Any good Pirate RPGs?

[KeighnMcDeath]

There's a mod for the original XCOM called 'X-Piratez', where instead of defending Earth from the alien invasion, you command a bunch of amazonian mutants who escape from a testing facility and decide to become pirates, complete with muskets, parrots, cutlasses, etc.

It's not particularly nautical (you're more likely to be raiding an aircar or a cult's temple than a boat), but the pirate 'theme' is top-notch.

Spoiler

Updated
https://www.moddb.com/mods/x-piratez/downloads/dioxine-xpiratez-n6-03-oct-2023-zany-cats

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I found Risen 2 & Risen 3 to actually be pretty fun but they get shit on a lot here. ymmv, I guess.
--
I've been wanting to try this for a while but haven't gotten around to it

this is made by a codexer


On the list of games that definitely didn't make me feel like a pirate, Deadfire would be at the top.

Trailer for that first one looks like the literal definition of a walking simulator. Heard good things about Horizon's Gate though.

Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships might be a good one for the OP to check out.

Also, Pirates of the Carribean should probably be avoided, even with the big New Horizons mod. There were so many things I hated about it.

One thing I hated about PotC was that the camera couldn't look up (or down) with your character's 3rd person view. And boarding a ship to take over consisted of just you and the enemy captain. CoAS fixed these camera issues and multiple members of your crew could board and fight (though not nearly as spectacularly as in Black Flag). If anyone decides to play any of these old Storm engine games on modern cards under Windows 10+ be certain to use DGVoodoo (at least v2.8) with a locked FPS of 60 in RivaTuner otherwise you're going to see too much of the engine shitting all over itself with the framerate no mater how powerful your card or rig.

Just yesterday I re-installed CoAS and in 4K it looks pretty fucking good for something so old and full of russo-jank. I just learned today that the new Sea Dogs game Caribbean Legend on Steam is actually just a remaster of To Each His Own with the same old interface. I heard the Maelstrom engine-mod introduces great stability to the Sea Dog games but it's $12.

 

[Nikanuur]

From the recent ones, and despite it being more of a tactical game with RPG features, people say it is pretty good (don't know myself).

 

[std::namespace]

From the recent ones, and despite it being more of a tactical game with RPG features, people say it is pretty good (don't know myself).

sjw garbage, also shit

 

[Modron]

Anyone try out Tortuga?

 

[Darkozric]

Anyone try out Tortuga?

Try it for yourself, annoying thot.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Skull & Bones

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

From the recent ones, and despite it being more of a tactical game with RPG features, people say it is pretty good (don't know myself).

And it has a few DLCs.
https://af.gog.com/en/game/shadow_gambit_the_cursed_crew_complete_edition?as=1649904300

Spendy though.

 

[std::namespace]

Anyone try out Tortuga?

i saw a video of it: ship combat turn based and very shallow

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Regarding using dgvoodoo and how it allows old DirectX8 games like the Sea Dogs series to run smoothly on modern Windows and video cards, I discovered a neat little upscaling trick that was first mentioned to me by mediocrepoet a few months back but I had time to experiment with today. At 4K (3840 x 2160), the information fonts and action icons in CoAS and other old storm engine games are far too small to read comfortably, but if you use dgvoodoo to upscale those fonts and icons from 1920 x 1080 to 3840 x 2160 you get the benefit of much larger UI elements while retaining the higher resolution sharpness of 4K for graphics and everything else. Fucking awesome for old games that still allow 4K resolutions (forced or natively) but the UI elements are far too small to see clearly at those resolutions. I'm sure some of you know about this little trick but others may not. So a personal thanks to mediocrepoet for mentioning this feature to me a while back.

 

[MerchantKing]

I've been playing Horizon's Gate recently. My only complaint is that there are no Gnomes. Otherwise, I'm enjoying the merchant simulator aspect of the game though it has plenty of room for more depth.

 

[Modron]

I've been playing Horizon's Gate recently. My only complaint is that there are no Gnomes. Otherwise, I'm enjoying the merchant simulator aspect of the game though it has plenty of room for more depth.

There have been a couple of Uncharted Water clones in recent years, Sailing Era and Sagres if that is your jam.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

It's a shame the Uncharted Water clones or newer pirate games mostly seem to be turn-based with anime/waifu/androgyne style characters (or super-deformed) as opposed to the fantastic real-time ship-to-ship battles of the Sea Dog series, but I guess that's the whole point of an Uncharted Waters clone. There's one thing I vividly recall from the New Horizons mod for Pirates of the Caribbean - those exciting (if you used time acceleration) and very realistic ship-to-ship battles with grapeshot, cannon-shot, etc. I think I only quit NH because I had unrealistic expectations about saving progress while chasing a ship on the run. I was in heated pursuit of a torn-up enemy (a real potential prize since it was a larger ship than mine with many goodies and luxuries on board) and saved progress but when I reloaded, the ship vanished (something that happens a lot in mods, or worse - crashing upon reload - ie GWX for Silent Hunter III). You just have to be sure to heed warnings about these things in readmes or whatever. You can't typically save scum like a retard in this shit.

Edited: update on my dgVoodoo experiments in scaling to get larger UI elements in CoAS at 2160p - it causes cut-scenes to be utterly fucked up (cropped) when you force a 4K resolution in dgVoodoo. If anyone knows a solution please inform me.

 

[JarlFrank]

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Early access

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Why couldn't Pirates of Dark Waters get a decent game and been a finished series on air and in comic and TTRPG? Oh well.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Lol, cool pirate RPGs. Are you INSANE mate?

There aren't even good pirate games. One of the most criminally ignored settings in gaming history.

You had Sid Meier's Pirates (kids games) and Akella's Rusjank, made even jankier after 20 years of modding efforts, where somehow, using some unholy magic unknown to man, they managed to find modders who are even worse programmers than the original Akella developers.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The problems I see is the sea shanties in these games usually suck. Maybe if groups like Alestorm provided music it would be better.


What is it with holy wenches stripping... make that crew a bunch of vampires & werewolf demon worshippers and thrust a convent at them... BAM! Sinners

 

[Jack Of Owls]

You had Sid Meier's Pirates (kids games) and Akella's Rusjank, made even jankier after 20 years of modding efforts, where somehow, using some unholy magic unknown to man, they managed to find modders who are even worse programmers than the original Akella developers.

Worse modders than the worst Akella programmers they may well be, but you can play as one of these guys in the PotC New Horizons mod. Day-O!

 

[Serus]

Lol, cool pirate RPGs. Are you INSANE mate?

There aren't even good pirate games. One of the most criminally ignored settings in gaming history.

You had Sid Meier's Pirates (kids games) and Akella's Rusjank, made even jankier after 20 years of modding efforts, where somehow, using some unholy magic unknown to man, they managed to find modders who are even worse programmers than the original Akella developers.

That's incorrect. You have Pirates! by Microprose one of the best games ever and - surprisingly enough - still a good one. Games from this time usually didn't age well (due to clunky interfaces, being very tedious to play, etc...) but Pirates! remains very enjoyable.

The remake you talk about - Sid Meier's Pirates! was not only made to look as a game for kids - it was also made worse in many areas. Only land battles were improved but also became slower. And it looks better from technical standpoint but art style is cartoon-ey. Not the worst I've seen, but the original had (semi)realistic art style and had more serious tone in general. Also was more difficult and was slightly more realistic.

It isn't a CRPG by any stretch of imagination although some people here think Star Control 2 is one so who am I to say.