Genre: RPG	Developed By: Akella
	The game allows you to live your dreams out on the open sea as a merchant, pirate or sailor and essentially mould your character as you would like with a series of traits that you can adjust in an incredibly rich world.

Overview

Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships follows up Playlogic’s successful RPG high seas adventure Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales. The game allows you to live your dreams out on the open sea as a merchant, pirate or sailor and essentially mould your character as you would like with a series of traits that you can adjust in an incredibly rich world.

Gameplay

While the graphics in Age of Pirates 2 are nothing to shout home about, that can be a good thing. The graphics are sufficiently detailed to create a rich world with plenty of interesting characters while not overloading your system or requiring you to buy an entirely new pc just to play the game. The audio aspect of the game, however, leaves something to be desired. All the sounds seem dated, like Playlogic used the same ones from Age of Pirates without updating them. There also isn’t much voice communication in the game, as most of your interaction with characters is through written scripts on the screen which leaves the characters feeling too robotic and one-dimensional.

The interface is simple and clean, but offers little information to beginners. There also seems to be very little help and no tutorials in the game, giving it a steep learning curve and promising plenty of trial and error.

P.I.R.A.T.E

One major new addition is the P.I.R.A.T.E system which stands for Power, Insight, Reaction, Authority, Talent, and Endurance. Power is your ability to inflict physical damage or your ability to carry items. Insight is your ability to hear and see which increases your stealth but does little else. Reaction is your ability to deliver quick blows or make quick moves and seems like an ancillary trait most of the time. Authority affects the number of officers that can join you as well as your ability to trade. Talent is the jack of all traits; it affects trade, cannons, navigation and the rate at which the character ranks up and acquires new traits. Endurance is your ability to repair and defend, as well as replenish health points.

For each of the skills, the more you use it, the better it becomes, although sometimes it can mean accepting tedious missions to hone a skill for later use. In theory, the P.I.R.A.T.E. system is very clever and efficient but in practice, it falls a little short. The system essentially allows you to take a generic character and hone him to suit your needs, but the process of getting there is quite tedious and can be very confusing. Right from the start, each of the traits and how they affect your character isn’t explained and can only be learned through experience. That means several career restarts and frustration. A quick tutorial would do wonders here.

Battles

Since Age of Pirates is all about life on the open seas, most of the battles you’ll face are naval battles. These can be tedious at times, especially when you’re sucked into one that you didn’t really want any part of, and even more so when you cant simulate them. For a game that offers plenty of options, the lack of any at certain points really hurts playability. Having said that, when you do get into a naval battle that you want to fight, it can be quite fun. Though it isn’t quite as realistic or strategy oriented as Empire Total War or other games, it can be fun as you board other ships and chop their crew to pieces.

Land battles, however, are another story. They frequently turn into button mashing contests and require less and less strategy as the fight goes on. This isn’t so much a problem with Age of Pirates 2’s engine, but more with the way RPG games are setup for PCs and without an intuitive interface, it seems like it’ll be this way for some time. They can also end up going for quite some time as reloading a pistol takes almost 10 seconds, an absurd amount of time when you’re trying to fight off multiple attackers.

Characters

In Age of Pirates 2 - City of Abandoned Ships, the player has a choice of playing as one of the three available characters: Ian, Diego, and Mr. Blood. Ian and Diego are both remarkably similar and begin their stories on a battered ship under a state of amnesia.

Mr. Blood starts out in England as a physician. All three characters have pretty open-ended stories which leads to greater flexibility in character development, but can make it more confusing as to what each character’s specific characteristics are and which one to pick. You can also choose to play as an Englishman, a Spaniard, a Dutch, and a Frenchman, though the game doesn’t explain what advantages, if any, choosing one over the other would offer. This is the game’s saving grace and Achilles heel at the same time. The flexibility with your crew, environment, and the colonial powers all mean a rich and ever changing storyline, but the lack of information at the beginning can make it quite frustrating and mean you may have to restart a few times with different settings to determine a style of play best suited to you.

Depending on the character that you select and the missions that you accept your reputation both as a sailor and with the colonial powers is at stake. Work for the French and the English may not take too kindly to when your flag and sails appear on the horizon. This means you have to pick your friends carefully. As the balance of world power shifts, and it does move a bit in the game, it can have severe consequences on your ship, crew, reputation, and missions. This is a refreshing change from most other games where interaction with the virtual world is too one-dimensional and where the game tends to get tedious after a certain point. In this respect, Age of Pirates 2 is well ahead of the curve.

Conclusion

Your relationship with Age of Pirates 2 will be a love and hate one. At times, the game will wow you with its creativity, realism and endless possibilities. Immediately after that, it will annoy you with tedious conversations with characters that you have to read rather than hear, boring missions, and a lack of depth that can be infuriating at time. It is a game worth playing, but just remember to save often, and keep a stress reliever close at hand.