14 DAY TRIAL // I have very fond memories of the old Sid Meier's Pirates game and always felt that the world of high sea criminals has not been explored in a similar way ever since so I decided to spend some time playing the new Pirates of Black Cove, a title published by Paradox Interactive.
The developers at Nitro Games have also worked on Commander: Conquest of the Americas and it seems that the team has a love for games that deal with long sea voyages and battles that involve cannons, sailors, wooden ships and boarding actions.
Pirates of Black Cove is done in a very cartoonish manner and allows players to do some naval battles, with the realism turned way down, some land battles, where the main avatar and his henchmen need to complete objectives while fighting enemies, and to manage their crew and their ships preparing for further challenges via recruitment and potion preparation.
The game looks good and moves fast but it might be too simple for its own future, meaning that most players will abandon it rather quickly after going through some naval battles and through some land skirmishes.
The land based sections of the game seem the most annoying and it seems that the main character can die a bit too quickly, which gets the player a Game Over message and a return to an earlier checkpoint.
The ship fights are fun and alert and succeeding takes quite a bit of effort, despite the cartoon like graphics used.
What class a gamer has and what he is facing matters but positioning has the biggest impact on the battles and the most important move is making sure that you expose as much of the broadside as possible while firing at the narrowest possible section of the enemy ship.
Here's a look at Pirates of the Black Cove in action: