Man o War: Corsair (Warhammer + Pirates!)

[Sepiche]

Picked this up due to my love of Warhammer and swashbuckling games now that it's out of early access.

Overall I'd say it's a bit of a mixed bag. Under the rather mediocre graphics is a very clunky UI, and under the clunky UI is a game with quite a few bugs still, but if you keep digging, under that is a pretty fun open world Pirates! style game.

In the open world campaign mode you can currently only start as an Imperial or Chaos aligned captain, although fleets you can encounter include dark elves, skaven, all 4 flavors of chaos, Empire, Brettonia, & Orcs.

You start with a small ship and crew, and enough money to get by for a short while, but you'll need to get bounties fighting other ships and doing missions to make more. The map covers everything from the northern Kislevite coast down to the southern coast near the badlands and the border princes. You can sail manually and increase time up to 8x to get places faster, as well as plot a course and have your first officer automatically follow it for you.

Your crew all have names, levels, stats, and perks, and you have a lot of flexibility in terms of where to assign them on your ship... extra lookouts increase your sighting range, extra crew in the rigging helps you turn faster, etc. Each time your crew levels you can choose new perks from a randomly generated list allowing them to get better at fighting, better at different crew stations, etc. There are also champion crew members you can buy such as sharpshooters and battle mages who are controllable and can add considerable firepower for your ship mostly during boarding actions. Some factions also have the option of having large beasts on the ship such as Empire ships having griffons.

In terms of ship upgrades there are different ammo types, a few different gun options, plus each faction has a few different ships that are available in their ports to buy.

The battles play out something like the combat from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Clicking the fire button shows a gun trajectory overlay, and you click again to fire a broadside. Getting your ship close to another ship and hitting space bar grapples the ship and starts a battle between your crews where you can control your captain in third person, or any of your champions fighting on the deck of both ships. One nice feature in combat are the different damage locations on ships. Each ship is divided into different sections, and in order to sink a ship you need to break through the armor in a section to get at the hull underneath. Disabling different sections also seems to have the effect of disabling object in that area... cannon, sails, etc.

As I alluded to above though there are also quite a few issues with the game. The graphics are mediocre at best, many the animations are pretty poor, and the UI is spread out and click heavy. It is functional, but exasperating at times. There are also still a good share of scripting bugs, and odd faction related open world issues that crop up.

So, long story short, if you can look past the amateurish interface, graphics, and bugs, there is a surprisingly deep, open world swashbuckling game to be had.

[NickAragua]

... now that it's out of early access.

Overall I'd say it's a bit of a mixed bag. Under the rather mediocre graphics is a very clunky UI, and under the clunky UI is a game with quite a few bugs still...

Guess they shouldn't have taken it out of early access then.

[Sepiche]

... now that it's out of early access.

Overall I'd say it's a bit of a mixed bag. Under the rather mediocre graphics is a very clunky UI, and under the clunky UI is a game with quite a few bugs still...

Guess they shouldn't have taken it out of early access then.

In their defense, it's actually come a long way since it first came out in EA, but no denying, despite having lots of enjoyable parts, it could definitely use more time in the oven.

[NickAragua]

... now that it's out of early access.

Overall I'd say it's a bit of a mixed bag. Under the rather mediocre graphics is a very clunky UI, and under the clunky UI is a game with quite a few bugs still...

Guess they shouldn't have taken it out of early access then.

In their defense, it's actually come a long way since it first came out in EA, but no denying, despite having lots of enjoyable parts, it could definitely use more time in the oven.

Do you think they're going to keep working on it? I mean, I'd like to play a naval combat game with boarding and crew management and stuff, but I don't really have time to play "QA simulator".

[Defiant]

I've been keeping an eye on this and Blackwake (a more team-based pirate naval combat game), and I think the above is going to make me hold off for a good sale, and lean towards Blackwake.

[Sepiche]

They definitely seem to have plans to keep improving the game, they're working on more campaigns and bug fixing currently. I doubt the graphics and animations will get much improvement, but I have hopes for the UI as I think even some small changes could make for an improvement, though I haven't seen any concrete plans they have for it.

I don't want to sugar coat the game, as a lot of folks have less tolerance for weak UIs and graphics than I do, but there's a fun game in there too.

[tgb]

I'm just happy that somebody is finally making a game based around the Warhammer universe. God knows I've been waiting for years for someone to license Warhammer and make a game out of it.

[Defiant]

I'm just happy that somebody is finally making a game based around the Warhammer universe. God knows I've been waiting for years for someone to license Warhammer and make a game out of it.

[NickAragua]

I'm just happy that somebody is finally making a game based around the Warhammer universe. God knows I've been waiting for years for someone to license Warhammer and make a game out of it.

You're not kidding, I don't think I've seen a games workshop licensed game come out for at least a week.

[Zenn7]

I'm just happy that somebody is finally making a game based around the Warhammer universe. God knows I've been waiting for years for someone to license Warhammer and make a game out of it.

You're not kidding, I don't think I've seen a games workshop licensed game come out for at least a week.

And after that lengthy wait, we have another lengthy wait for the next games workshop licensed game! (DOW3 out next week).