Sea Dogs

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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Bethesda
EAN: 0093155115903
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Bethesda
Dimension: 0.3 x 10.25 x 0.25 inches
Manufacturer: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda
Release Date: December 05, 2000
Studio: Bethesda

Sea Dogs casts you as a young English privateer who had the misfortune of getting boarded and captured by the Spanish during the golden age of piracy. Left to rot in an island prison, you soon make your escape, capturing a small ship and making for the nearest English port. There the adventure begins as you accept a letter of Marque, which grants royal authority to attack and plunder Spanish ships.

Sea Dogs offers three games in one. A third-person perspective lets you guide your character through the various towns and ports and interact with the citizenry. The shore-side adventure plays like a good 3-D RPG and allows you to uncover plots, hire pirates, and buy supplies. But the gameplay on land is merely a prelude to the real action: piracy on the high seas. The combat model is excellent, enabling quick-thinking captains to maneuver their ships to fire broadsides into enemy vessels. You pick from the surprisingly wide variety of cannon shot in order to bring down mizzenmasts and mainsails, clear the decks of crew, or simply blast the enemy ship into matchwood. When you board or are boarded, a third option pops up that lets you duel with the enemy captain. Your health is a representation of the amount of crew you have relative to the enemy. It's a decent system pirated straight from Sid Meier's Pirates!, the original high-seas adventure.

Another bit of stolen Pirates! booty is the ability to pursue your own destiny. Unlike most other games, Sea Dogs does not impose a restrictive plot upon the player. Stay loyal to the English, join the Spanish, plunder the French just for the fun of it, or renounce all nations and become a pirate king--the options for adventure in Sea Dogs are as limitless as the ocean.

Where Sea Dogs takes on water is its difficulty. It took an awful lot of dying and reloading before we came upon an encounter that we could handle with our meager initial force. Getting thrown to the sharks wouldn't be quite so bad if gamers were given a chance to hone their skills, but Sea Dogs lacks any kind of tutorial to let you practice ship-to-ship combat and swordplay. If your interest is only casual, this one won't shiver your timbers. But if you're in it for the long haul the game delivers a fantastic pirate experience. --Bob Andrews

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Ratings & Comments(Average:)

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- Beautiful, fun game
This game's biggest flaw is its difficulty. It's TOO hard, but really fun once you get the hang of it. You will have to spend some quality time with this game if you want to be successful. Yes, the game has some bugs, but they probably won't bother you too much. The dialogue can be awkward due to this being a Russian game, so be prepared for that. Also, you'll probably need a walkthrough at some point, because you'll probably have a hard time figuring out where you're supposed to go next in order to continue along the storyline. You'll also have to be very good at balancing your budget, because it's no easy task, and you'll hang from the yardarm if you fail to keep enough doubloons on hand.

That said, this is an extremely beautiful game, and the battles are awesome. I recommend buying this game first, and then getting the sequel; Sea Dogs II.

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- Very challenging, but fun when you get the hang of it.
When I bought this game, I was really hoping for it to be the "Morrowind" of the high seas. I was dissapointed.
Thats not to say the game isn't cool - it is. Being a pirate is always awesome. However, the plot isn't what I would call revolutionary or unpredictable. In addition, the contact with NPCs is not what I expected - you can't really develop any 'relationships'. Also, be aware that you can only play as a man and that the character is not customizable. On the positive side, the graphics are stellar. The ship to ship combat is awesome, once you get a hang of it. Which is also one of the biggest weaknesses of the game. There is no tutorial, no guide, and the manual is really insuficient when it comes to teaching you the game. In order to get the most out of Sea Dogs, you will need to go find an online guide or walkthrough. When you start off, you will find the game to be difficult (very challenging). Leveling up your character is quite hard and time consuming. Yet, once you get the hang of it all, the game is quite entertaining and fun.

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- Good thing you found this, buy it before its too late.
Before you dismiss me as some pirate loving freak who has only played this game and therfore thinks its the best ever, hear me out.

I was givin this game as gift about 6 years ago and I play it to this day. Its quite simply the most fun I've ever had in an RPG, I've played all sorts of games and this is definitly the best overall.

There are several different factions you can join, English, French, Spanish, and Pirate. These mean different things obviously. You begin as English. English are at war with Spain so Spain is Hostile. French is neutral and Pirate is hostile to all. France is at war with spain though, but not allied with English. So turing to Spains Side would make you hostile to all.

Each faction has its own unique story as well. Four different games there, if thats what you want.

Sea Battles are amazing, want to slow the enemy down? Load your guns with Chain shot and aim for his sails, aim high thought, its range is less then solid shot or bombs. What to kill his crew? Load grapeshot and blast him! Now that he cant move and his crew is in ruin, board him! Attacked the ship and if you win, you gain control of his cargo and even his ship, only if you hired a first mate to captain it, of course.

Killing not for you? Start off buying coffee at highrock and sell it at dead island for twice the money. When the time is right, buy a tradeship and sail all over exploiting islands needs and whatnot.

The action, politics and quests availible on land I cant even begin to capture in words, so I wont try.

Want to stop Spainish harrasment of english ships? Attack a spanish fort and plunder their town, it will be weeks before its repaired.

Want to drive the cost of hard-wood down at Belfore? Raid a French Treasure fleet and make off with millions. Watch out though, they are guarded by 100 cannon floating monsters of ships called Man O' Wars.

Dont care about the story? Become and Pirate and do anything you want, I cant overstate how great this game is.

If you like RPGs and dont own this game, if you dont order it right now, you are either recovering from major trauma to the head or simply an idiot.

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- Addictive!
This is a great game of piracy. It's extremely addictive to a modern-day gamer as well as the pirate-at-heart. The game was released in 1998, and the graphics are just amazing for that time era. I've seen games on Playstation 2 that didn't look as good. The locations and characters are entirely fictional, but have been developed around historical documents and evidence of piracy, so it feels very real. You can work as a privateer or a pirate, and you can change your mind as you wish to do so. The sailing interface is very nice, even though your entire crew is invisible. The boarding/fencing interface is a little less amazing, and your movements are very limited when compared to something you see in a movie. The only complaint is that there are a few loopholes; one of which is it can get repetitive going back and forth between islands to complete missions. All in all, though, this game is quite entertaining.

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- Everything You Could Want in a Pirate Game
Yes, this game is not easy - although there are plenty of walkthroughs available on the web. Thanks to those who have played for a long time and made the effort to share their knowledge, you almost don't mind that the manufacturer never bothered to issue a player's guide.

Yes, it does require you to pay attention - the suggestion to use a notebook is quite a good one! There is so much going on and you visit so many places, talk with so many people and with lots of story lines to keep track of, a notebook would be a great asset.

Yes, the graphics are amazing! Especially for those of us with older computers. The detail is awesome and if you take advantage of the first person perspective, you'll feel as if you really are on a ship in the middle of (pick one) a battle, heavy weather, open seas, etc.

No, you won't finish it in one sitting - unless you don't get up for several days running.

Sea Dogs is one fine piece of work and one fine game.

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