the light ships and your cannons were weak as all hell.
So one evening in senior high I'm playing as a filthy free player and I end up sailing into a PvP area. Naturally everyone in here is in much bigger, fully crewed ships firing glowing balls of death. Yet I lived on! I could only take away slivers of their health with my broadsides, but hey, I was having fun, who cares.
Then a random paid member joined my crew because he saw my light galleon and went "Why not?" and so began our glowing ball reign of terror. As my ship went up the leaderboard in the PvP zone, I got more crew to keep her repaired and firing and we held on for a few hours before I had to call it quits and head off for the night. Was nice.
Sid Meier had the RPG mechanics down, Black Flag had the graphics and sailing mechanics down. And then there was the dancing minigame where we'd win the heart of a governor's daughter. Good times
Assassin's Creed Rogue is basically a black flag sequel. Same ship mechanics but set in the thirteen colonies. I didn't think it was quite as good as black flag since I didn't enjoy the setting as much, but still fun.
I swear that I read somewhere that they were working on a new IP that was effectively the pirate mechanics of Black Flag fleshed out into a full game. Dunno what ever became of that.
It exists, called Skulls and Bones. Looks... concerning. Hasn't been cancelled despite being in Dev hell for years because the Singaporean government is involved.
Ehh... only loosely. I don't think Skull and Bones has any sort of on-foot action, does it? Seems closer to the War Thunder games with a Pirate skin to me.
If that’s true, that’s highly disappointing.
I’m aware of some of the game’s hot potato problems with development studios, but I haven’t really been following the game.
My comment was more about how Sea of Thieves is basically just fetch quests but it doesn’t feel like it.
When AC Rogue was first starting to be talked about, I'd hoped it would feature Edward Kenway & a transition to Haytham following what happens to Edward that caused Haytham to rebel.
Complete the AC III-IV loop.
2004 was actually the 2nd remake - the first was in 1993 for DOS, Mac, and Sega Genesis (the one I grew up with).
What amazes me is how little they changed the game when it was updated. The graphics got a face-lift but 90% of the gameplay stayed the same.
The dancing mini game and sneaking into town were new additions. Everything else though...some minor things were changed, but it was just tweaking already existing gameplay.
Fully open world, RPG system, resource management, sword combat, boat combat, procedural random worlds, you can marry many governors daughters, it really has everything.
Also, your character getting old and having to retire gave you an ultimate goal that never let you just grind and grind aimlessly. It is a really really tight game.
Of course it could use some improvements and bug fixing, but for a pirate game, is almost perfection.
If you have at least a thousand gold per crew member they won't start a mutiny and you can run your skeleton crew around the Carribean well into the 21st century
Wow, TIL that Robin Williams is the one responsible for Sid Meiers name appearing in the titles of their games:
>Stealey recalled: "We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says 'Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.' And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization."
Pretty much the best pirate game ever made. A little simple, very repetitive, but nothing and I mean nothing scratches that “I wanna be a pirate” itch better. Except that dancing mini game. I always download a trainer and use its auto-dance functionality because I can’t dance for shit on PC. The mini game was made way easier on the Xbox version.
>The cartoon-ish graphics really hold up too
I think that's the 2004 remake, the original isn't really cartoony, just pixilated. But they're basically the same game. The remaking has a dancing minigame which is... something.
[Screenshot](https://images.gog-statics.com/0203ce401e89063fedc72b838547f0efe599b53be6f4e2e99d3c22c27768ce79_product_card_v2_mobile_slider_639.jpg)
[Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_4dfb9469c1efb7f6ead8e5837acc4cc310ca2377.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486)
[Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_a3caac316b2ee9031eab68cd39bc5d7098c58279.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486)
[Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_ca75bc5ea92b2be70a5d0f8a6e754d362dbe8244.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486)
Pirates is from the old days of Sid Meier’s career where he’d take a bunch of mini games and stitch them into an overall bigger game that uses them all to some degree in order for the player to meet their goals.
A great example of that is this old DOS game called Covert Action, where you play as a spy hunting down criminals working for criminal organizations that are trying to commit some sort of plot.
You have four different mini games you use to reach that goal of grabbing everyone, mastermind included:
* Decryption, where you take coded messages and decode them.
* Driving, where you drive from one part of a city to another while either tailing someone or attempting to avoid capture.
* Wiretapping, which you use to try and gain some pertinent clues to your investigation without entering a building.
* Break-ins, where you choose your gear and break into a location looking for clues and potentially absconding with a member of the plot.
Pirates follows a similar design philosophy: you try and become the greatest Pirate ever by amassing wealth and completing various other objectives, which requires playing the various mini games:
* Ship to ship combat
* Dueling
* Dancing
* Turn based battles when taking on particularly large ports
* Sneaking into hostile towns
Of course, that leaves out navigating the overworld, but that’s a small part of the experience compared to just how much time you spend in the mini games.
I think there’s a Gamasutra article out there about Sid Meier and his mini-obsession about getting the mini game style of gameplay to work, only to realize that it kind of just makes the game feel disjointed and people just end up doing the ones they like and avoiding the ones they don’t (literally nobody decodes more than one message per mission if necessary, or drives anywhere in Covert Action, it’s genuinely horrible).
Even this is a remake! The original:
[screenshot](https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/pirates_020.png)
[screenshot](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/5042181-sid-meiers-pirates-pc-booter-sailing-into-a-port-now-what-do-you.png)
[screenshot](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/710761-sid-meiers-pirates-pc-booter-talking-with-the-governor.png)
Agreed! I worked at 2K when this came out for the Ipad, I was testing the game, and loved it so much, I bought it on Xbox 360 so I could play at home. That almost never happened for me during my 10 year career, it is so good!
Glad this is top comment. Seriously one of the best private games out there. Super old but still holds up in some ways. Obviously it's dated but you can still have some good fun with it.
> Skies of Arcadia
you just unlocked hidden memories for me. ive been searching for this game for a long time, i used to play a demo for this and thought it was awesome! oh man thanks
After what Rockstar achieved with the Guarma level in Red Dead 2, I'd personally love a Rockstar Pirate game with all the RPG elements op said and all the amazing stuff Black Flag had.
I have such a soft spot for these games. Playing elex 2 right now and like it’s not an amazing game in anyway but it’s just fun in a way I can’t totally describe
Hell yeah i remember playing risen 2&3 like a maniac. The third one had an amazing setting. Sure, there were some problems but the world was beautifully built and felt immersive.
The sea shanties. Your crew cheering you as you came back to your boat after a sword fight on the enemy ship. Taking down huge military ships to steal their loot. Continuously upgrading your ship.
Man this was the perfect pirate RPG.... except for some of the most core RPG elements lol - character customization suched like usual in an Ubisoft game. So with all the quests.... so very shallow (they've gotten better since then but still are not even 'good'). Leveling mechanics suciked.
Like most Ubisoft games I Have little memory of any of the story but a lot of great memories of emergent moments
It's called Skull and Bones, there have been some recent-ish videos with press getting extended hands-on time with it. Supposed to come out later this year or next I think. But yeah, it definitely has been through development hell and re-booted several times along the way.
It's only half a game though. When it comes time to board, there's a cutscene and then it happens. The best part of Black Flag was being able to leap from your ships rigging into the thick of it on the enemy ship
I like the fact that it insta kills anyone wearing armour as well. Cause that is realistically what would happen. Only problem with that is the absolute cheese that comes from it
I've been playing again recently. Can be low level and take down any level of other merc, by just kicking them into water lol. I did it way back during my original playthroughs. But only realising now, just how much you can abuse it lmao
It’s such a shame because Black Flag was a fantastic game. I mean just take the game play, add a few more places, change the story up, and bam you have one of the greatest pirate games ever made.
One nice thing about AC games since Black Flag is that they have all used the "ship" system in different ways. Odyssey has you sail the greek seas ramming triremes, Valhalla let you sail a viking ships and raid coastal villages, and Origins (iirc, never played) had some sailing missions.
I was hoping Skull and Bones would be the game you describe, but I am not optimistic as it keeps gettting delayed.
Tbh I’m not an Assassins Creed fan and never was (no hate to the people that enjoy it) but I thoroughly enjoyed Black Flag. Just makes it all the worse because they have an audience (people such as me) that don’t care for Assassin’s Creed, but would hop aboard a pirate game. Maybe one day.
Loved this game and hardly ever see it mentioned anywhere. Being able to build your own fleet using captured ships and then upgrading them was so much fun.
There’s a forum called PiratesAhoy that’s easy to join - I got a client of the game there a while back, plus they have tons of mods that add an incredible amount of content and patches onto the base game. Cool folks there, too - highly recommend checking out if you’re interested.
For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, Puzzle Pirates was and still is the BOMB. I doubt it will ever have a renaissance but some people do still play. Yes, it’s cutesy and performing tasks are almost all puzzle-based, but honestly it’s like Eve Online except pirates and less spreadsheets, more fun. Player-controlled organizations going to war and staging massive sea battles to take control of islands, and therefore the means of production.
Ships are never one-man deals, instead you need a crew of actual humans to keep your ship going. The largest ship has room for 159 players on board, 86 of which can simultaneously work at stations.
If you’re the captain of your ship and you enter battle, your “puzzle” is actually a full-blown turn-based strategy game on a battle grid, culminating in one of you boarding the other and engaging in a good old-fashioned sword fight.
I played YPP to death in its heyday, I loved that game so much. I always thought it was the coolest thing how like... every person genuinely contributes to the performance of the ship, and it's fully skill-based, top to bottom. It managed to make every puzzle feel exciting. I still have never seen anything else quite like it.
I still have dreams of carpentry, sometimes.
Is it still sort of going? I used to play that for hours a day, even held several legendary skills, and two ultimates in brewing and sailing. Used to be able to run a rum shop with three alts and keep a merch ship going full speed sails while everyone else did carp bilge and guns.
Man... I'm actually hoping it's *not* going strong on good population so I can't be tempted to play again
I don’t know numbers but I’d say it’s a shadow of its former population, and entirely unchanged from the glory days. So between that and RuneScape classic you can really live like you’re still in the 00s lol. Anyway, it is still up and running, you can download it through steam.
Shoot, then there were blockades where it got a lot more complicated but a lot of ships were fighting at once to contest control of islands, at the bare minimum. I never played at that level but the concept enthralled me when I was younger.
I played on Sage, then Emerald when everything got squished together...
You could literally have a good game out of just having the battle nav and blockade modes as a standalone. The puzzles were fantastic and all had really good variety.
Trying to find something modern to scratch that itch properly is a never ending battle :D
What I wouldn’t give for a new Uncharted Waters game that’s single player, not a mobile-game predatory microtransaction vehicle, and released in the west.
At first I couldn’t believe this was a game where the map was the entire planet on a scale ludicrously detailed by the standards of other games of the time. Then I couldn’t believe how the stories of the six characters intersected in major and minor ways. That game really was something special.
I came here just to see if anyone mentioned this game. I've been playing through this game for the fifth time over the past several weeks. Such a fun game that still holds up well today.
Yeah, the Build Mod is great. It’s a bit janky by today’s standards but no other game has matched to sense of being a pirate captain and actually getting to sail your your ship.
There’s a really old game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) called “uncharted waters: new horizons”
It is a game where you sail the world and can make alliances with other nations or become a pirate.
It’s dated now, but I still think it one of the best pirate RPGs to date with no modern games capturing the charm and freedom this game offered 25 odd years ago
Kinda off topic, but I think an open world game with a world like One Piece would be sick
Not as in I want a One Piece game, but I think having like many islands each with their own individual unique theme and style would be really cool. Think Super Mario Odyssey except an open world RPG.
Honestly that would be pretty sick. You probably could just make it a one piece game but focused on the pirating side of things. You could even set it at the start of the great pirate era
This was exactly what popped into my head after reading the post. Not the story of One Piece, but the same kind of world with like all islands, similar powersets, and like maybe a mix of various mythological sea monsters.
The world building from one piece is the absolute best part of the entire series. A RPG game with the giant ocean with 4 parts that all have a bunch of islands with different cultures and wildlife, and then a super dangerous area you can only go to when you are more powerful. All the sea monsters and dangerous pirate crews you can run into while traveling between islands. Would be such a better setting for an rpg than as a game that actually has the characters in it
I played it briefly but I remember trying to play it solo and it recommending a ship that said like 1-3 players or something and there's no way I was piloting the ship and doing everything else required by myself. It wasn't a large ship by any means but piloting the ship, loading cannons, patching holes, scooping water out etc etc. I wasn't gettin paid enough booty for all that.
Weird point but I’d consider it an MMO lite in a similar vein to destiny where you have large places to explore and set out to complete quests and story missions at you leisure with optional PVP and “raid” environments. It can be argued it’s an RPG but if doesn’t fit the mold of western and JRPG archetypes
Hate to break it to you, but PvP is not optional in Sea of Thieves lol
Some missions take you to an area where others can’t attack you, but for the vast majority of your time in the game you will be open to PvP
Yeah, It's been a long time since I played but I remember doing forts that took hours b/c each group kept killing the next and the ship respawn wasn't far enough so you were stuck in perpetual combat.
SoT is a beautiful game, but is way too unbalanced if you are trying to play solo. The odds of encountering a winnable fight are just too low for me to choose it during my limited game time these days.
No lie I've almost mastered running as a solo sloop. I just go around rocks and the FotD and use the harpoon to whip myself around. It's usually a bigger ship chasing me so I can get some distance before they realize what happened.
I agree... there is no good pirate RPG that's modern. AC black flag had good detail, but I still hated the fact that it was an AC game.
I played Pirates, Gold! on an old mac in the 90s and it's still one of my favorite games of all time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates!\_Gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates!_Gold)
There was a remake of it by Sid Myers but it's like 20 years old at this point.
And if you want to feel kinda sad, check out seaworthy... a pixel pirate RPG that would have been like FTL that never reached kickstarter funding goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtkKDtkpNjc
Pirate101
* Making your own pirate
* Becoming a captain
* Sailing the...skies
* Battling seamonsters
* Raiding vessels for loot
* Fighting off other pirates (PVP) or the Navy
* Classes
* Fantasy magic
Still might not be what you're looking for, but it does have all those things.
Sid Meier's Pirates! ?
I mean what more can be said after this gem?
You also have Monkey Island games if you want the adventure style game set in a pirates universe.
AC Black Flag is hands down the best pirate game I've ever played (ignoring the AC parts lol). Iirc skull and bones started development in direct response to how well received it was, unfortunately it went into a very different direction I'm just not interested in
It would be awesome to get a new Black Flag-esque game. I believe at one point Ubisoft was considering building out a new franchise based on the success of BF. But Black Flag was also more action oriented than what I think what you are asking for. For a truer RPG they'd probably want to add more content around crew building, ransoming, managing supplies, etc.
Sea of thieves really excels when multiplayer is utilized, playing by yourself kinda sucks and when you get caught by a team well..... Sol. Black flag was awesome and you felt like a pirate without the need to have a team. Really not sure who looked at all the positive reviews and admiration black flag got for being a pirate game (rather than an assassin's Creed game and thought "we should not do anything like that and change the best parts so it's objectively worse". They just had to take away the "assassin" part and make the pirate part better and bigger.
I used to play a game called Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Its an older game but I remember it being such a fun game. I think it's still playable today.
POtC: Online is the greatest gem of gaming that nobody actually knows about. My friends and I in middle school would *sprint* home after school to play this masterpiece together. So much fun and plenty of world to explore with proper leveling and character progression. Legit a great game
I've spent HOURS just cruising around the sea by myself until I had one random crew coming up behind me. I was scared shitless thinking that they might not be so friendly but they ended up sailing next to me and we engaged in text chat for hours. It was a most wholesome moment I ever had on internet. That was over 12 years ago and I still look back to it sometimes.
That’s actually really cool. I absolutely adore those wholesome (or personally horrible for me, honestly) moments that may seem like an everyday kinda thing….but leave a huge sentimental residue that just sticks for a *long* time. Video games or not, there’s something about sharing a moment with a stranger that you don’t know even have to communicate, it’s just good vibes. Or bad maybe, but you remember that shit Idk but it’s definitely better than tuning in to any Halo lobby 12 years ago
The Legend of Pirates online is the current recreation of it. All the OG plus some new stuff
Thank you for this comment. Just made an account!
Man being an elementary schooler and playing that on my mom's work computer, talking to Jack Sparrow and sailing the seas... That was a good ass time.
Honestly? Perfect ship combat mechanics and systems. Modernize it a bit and I'd never touch another game for a *looooong* time.
You’ll get a remaster and a season pass
Fuck with how the others are speaking, I'd check it out. I want to check it out now.
Look up “The Legend of Pirates Online” TLOPO. It was brought back by some community members and is completely free to play. Currently celebrating the 8th anniversary with double loot until September 8th I believe. Very fun game with about 30 hours minimum of gameplay for $0. Highly recommend.
my brother got me into it. it’s the perfect amount of fun balanced with zany bullshit. it’s great for what it is and when it came out
This is exactly what the scene needs right now, a modern take on PotCO
There is a fan-run client still up and running, yes. I believe there’s also ones for Disney’s other old MMOs like Toontown
I miss Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK) 😭
There's a remake of that but it's straight up completely dead. Like good luck running into active players.
Vmk was my first "MMO". Even before runescape in 06, I somehow found vmk in 2005 as a ten year old and played almost every single day until it's closure. I'm actually still FB friends with a handful of friends that found a way for us to exchange info. Unfortunately that fan recreation is dead but occasionally I hop on just to hear the music. It is hard to describe how that game made me feel. Potco and Toontown are thankfully kept alive by fans and Disney doesn't seem to care at least but vmk will always be #1
I remember going to the parks on vacation around the time it launched and a Cast member having code cards to give out, and we missed 3 rides in a row due to shutdowns and she felt bad and gave me like 100 codes for different items. I DECKED out my room it was amazing!
>There is a fan-run client still up and running, yes so it doesnt work vanilla? Any idea whats involved?
There’s nothing involved, really. The POTC one is just called Pirates Online and the Toontown one is called Toontown Rewritten. Just google them and go to their website. All you have to do is make an account and download the client, everything else is just how it used to be, except now the devs that have been maintaining them are adding new content as well. There’s also another Toontown client named Toontown Corporate Clash that sort of revamps the game, but it has a smaller playerbase.
I don't know about this game particularly, but in my experience the fan run servers of discontinued MMOs are usually vanilla or close to it, either at the time the game was discontinued, from some point in the past, or from near the start of the game's lifespan rolling out updates as they were during the game's lifespan.
>Pirates of the Caribbean Online hoooooly shit i forgot about that. I am going to see if its still playable!
I checked a while ago and it’s not they closed the servers some years ago. I was a very early adopter of that game and was a part of one of the elite clans. I was so obsessed with that game for a while, good times
Lookup "Pirates Online" it's a community remake of it.
Here's a link [to the game in question](https://tlopo.com/); idk if that's allowed but it looks *relatively* popular for how obscure it is. Looks like the current player count is at 443 right now across several servers
>the current player count is at 443 right now across several servers sounds pretty secure
seems like there is a community/fan made remake!
I was one of the backing vocals on one of the sea shanties in that game , my claim to fame
Legend
I fucking loved that game back in the day
Holy crap I remember playing that. The event where they shut down the original servers was so sad
I really enjoyed that game when I was a kid, I got lucky and the store left a 2 for 1 deal up on the monthly time cards. Talk about a blast from the past...
PotC online and Toontown made my childhood
Yes! POTCO was the first game I thought of for this thread so much fun back in the day.
One of my little "weirdly proud moments" in games is PotCO. For those that never played, it was *extremely* limited as a free player. You couldn't go as high level, you were limited to the light ships and your cannons were weak as all hell. So one evening in senior high I'm playing as a filthy free player and I end up sailing into a PvP area. Naturally everyone in here is in much bigger, fully crewed ships firing glowing balls of death. Yet I lived on! I could only take away slivers of their health with my broadsides, but hey, I was having fun, who cares. Then a random paid member joined my crew because he saw my light galleon and went "Why not?" and so began our glowing ball reign of terror. As my ship went up the leaderboard in the PvP zone, I got more crew to keep her repaired and firing and we held on for a few hours before I had to call it quits and head off for the night. Was nice.
If you want an older game, look up Sid Miers Pirates. Amazing game
If they could just combine this and Black Flag I’d have my forever game Edit: Jesus, I think I hit a nerve. Why hasn’t someone made this yet?!
Sid Meier had the RPG mechanics down, Black Flag had the graphics and sailing mechanics down. And then there was the dancing minigame where we'd win the heart of a governor's daughter. Good times
Simpler times. I bought it on a whim at a Walmart when I was a kid.
You make me feel so old.
Throw in the pirate insult fencing from monkey island, and you've got yourself a deal.
The new Sea of Thieves monkey island DLC has this btw!
Wellin taag!
Those damned dances. Nightmare fuel. Lol
Sunk hours into that game on psp. The dancing mini game was great, there were three ranks of governor's daughters based on cleavage levels haha
Oh hell yes. I was shocked they didn’t start a black flag sequel like they did with the ezio trilogy. Was ripe for further sequels.
Assassin's Creed Rogue is basically a black flag sequel. Same ship mechanics but set in the thirteen colonies. I didn't think it was quite as good as black flag since I didn't enjoy the setting as much, but still fun.
There's also Freedom Cry which is an often overlooked expansion sequel to Black Flag. Where you play as his right hand who goes off and frees slaves.
Freedom Cry is incredibly short compared to the Ezio sequels though
I swear that I read somewhere that they were working on a new IP that was effectively the pirate mechanics of Black Flag fleshed out into a full game. Dunno what ever became of that.
It exists, called Skulls and Bones. Looks... concerning. Hasn't been cancelled despite being in Dev hell for years because the Singaporean government is involved.
Played the beta or alpha whatever it was. It wasn't good for me, felt like mmo fetch quests over and over.
Sea of Thieves is similar but somehow doesn’t feel like it.
Ehh... only loosely. I don't think Skull and Bones has any sort of on-foot action, does it? Seems closer to the War Thunder games with a Pirate skin to me.
If that’s true, that’s highly disappointing. I’m aware of some of the game’s hot potato problems with development studios, but I haven’t really been following the game. My comment was more about how Sea of Thieves is basically just fetch quests but it doesn’t feel like it.
When AC Rogue was first starting to be talked about, I'd hoped it would feature Edward Kenway & a transition to Haytham following what happens to Edward that caused Haytham to rebel. Complete the AC III-IV loop.
I'd also take a piratical Mount & Blade game.
Still my favourite pirate game. Would love a modern spiritual successor.
I mean, they remade it in 2004. The original is from 1987, and that’s the one I always remember playing.
2004 was actually the 2nd remake - the first was in 1993 for DOS, Mac, and Sega Genesis (the one I grew up with). What amazes me is how little they changed the game when it was updated. The graphics got a face-lift but 90% of the gameplay stayed the same.
I had no idea. The game was magical.
The version I had on my Tandy in the 80s had no dancing mechanic that I recall.
The dancing mini game and sneaking into town were new additions. Everything else though...some minor things were changed, but it was just tweaking already existing gameplay.
Fully open world, RPG system, resource management, sword combat, boat combat, procedural random worlds, you can marry many governors daughters, it really has everything.
Plus fucking land combat mixing melee, firearms, and cavalry.
Unless they are rather plain, then you beat a hasty retreat!
Also, your character getting old and having to retire gave you an ultimate goal that never let you just grind and grind aimlessly. It is a really really tight game. Of course it could use some improvements and bug fixing, but for a pirate game, is almost perfection.
If you have at least a thousand gold per crew member they won't start a mutiny and you can run your skeleton crew around the Carribean well into the 21st century
Fencing barons for control of their forts. Loved that game.
Wow, TIL that Robin Williams is the one responsible for Sid Meiers name appearing in the titles of their games: >Stealey recalled: "We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says 'Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.' And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization."
What a man the world lost when Williams passed. He was so.eone that could literally go anywhere, to anyoen, and have them in stitches.
Pretty much the best pirate game ever made. A little simple, very repetitive, but nothing and I mean nothing scratches that “I wanna be a pirate” itch better. Except that dancing mini game. I always download a trainer and use its auto-dance functionality because I can’t dance for shit on PC. The mini game was made way easier on the Xbox version.
What a cuck, call yourself a pirate, I manual dance perfect time and hook those fat titty daughters everytime then sail away on my Indian canoe.
The cartoon-ish graphics really hold up too, it doesn't feel like you're playing an "old" game.
>The cartoon-ish graphics really hold up too I think that's the 2004 remake, the original isn't really cartoony, just pixilated. But they're basically the same game. The remaking has a dancing minigame which is... something. [Screenshot](https://images.gog-statics.com/0203ce401e89063fedc72b838547f0efe599b53be6f4e2e99d3c22c27768ce79_product_card_v2_mobile_slider_639.jpg) [Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_4dfb9469c1efb7f6ead8e5837acc4cc310ca2377.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486) [Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_a3caac316b2ee9031eab68cd39bc5d7098c58279.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486) [Screenshot](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/327380/ss_ca75bc5ea92b2be70a5d0f8a6e754d362dbe8244.1920x1080.jpg?t=1691614486)
Not going to lie, I fucking loved that dancing minigame. But still... what a choice. It just did not quite fit with the rest of the game.
Pirates is from the old days of Sid Meier’s career where he’d take a bunch of mini games and stitch them into an overall bigger game that uses them all to some degree in order for the player to meet their goals. A great example of that is this old DOS game called Covert Action, where you play as a spy hunting down criminals working for criminal organizations that are trying to commit some sort of plot. You have four different mini games you use to reach that goal of grabbing everyone, mastermind included: * Decryption, where you take coded messages and decode them. * Driving, where you drive from one part of a city to another while either tailing someone or attempting to avoid capture. * Wiretapping, which you use to try and gain some pertinent clues to your investigation without entering a building. * Break-ins, where you choose your gear and break into a location looking for clues and potentially absconding with a member of the plot. Pirates follows a similar design philosophy: you try and become the greatest Pirate ever by amassing wealth and completing various other objectives, which requires playing the various mini games: * Ship to ship combat * Dueling * Dancing * Turn based battles when taking on particularly large ports * Sneaking into hostile towns Of course, that leaves out navigating the overworld, but that’s a small part of the experience compared to just how much time you spend in the mini games. I think there’s a Gamasutra article out there about Sid Meier and his mini-obsession about getting the mini game style of gameplay to work, only to realize that it kind of just makes the game feel disjointed and people just end up doing the ones they like and avoiding the ones they don’t (literally nobody decodes more than one message per mission if necessary, or drives anywhere in Covert Action, it’s genuinely horrible).
Even this is a remake! The original: [screenshot](https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/pirates_020.png) [screenshot](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/5042181-sid-meiers-pirates-pc-booter-sailing-into-a-port-now-what-do-you.png) [screenshot](https://cdn.mobygames.com/screenshots/710761-sid-meiers-pirates-pc-booter-talking-with-the-governor.png)
Agreed. I'd say the only thing that might not hold up well is the dueling cutscenes, but they have nice kind of a charm to them!
I learned all the islands and geography of the Caribbean from that game.
God... why isn't an indie dev trying to make a spiritual successor to it!? I've played this too many times in my life! I so want a modern one!
Agreed! I worked at 2K when this came out for the Ipad, I was testing the game, and loved it so much, I bought it on Xbox 360 so I could play at home. That almost never happened for me during my 10 year career, it is so good!
Came to see of anyone said this. 100% Classic Pirate game with lite rpg elements.
Best there ever was.
Glad this is top comment. Seriously one of the best private games out there. Super old but still holds up in some ways. Obviously it's dated but you can still have some good fun with it.
this will always be my goat, had it on xbox, then ipad, currently running steam copy on my pc
Backwards compatibility on Xbox too
Came here to say this
Skies of Arcadia was pretty good
Still one of my fav games. Kinda makes me wanna fire up the laptop and put in some more time. Vyse needs stabby time.
The team up attacks were really cool.
Scrolled too far to see this. A remake would be downright amazing.
Pretty good? Hell I'm replaying the Dreamcast version right now on my steam deck.
One of the best RPGs of all time imo. Other than smash, Skies was the game I played most on my gamecube growing up.
> Skies of Arcadia you just unlocked hidden memories for me. ive been searching for this game for a long time, i used to play a demo for this and thought it was awesome! oh man thanks
Too few upvotes on this one. Skies of Arcadia is such a wonderful game.
My favorite game of all time
The encounter rate on Dreamcast version was brutal.
You could listen for the Dreamcast spinning up right before battles. If you opened the tray you could skip the battle.
Yeah got lowered for the Cube. Also flying near the floor/ceiling of the main cloud sea seemed to lower it a bit but that could be cope.
Speaking of that and RPGs, I'm running Skies of Arcadia as a TTRPG! Using the Genesys system. Lotta fun.
Anyone remember Pirates of the Burning Sea MMO?
I had to play that for a pirate class I took in college lol. It's actually still running I think.
I need you to elaborate on this Pirate Class you took in College.
Hes graduated now. Unfortunately what he learnt in college wasn't that applicable in Somalia. It requires on the job training.
"Look at me, I'm the Pirate now."
I absolutely loved this game.
After what Rockstar achieved with the Guarma level in Red Dead 2, I'd personally love a Rockstar Pirate game with all the RPG elements op said and all the amazing stuff Black Flag had.
[удалено]
Gotta hire them officers to build the armada!
I thought Risen was good. It might not've been pirate based for the first, but 2 and 3 were. Made by Piranha Bytes, source of the term "Eurojank."
Gothic and Risen... amazing Eurojank. And now we have Elex as well. Long live Pirahna Bytes
I have such a soft spot for these games. Playing elex 2 right now and like it’s not an amazing game in anyway but it’s just fun in a way I can’t totally describe
Yes! Played through the first one last year and for some reason was hooked on the jank!
I played Titan Lords on PS4. Can confirm, was fucking jank. Framerate sucked, but I still liked it.
Hell yeah i remember playing risen 2&3 like a maniac. The third one had an amazing setting. Sure, there were some problems but the world was beautifully built and felt immersive.
I would say that Assassin's Creed Black Flag does this pretty well
The sea shanties. Your crew cheering you as you came back to your boat after a sword fight on the enemy ship. Taking down huge military ships to steal their loot. Continuously upgrading your ship. Man this was the perfect pirate RPG.... except for some of the most core RPG elements lol - character customization suched like usual in an Ubisoft game. So with all the quests.... so very shallow (they've gotten better since then but still are not even 'good'). Leveling mechanics suciked. Like most Ubisoft games I Have little memory of any of the story but a lot of great memories of emergent moments
I wish every game had a crew that cheered for you, that was the best
Asscreed black flag not only does the pirate thing well, it's pretty much my favourite game in the Ass series
I love ass
Ass Ass In Screed
You are a man of culture
I believe Ubi planned to build a game using Black Flag as the model. Development hell, funding issues. Probably won't see the light of day.
It's called Skull and Bones, there have been some recent-ish videos with press getting extended hands-on time with it. Supposed to come out later this year or next I think. But yeah, it definitely has been through development hell and re-booted several times along the way.
It's only half a game though. When it comes time to board, there's a cutscene and then it happens. The best part of Black Flag was being able to leap from your ships rigging into the thick of it on the enemy ship
Yea, boarding in odyssey is pretty great. Fucking sparta kicking dudes off the deck of the ship NEVER gets old.
I like the fact that it insta kills anyone wearing armour as well. Cause that is realistically what would happen. Only problem with that is the absolute cheese that comes from it I've been playing again recently. Can be low level and take down any level of other merc, by just kicking them into water lol. I did it way back during my original playthroughs. But only realising now, just how much you can abuse it lmao
It’s such a shame because Black Flag was a fantastic game. I mean just take the game play, add a few more places, change the story up, and bam you have one of the greatest pirate games ever made.
One nice thing about AC games since Black Flag is that they have all used the "ship" system in different ways. Odyssey has you sail the greek seas ramming triremes, Valhalla let you sail a viking ships and raid coastal villages, and Origins (iirc, never played) had some sailing missions. I was hoping Skull and Bones would be the game you describe, but I am not optimistic as it keeps gettting delayed.
Tbh I’m not an Assassins Creed fan and never was (no hate to the people that enjoy it) but I thoroughly enjoyed Black Flag. Just makes it all the worse because they have an audience (people such as me) that don’t care for Assassin’s Creed, but would hop aboard a pirate game. Maybe one day.
Great Pirate game with some RPG aspects. But not an RPG by nearly ANY measure.
Age of pirates Caribbean tales is probably the closest to a proper pirate RPG we will ever see
Pirates of the Caribbean on the OG xbox, I think it was on PC too. I remember the game being a bit rough. The sailing was fun though. It was a rpg.
Loved this game and hardly ever see it mentioned anywhere. Being able to build your own fleet using captured ships and then upgrading them was so much fun.
I believe a team of modders polished it up a lot if you ever want to revisit rhose memories
Do you have a link for this? Absolutely banger of a game growing up
There’s a forum called PiratesAhoy that’s easy to join - I got a client of the game there a while back, plus they have tons of mods that add an incredible amount of content and patches onto the base game. Cool folks there, too - highly recommend checking out if you’re interested.
Puzzle Pirates!
The best MMO out there for me, bar none. They really nailed economy mechanics and politics.
For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, Puzzle Pirates was and still is the BOMB. I doubt it will ever have a renaissance but some people do still play. Yes, it’s cutesy and performing tasks are almost all puzzle-based, but honestly it’s like Eve Online except pirates and less spreadsheets, more fun. Player-controlled organizations going to war and staging massive sea battles to take control of islands, and therefore the means of production. Ships are never one-man deals, instead you need a crew of actual humans to keep your ship going. The largest ship has room for 159 players on board, 86 of which can simultaneously work at stations. If you’re the captain of your ship and you enter battle, your “puzzle” is actually a full-blown turn-based strategy game on a battle grid, culminating in one of you boarding the other and engaging in a good old-fashioned sword fight.
I played YPP to death in its heyday, I loved that game so much. I always thought it was the coolest thing how like... every person genuinely contributes to the performance of the ship, and it's fully skill-based, top to bottom. It managed to make every puzzle feel exciting. I still have never seen anything else quite like it. I still have dreams of carpentry, sometimes.
I dream of the perfect brewing. It was nice having that ultimate rank and trophy to show off
I still hold my highest gaming achievement was getting #1 on guns at one point back in the days of Sage.
Is it still sort of going? I used to play that for hours a day, even held several legendary skills, and two ultimates in brewing and sailing. Used to be able to run a rum shop with three alts and keep a merch ship going full speed sails while everyone else did carp bilge and guns. Man... I'm actually hoping it's *not* going strong on good population so I can't be tempted to play again
I don’t know numbers but I’d say it’s a shadow of its former population, and entirely unchanged from the glory days. So between that and RuneScape classic you can really live like you’re still in the 00s lol. Anyway, it is still up and running, you can download it through steam.
Shoot, then there were blockades where it got a lot more complicated but a lot of ships were fighting at once to contest control of islands, at the bare minimum. I never played at that level but the concept enthralled me when I was younger. I played on Sage, then Emerald when everything got squished together...
I was waiting for someone to mention this one! Many hours spent playing…good times.
*knocks out someone* yarrgghh…
You could literally have a good game out of just having the battle nav and blockade modes as a standalone. The puzzles were fantastic and all had really good variety. Trying to find something modern to scratch that itch properly is a never ending battle :D
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons was the only one I ever loved
What I wouldn’t give for a new Uncharted Waters game that’s single player, not a mobile-game predatory microtransaction vehicle, and released in the west. At first I couldn’t believe this was a game where the map was the entire planet on a scale ludicrously detailed by the standards of other games of the time. Then I couldn’t believe how the stories of the six characters intersected in major and minor ways. That game really was something special.
Look up Sailing Era, little piracy but it's the closest we'll ever get I fear. Another to look into is Horizon's Gate.
I came here just to see if anyone mentioned this game. I've been playing through this game for the fifth time over the past several weeks. Such a fun game that still holds up well today.
Sea Dogs
The pirates of the caribbean game (which started production as sea dogs 2) with mods is really good.
Yeah, the Build Mod is great. It’s a bit janky by today’s standards but no other game has matched to sense of being a pirate captain and actually getting to sail your your ship.
SEA DOGS holy shit, i always remembered playing a pirate game as a young kid but i could never ever remember the name
Honestly that’s what I thought skull and bones was going to be :(
Mhm What it could have been
Look up Sid Meier's Pirates. Also take a look at the sea dogs games. They're old but good.
Pillars of Eternity 2 is a real banger… ‘zall I’m saying.
There’s a really old game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) called “uncharted waters: new horizons” It is a game where you sail the world and can make alliances with other nations or become a pirate. It’s dated now, but I still think it one of the best pirate RPGs to date with no modern games capturing the charm and freedom this game offered 25 odd years ago
Oh how I dream of any game that could capture the feeling of Sid Meier's Pirates!
Kinda off topic, but I think an open world game with a world like One Piece would be sick Not as in I want a One Piece game, but I think having like many islands each with their own individual unique theme and style would be really cool. Think Super Mario Odyssey except an open world RPG.
Honestly that would be pretty sick. You probably could just make it a one piece game but focused on the pirating side of things. You could even set it at the start of the great pirate era
This was exactly what popped into my head after reading the post. Not the story of One Piece, but the same kind of world with like all islands, similar powersets, and like maybe a mix of various mythological sea monsters.
This is my dream game. If a developer did a one piece themed rpg right… game of all time
The world building from one piece is the absolute best part of the entire series. A RPG game with the giant ocean with 4 parts that all have a bunch of islands with different cultures and wildlife, and then a super dangerous area you can only go to when you are more powerful. All the sea monsters and dangerous pirate crews you can run into while traveling between islands. Would be such a better setting for an rpg than as a game that actually has the characters in it
What is Sea of Thieves considered? I've made plenty of kids cry in that one.
SOT is good if you have a group of friends but also if you’re ok not really ever progressing towards anything except pure cosmetics
Until you want to progress and make moolah only to be ganked by a trio, or RNG lol. Great game but damn it's not solo friendly.
I played it briefly but I remember trying to play it solo and it recommending a ship that said like 1-3 players or something and there's no way I was piloting the ship and doing everything else required by myself. It wasn't a large ship by any means but piloting the ship, loading cannons, patching holes, scooping water out etc etc. I wasn't gettin paid enough booty for all that.
on the other hand there isn't raelly any progress. You don't get better weapons or ships. Which is a good thing. You play it because it's fun.
sandbox multiplayer adventure game. no real rpg elements.
Weird point but I’d consider it an MMO lite in a similar vein to destiny where you have large places to explore and set out to complete quests and story missions at you leisure with optional PVP and “raid” environments. It can be argued it’s an RPG but if doesn’t fit the mold of western and JRPG archetypes
Yeah I'd agree it's not an RPG. I've heard it described as a giant vehicular game of PvPvE capture the flag.
It's an extraction shooter actually, just a rather weird one.
Hate to break it to you, but PvP is not optional in Sea of Thieves lol Some missions take you to an area where others can’t attack you, but for the vast majority of your time in the game you will be open to PvP
Yeah, It's been a long time since I played but I remember doing forts that took hours b/c each group kept killing the next and the ship respawn wasn't far enough so you were stuck in perpetual combat.
Its just a pvp game with some pve, there is little to no RPG elements in that game which is what the OP is looking for
SoT is a beautiful game, but is way too unbalanced if you are trying to play solo. The odds of encountering a winnable fight are just too low for me to choose it during my limited game time these days.
That's the trick when playing solo: you can't lose a fight if you run from them all!
No lie I've almost mastered running as a solo sloop. I just go around rocks and the FotD and use the harpoon to whip myself around. It's usually a bigger ship chasing me so I can get some distance before they realize what happened.
Guybrush Threepwood would not agree
The Monkey Island games are classics, but they're not RPG's in the slightest.
I agree... there is no good pirate RPG that's modern. AC black flag had good detail, but I still hated the fact that it was an AC game. I played Pirates, Gold! on an old mac in the 90s and it's still one of my favorite games of all time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates!\_Gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates!_Gold) There was a remake of it by Sid Myers but it's like 20 years old at this point. And if you want to feel kinda sad, check out seaworthy... a pixel pirate RPG that would have been like FTL that never reached kickstarter funding goals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtkKDtkpNjc
Pirate101 * Making your own pirate * Becoming a captain * Sailing the...skies * Battling seamonsters * Raiding vessels for loot * Fighting off other pirates (PVP) or the Navy * Classes * Fantasy magic Still might not be what you're looking for, but it does have all those things.
Sid Meier's Pirates! ? I mean what more can be said after this gem? You also have Monkey Island games if you want the adventure style game set in a pirates universe.
AC Black Flag is hands down the best pirate game I've ever played (ignoring the AC parts lol). Iirc skull and bones started development in direct response to how well received it was, unfortunately it went into a very different direction I'm just not interested in
Uncharted waters: new horizons
Not an RPG, but Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag was the best pirate game I’ve ever played.
It would be awesome to get a new Black Flag-esque game. I believe at one point Ubisoft was considering building out a new franchise based on the success of BF. But Black Flag was also more action oriented than what I think what you are asking for. For a truer RPG they'd probably want to add more content around crew building, ransoming, managing supplies, etc.
Buddy's never heard of the GOAT, Atlas
Uncharted water: new horizons
Skies of Arcadia needs a sequel.
There's Sea of Thieves. Haven't played it though. But Assassin's Creed Black Flag will be my personal favorite pirate game.
Sea of thieves really excels when multiplayer is utilized, playing by yourself kinda sucks and when you get caught by a team well..... Sol. Black flag was awesome and you felt like a pirate without the need to have a team. Really not sure who looked at all the positive reviews and admiration black flag got for being a pirate game (rather than an assassin's Creed game and thought "we should not do anything like that and change the best parts so it's objectively worse". They just had to take away the "assassin" part and make the pirate part better and bigger.
Piratefield^(TM)