While walking through Best Buy I saw a couple of scurvy pirates staring me down from the box art of Pirates of the Burning Sea. I've heard of the game, read a few tidbits on it in the past, but never really gave it much thought. It was on sale for $20 so I thought, "Might as well give it a try, it could be a surprise hit."
I get home, start my installation, and after 90 hours of patching (give or take 85 hours) I'm finally ready to set sail.
The character customization, while somewhat robust, seemed a bit underwhelming. There were a lot of faces to choose from, but all of them looked like characters from Goldeneye on N64, not something graphics wise that we'd see in a game nowdays. I picked to be a pirate, gave myself a sweet pony tail, and started in on the tutorial.
The tutorial was broken up into a few different missions to kind of give me a taste of each. Right from thre I noticed that the sea combat was pretty damn fun, and the melee (if that's what you want to call it) combat was craptasic. It looked like an irish Folk dance the way every character on the screen attacked at the same time in unison with the exact same animations. Possibly the worst combat in any MMO I've ever played, and yes, I have played The Matrix Online.
It's not all bad though. Sailing around in your boat is the best part of the game, but unfortunately, you have to dock at a port and be exposed to the uglyness of being on land. Having sea battles and plundering goods is a lot of fun, but got very boring and repetitive for me.
My advice, if you get a free trial give it a shot. It was fun for a couple weeks, but just didn't hook me at all. To each his/her own. Ship battles, and well, anything in the water was fun. But next time, instead of burning the sea, they should have burned the land, because the sea is the only decent part of the game.
