Corsair's Legacy, Arr it be a pirate's life for me!

[rusty_shackleford]

The year 1689. Captain Blood’s Odyssey has reached its end – a legendary corsair took over as governor of Jamaica. The Caribbean needs new heroes – notorious adventurers who would set sail under the black flag for a hazardous journey and Spanish gold, becoming the scourge of the tropical islands!

Will this be yet another game to fall to the pirate-themed RPG curse?

[GhostCow]

This doesn't look very good to me. The voice acting at the start of the video is cringe and gay and the combat doesn't look particularly good. I'm betting it's one of those things where melee is just an attack and a block button. Maybe a heavy attack button too. If I can't control the direction that I swing my weapon, then I consider melee combat to be ****. We need more action RPGs with combat similar to Gothic or Mount and Blade.

[Tweed]

Nice how everyone fights at a snail's pace and I like how your crew exists entirely to keep enemies busy until you run over and kill them, also dig how they get in the way. Looks like a real winner.

[Ratcatcher]

Pirates are lame and the only halway decent pirate game ever is Sid Meier Pirates!

[Lich]

People's expectation of pirates as regular guys with funny outfits and a particular vernacular severely limits the thematic scope of pirate games. I'd be more interested in them if they incorporated obscene or repugnant themes like disease, sexual violence and paranoia, and made piracy mechanically fundamental, rather than be another typical action game but on ships with tricorns and eyepatches.

[wndrbr]

Slavs are stuck in the past, this is like 20th attempt at resurrecting the Seadogs series after official Seadogs 4 was canned.

For those who don't know, all those slav pirate-themed rpgs are actually a part of a single franchise. Due to some publishing shenanigans, outside of CIS countries all of them have different names:

- Corsairs (aka Sea Dogs in the west);
- Corsairs 2 (was named "Pirates of the Caribbean" after the devs managed to strike a deal with Bethesda and coincide game's release with the first PotC movie, even though it has bugger all to do with it);
- Corsairs 3 (devs lost the rights for "Pirates of the Caribbean" trademark, and had to rename the sequel to 'Age of Pirates - Caribbean Tales');
- Corsairs 3: Dead Man's Chest - the first and only standalone expansion made by the devs of the original game. Was meant to be a soft reboot of Corsairs 3 after that game spectacularly sanked due to innumerous amount of gamebreaking bugs;
- Corsairs: Return of the Legend - the first standalone expansion co-developed by a team of ex-modders, was never released outside of Russia;
- Corsairs: City of Abandoned Ships - second standalone expansion made by the same team of ex-modders, known as 'Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships' outside of CIS countries;
- Corsairs IV was meant to be a full-blown sequel with AAA production values, devs (the same ex-modders) even wrote a brand new engine and wanted their game to be released on multiple platforms. Unfortunately, the game was canned because of the problems their publisher had due to 2008 financial crisis;
- Corsairs: To Each his Own (another standalone expansion, this time made a different team of ex-modders). Known as 'Sea Dogs: To Each His Own' outside of CIS countries.

There were later attempts at resurrecting the brand with 'Corsairs - Black Spot' and a bunch of other shoverware projects, but all of them either failed to materialize due to a lack of funding, or were exposed as fraud schemes. Unlike them, it seems like 'Legacy' have the chances to see the light of day.

[GothGirlSupremacy]

If you know then you know.

[Tweed]

My right ear really enjoyed this.

[asf]

Another age of pirates clone

[1998]

[media/][/media]

[rusty_shackleford]

[media/][/media]

FYI, there's no need to use the media tag unless you tick the 'Do not automatically parse URLs' option when posting. Any media that can be embedded will automatically be embedded.

[rusty_shackleford]

The early access releases in 8 hours, and there's a demo up.

[edit]
yuck, early access.

[rusty_shackleford]

wtf is going on in this screenshot


it's from the store page

[Vergil]

This looks like hot garbage honestly which is sad because I've always wanted a good pirate themed RPG.

[Oyster Sauce]

This looks like hot garbage honestly which is sad because I've always wanted a good pirate themed RPG.

Pillars of Eternity 2

[wndrbr]

This looks like hot garbage honestly which is sad because I've always wanted a good pirate themed RPG.

Risen 2

[rusty_shackleford]

Pirate-themed RPGs have the same issue most non-fantasy RPGs face: RPGs without magic are just boring. Doesn't matter if it's space magic, tech magic, cave wizard magic, or magic magic.
If you have an RPG without magic, the rest of the game better be 5/5 because it will be carrying the game. It's why games like Fallout are remembered, and most Fallout clones are forgettable crap.

[rusty_shackleford]

Pirate-themed RPGs have the same issue most non-fantasy RPGs face: RPGs without magic are just boring. Doesn't matter if it's space magic, tech magic, cave wizard magic, or magic magic.
If you have an RPG without magic, the rest of the game better be 5/5 because it will be carrying the game. It's why games like Fallout are remembered, and most Fallout clones are forgettable crap.

Just remembered where I originally read this, and it's with regards to tabletop RPGs but still applies.
https://arbiterofworlds.substack.com/p/ ... protection

Just Add Magic
If a genre doesn’t have enough viable niches, the easiest way to address the lack is to just add “magic” to the setting. I’m using “magic” broadly here, to include all forms of paranormal and supernatural phenomena, including psychic powers, superpowers, mutations, cybernetics, impossible tech, and so on. Examples include:

Deadlands: Western + magic

Ascendant, Champions: Crimefighting thriller + magic

Call of Cthulhu: Mystery story + magic

Gamma World, Rifts: Post-apocalyptic + magic

7th Sea: Pirate adventure + magic

Shadowrun: Spy thriller + magic3

Vampire: Underworld drama + magic4

Weird War II: War movie + magic

That games with “magic” in them are more popular than games without magic is commonly known among TTRPG game designers. But it’s not often explained why this is the case. There’s nothing magical about magic. It’s simply a versatile tool to create a lot of niches.

The problem with “magic” is that its inclusion changes the feel of the genre. At its best, it can lead to the development of a new subgenre, which develops its own tropes. More often, it descends into gonzo farce. At its worst, it can destroy the essence of what made us want to design for the original genre — the grit, the realism, the struggle.

And yet magic works. There are virtually no commercially successful western, mystery, crimefighting, post-apocalyptic, pirate, spy, or underworld RPGs without some form of magic. There are plenty of examples with magic.

Is that it, then? Are we doomed to include magic in every genre? Does every player’s need to be the special snowflake mean that we can never create a commercially successful Western RPG, or Pirate RPG, or any other RPG, without magic?

Creating interesting, unique RPG characters without magic is hard.

[Vergil]

Pillars of Eternity 2

Risen 2

[rusty_shackleford]

Risen 2 is pretty good, it's just not a Gothic game. It also has a lot of racist jokes that would never get published in a game with a budget today.

[Vergil]

Risen 2 is pretty good, it's just not a Gothic game. It also has a lot of racist jokes that would never get published in a game with a budget today.

I need to try it again honestly. My first attempt was right after beating Risen 3 and I ended up being too burnt out.

[Pipeweed]

https://github.com/storm-devs/storm-engine
this engine with corsairs 2 was my first introduction to modding games and even programming, all scripts were out in the open so you could change anything.
newer titles only seem interested in skyrimizing things.

edit: corsairs legacy is actually made in unity, just ripping it off

[rusty_shackleford]

https://github.com/storm-devs/storm-engine
this engine with corsairs 2 was my first introduction to modding games and even programming, all scripts were out in the open so you could change anything.
newer titles only seem interested in skyrimizing things.

Game development has sadly become worse about this over time rather than better as I hoped it would.

[Irenaeus]

How are the dancing parties like?

[rusty_shackleford]

Looks like they changed the release date? Was supposed to release earlier.

[Vergil]

Always a good sign when they struggle to get it into an early access appropriate level of release.

[rusty_shackleford]

Looks like they changed the release date? Was supposed to release earlier.

And it's now out in early access?

[1998]

Yeah, I think until a couple of weeks ago they made it seem it will be released in full. Up until then I was actually quite interested in it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Will this be yet another game to fall to the pirate-themed RPG curse?

Seems to have actually done well so far in early access. Anyone played it?