Bumblejinks Reviews: Pirate101
Sailin' the high sea-- er, skies, rather, made obnoxious.
Whether it's from storybooks, movies or social media, we've all heard the tale of pirates before. Scruff-wearing sailors with big, black Jolly Roger flags and peg legs up the wazoo ( seriously, what's up with all these pirates and peg legs? ). There are those who deem such people scum, and would sooner see them wiped from the face of the earth then allow them to continue their bouts of piracy, which often includes killing, robbing, and even pillaging the innocent.
And to be honest, I for one am cool with that. Pirates are some of the most fascinating people in the world, and if Pirates of the Caribbean has taught us anything, it's that they're often very resourceful and able to pull through difficult situations.
So, what happens when you take the pirates we all know and love and stick them on ships that sail through the skies? Well, BESIDES Treasure Planet, that is.
Apparently, KingsIsle entertainment had the same thought in mind and wanted to try and make their own adaptation of the bizarre sky pirates. And thus, Pirate101 was born.
Now, KingsIsle having already soaked their feet with their previous mega-hit MMORPG Wizard101, it wasn't surprising that they would want to release another MMORPG to try and capitalize on it's success. What IS surprising, however, is just how late in Wizard101's life span Pirate101 happened to come out. Pirate101 came out on October 15th, 2012, over 4 years after Wizard101 had come out ( September 2nd, 2008 for North America ). So why they decided to wait so long to release their next game, I have no idea.
Regardless, I personally could care less for the politics behind the game, as long as the game is good. Is Pirate101 good? Does it live up to the INSANELY high standards of it's mega-hit predecessor? Let's find out.
First things first: The Plot. The game opens up on your lone, orphaned pirate character being rescued from the brig of an Armada warship by the games two main characters: Captain Boochbeard and Mr. Gandry. Get used to seeing these two; They'll be popping in on occasion to give you timely advice all throughout the game, much like the "Tutorial Tips" in Wizard101. For the first time player, it's excellent, but on repeat playthroughs, you'll wish there were a mute option to get them to shut up. Luckily, there is an option to turn these tips off in the options menu.
Anyway, shortly after springing you from your brig, you'll meet up with your first companion ( who differs depending on what class you are ), and you quickly learn how this games battle system works. More on that later.
As you advance through the game, you'll end up getting into a number of outlandish situations, ranging from battling it out with dangerous pirate enemies of many flavors, monsters, and the occasional villain.
Throughout the game, your working to take down the Armada, but there's so much to do in the meantime. This game, much like Wizard101 before it, is heavily focused on the sidequests. Sure, you can just do all the primary quests and not give any of these areas a second glance, however, you'd be missing out on about 70% of the game if you choose to do that. While this design can work to great benefit in this games case, I think it can also end up turning off hardcore gamers from playing this thing. It also doesn't help that finding your way around has gotten a BIT more annoying this time around from Wizard101. More on that later.
In short, the plot falls into much the same category as the plot in Wizard101. Nothing spectacular, with the occasional plot hole here and there that can leave you scratching your head, but it's definitely not the worst out there. Not by a LONG shot.
So, with that aside, let's talk about The Graphics. As I'm sure your all well aware, Pirate101 came out 5 years after Wizard101 and was developed by much the same team, so you'd expect the graphics in this game to be better then Wizard101. Well, they are... to an extent.
For the majority of the game, the graphics are on par with Wizard101, if not completely better then that game. The character models and ships all look spectacular, and many of the weapons look great, too. Especially when upscaled to HD using the games graphical options. But unlike Wizard101, this game cannot maintain the great graphics in heavily crowded areas or in the midst of combat.
I noticed MANY times when I was playing through the game that the graphics would scale down to their "Low" settings for absolutely no reason. I understand that this was probably done to help lighten the strain on my computer, but my computer has an extremely powerful quad processor and a whopping 8GB of RAM, so there really is no excuse for this graphical down-scaling. I know there's probably an option to make the game not do this, but I couldn't help being distracted by it all the same, especially after so many years of playing Wizard101 before this game.
Also, I'm not sure if it's just me, but I feel like some of the item and clothing designs in this game aren't quite up to the usual standards of KingsIsle games. I might be nitpicking here, but play the first half of Wizard101 and compare it's armor to some of the armor designs in this game, and you'll see why I expect better, especially from a game that came out 5 years after it's counterpart game.
It also doesn't help that the game recycles a few of the graphical assets from Wizard101, which can stand out like a sore thumb among all the new stuff they put into this game for anyone who's played Wizard101 before this. Again, it's nothing earth-shattering, but it's still distracting.
So in terms of graphics, it's kind of a "Mixed Bag" for me. For everything I like, or find visually appealing, there's one more thing that drives me bonkers or leaves me scratching my head. It also doesn't help that Wizard101 is currently receiving some graphical overhauls for some of it's older assets, but it appears Pirate101 is being ignored in terms of graphical redesigns, which is part of a trend you'll notice as we go through this review. Again, this games graphics are very middle of the road.
Next up, The Sound. Like with the graphical aspects, I feel like KingsIsle has some stellar hits here, but they failed to capitalize on all the opportunities available to them to make this game really stand out.
For example, the game's soundtrack is easily some of the best stuff I've ever heard in an MMORPG. The character selection theme is great, the Skull Island theme is great, the Skull Island Combat theme is especially fantastic, and I love the music that plays when your engaged in a battle on board your ship. It kind of made me feel like I was in Pirates of the Caribbean, and I like that movie series.
But of course, like Wizard101 before it, the soundtrack isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn't tell you what the Skull Island Cave theme sounds like by memory, and some of the other tracks I heard in the first area are pretty forgettable, and of course, like with some of the graphical assets, this game is unfortunately guilty of recycling a few tracks from Wizard101. Chief among them being the Azteca battle theme, which was by far one of the best tracks in Wizard101. Personally, I can get over that tracks inclusion in this game seeing as how it's so great.
As for the sound effects, I personally feel like they're all FANTASTIC. One of the most satisfying things for me is hearing the sound of my swords and whatnot connecting hits with my enemies, or hearing that dramatic musical piece that plays whenever someone scores an "Epic Hit" ( critical ). It really makes you feel happy and satisfied. And come on, who doesn't love the sound of cannon fire as their cannonballs shred the enemy ships to pieces ( or they shred your ship to pieces )? Nobody, because it's AWESOME!?
But of course, the sound effects aren't perfect, either. Some of them either sound really soft in comparison to all the others, they sound extremely out of place, or they're recycled from Wizard101. But I can get over that seeing as how every MMORPG out there recycles one sound effect from another game in some regard.
And of course, we can't talk about this game without bringing up the VOICE ACTING. Like Wizard101, it's all A+ stuff, with one or two exceptions. I swear there are moments when the characters speaking don't always match up with their dialog that appears on-screen, and the occasional moments where the characters just sound weird ( looking at you, Mr. Gandry ), but other then that, it's all good stuff. It doesn't beat out the voice acting in, say, Lord of the Rings Online, but it's equal to it's sister game Wizard101, if not better.
While the sound design does tend to stumble here and there, it's all fantastic stuff. By far, one of the better parts of this game by a large margin.
Now we move on to the most important part of this game: The Gameplay. Ooh boy, where do I even start here?
Let's start by talking about the most drastic differences between the two games: The battle system. This game doesn't use the turn-based battle system that Wizard101 uses. Instead, this games combat system is based on a chessboard, much like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem. So if you've played any of those kinds of games, you'll have no problem adjusting to the combat system here. But if you haven't, they do walk you through it rather nicely... in earlier builds of the game, anyway.
One thing that always confused me about this game is that they dramatically down-scaled the tutorial from when the game first came out. Heck, the tutorial doesn't even tell you about Doubloons, powerups you can use to give your team the edge in battle. What kind of nonsense is this? At least Wizard101 bothered to give you special quests where you learned about all the advanced combat mechanics as you got to them. Why couldn't Pirate101 do the same? Sure, the tutorial hints you get can help you figure some of this stuff out, but it's still a glaring issue that doesn't occur in Wizard101.
Sadly, the gameplay issues I have don't end there. There are all sorts of other problems with the gameplay that ultimately ended with me putting this game down only a couple of weeks into it. And again, I played Wizard101 for YEARS before picking this game up, so it really hurts me to say that. But it's the bittersweet truth.
For starters, I am NOT a fan of how restricted you are as a free player. In Wizard101, you could fully explore up to half of the first area without paying, and had to shell out money to access the rest of the game. In Pirate101? You only have a small handful of areas open to you, and while it is more then Wizard101, it's nowhere near as big as the first zone of the game actually is. The first world of Pirate101 is HUGE, and it makes me so upset that we don't even have half of this place open to us without paying. Again, Lord of the Rings Online had it right in my opinion, and that game came out at around the same Pirate101 did, so what happened here? Didn't KingsIsle learn their lesson from Wizard101?
In a related note, and as I said before, this games worlds are GIGANTIC, and it's very easy to get lost. I always rely on the Quest Guide to help me find my way around, and even then, there are those odd moments where it just doesn't feel like cooperating with me, leaving me wandering around for the longest time trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be going. This especially gets painful when your sailing the open skies, where the amount of distance you have to cover to get from point "A" to point "B" gets really ridiculous. And your first few ships aren't very fast, so unless your REALLY skilled at the game, and are able to take some shortcuts around enemies to get to where you need to go faster, your going to dread navigating this world.
There's another thing in this game I NEVER look forward to dealing with: Unit Advancement. Now, advancing your character, much like in Wizard101, is never a frustrating slog. If you enjoyed Wizard101 before this game, you'll have no problem getting the hang of advancing your character. You have experience, you gain levels, you earn points to spend on other classes skills, and you can buy new equipment for yourself as your level rises and as you go through the game, with things such as the Crowns Shop offering a quick shortcut for those who have money to burn, and who don't feel like farming monsters endlessly to get the best stuff. It's not much different from Wizard101... until companion characters enter the scene.
See, unlike some games out there like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, your companions are good at one thing and one thing only, and that's whatever their class specifies that they're going to be good at. So nine times out of them, when your up against a particularly difficult enemy who's resistant to a specific class type, you'll have to switch out your units to someone who's better suited to deal with the threat. And if that's a character you haven't used a lot, or who's underleveled for whatever reason, you have to either grind experience for them and level them up, or spend TONS of gold buying companion training points to power them up quickly. OH GOSH.
If you want all your companions to be the same level as you, and for no particular unit to fall way behind in level in case you need them for a certain battle later, get ready to grind your butt off. My goodness.
I never commented on the grinding in Wizard101. Honestly, it didn't matter to me then. Grinding to level up YOUR character is just something you learn to get used to with MMORPG's. If you can't get into that, your probably not going to like RPG's in general. But Pirate101 is a different story. I NEVER look forward to grinding gold to power up my crewmates. Even during the Christmas event, where I just collected gift boxes repeatedly to build up gold fast, I still had to grind a good amount to power up my party. Why? Give us something like the EXP Share in Pokemon to help mitigate the problem or something. I dunno.
There are quite a few things your crew mates can do when they're not fighting for you. Assuming you don't use them as decorations at your house or wherever, they can go and perform specific tasks for you, obtaining things like money, items, and experience for themselves. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that these characters are unusable for combat while they're busy with their mundane tasks. It doesn't SEEM like a serious issue, but it'll catch you off guard more then once, especially when you end up needing that particular crewmate for a certain enemy.
I'm also not a fan of how your crewmates can be serious injured following a lost battle and be required to spend some time in a clinic, otherwise they'll be sent into battle with a reduced health bar. WHY!? That NEVER happens to your character, no matter how badly you get beat, so why does it happen to your shipmates? That's not fair!
There are also specific quests you can undertake at various points throughout the game to promote your crewmates, beefing up their skills and stats. That's nice, per say, but it's always THE WORST when the game tells you to go somewhere that you can't get to yet, requiring you to have a higher level friend help you. Wizard101 occasionally fell into this trap as well, but it hardly mattered in that game, because it was often a sign that you were leveling up to fast. This game? One of the starter companions promotion quests, required to promote them from a Bull Ronin to a Bull Samurai, requires you visit an area that you don't get to until your around level 14-15. How does that make a shred of sense?
Broadside combat with enemy ships works fine enough, but there's also those moments where you can run into monsters on the high skies and be forced to fight them on the deck of your ship. You can do this with enemy ships as well when their health is low enough, at which point you can board them and fight the remaining enemies in a straightforward battle, but if you don't feel like doing that, you can just keep pelting them with cannonballs to sink them eventually. This works well enough, although there is room for improvement. I will be the first to say that.
Pet training has been VASTLY altered from Wizard101, and all for the worst in my opinion. In this game, every time you send your pet off to train one of it's traits, there's a timed bar that shows you how long it's going to be until they're finished. And this timer gets really, REALLY long the older your pet gets. It eventually gets to the point where you can only train one of their traits ONCE per day, unless you pay crowns by the boatload ( no pun intended ) to speed up the process. Wizard101 had it right long before this game came out, so why did Pirate101 feel the need to use this inferior structure that ultimately fails in the long run?
PvP is back as well, and just like Wizard101, it's nothing I'll get much out of. You can't even use your full crew in any one PvP battle, and like before, the person with the biggest wallet is usually going to come out on top. I don't consider the PvP in this game worth anything but bragging rights. Much like Wizard101 before it.
The skills you can learn are all pretty nice, and I like the fact that you can get a skill that heals and revives another player sooner in this game then you did in Wizard101 regardless of your class, but there are fewer classes in this game then there were in Wizard101, and their limitations are MUCH more drastic in this game then they were in that one. They're all good regardless, and I personally found the Buccaneer very satisfying to play as. It reminded me a lot of Pirates: At Worlds End for the PC.
And with that, we come to our conclusion: The Appeal. How well does this game stand the test of time compared to today's MMO's? Honestly, guys, I can see why this game won MMORPG.com's Game of the Year award back in 2012. Back then, it was quite the marvel to see and play. Everything felt so fresh and new, especially after playing Wizard101 for 5 long years prior to it. And the first time I played through it, I was prepared to call it one of the best MMORPG's of all time.
But with every passing playthrough, what I first thought was "Good" turned into "Just OK", and what I thought was "Just OK" turned into, well... just plain "Bad." The game itself is fairly playable, and can be quite the jolly good time if your into Final Fantasy Tactics-styled unit management or sailing across the high skies, but apart from that, the game really doesn't have much else going for it.
The graphics and sound are good, with a handful of musical tracks being downright FANTASTIC, but the rest of the graphical and audio design in this title is either not that interesting, or is recycled from it's sister game Wizard101. It's good stuff overall, but nothing spectacular, or nothing that we haven't seen before.
The gameplay, especially in regards to your crew, is the games weakest aspect by a wide margin. This game may be good, but the unit management system is going to end up turning off SO MANY players who don't have a very big wallet. It honestly makes me upset to know that KingsIsle hadn't learned their lesson from Wizard101, and instead decided to make things worse with even more obnoxious design as far as crew management, pet training, and PvP goes. And while I don't think the latter two were handled especially well in Wizard101 either, at least they were structured in a way that didn't make me want to pull my hair out.
This game is SUPER guilty of recycling all sorts of assets from Wizard101, including many of the player character animations, a good chunk of the weapon designs, and even a few musical tracks. I know that KingsIsle probably did this on purpose so they could justify having some of these weapons appear in both games, but I still can't help being distracted by it overall. Like with the graphical down-scaling I mentioned before, it's nothing frustrating by itself, but it will catch you off guard if you've played Wizard101 before this.
So in short, if your a fan of pirates, Wizard101, or KingsIsle's content in general, there's definitely something to enjoy here if you've got the money to burn to get out of the first few areas. Otherwise, your better off playing something like The Legend of Pirates Online or Sea of Thieves. It takes a certain kind of gamer to defeat a game such as this, and I am NOT that kind of gamer.
** WHAT'S THE SCORE? **
PLOT: Like it's sister game, this game's plot is minimalistic at best and leaves several gaping plot holes out for everyone to see. It still gets the job done, though. ( 7.8 )
GRAPHICS: All the areas look great, and the ships all look like they were ripped straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Sadly, this game recycles a few worlds and areas from Wizard101. ( 8.3 )
SOUND: The games soundtrack is amazing, and the sound effects all work surprisingly well. Unfortunately, several of the musical pieces are recycled from it's sister game, which doesn't mesh well with me. ( 8.0 )
GAMEPLAY: If the game was like Wizard101, except with pirates sailing the high seas, the game would be very enjoyable. Instead, thanks to a combination of frustrating game structure choices, and some of the most OBNOXIOUS unit management I've ever seen in a game, you get hours upon hours of torture. ( 4.3 )
APPEAL: This game is a combination of annoying design choices and an abundance of gameplay failures from it's sister game that had come out years prior. Definitely a one-and-done kind of game. ( 6.9 )
FINAL SCORE: 35.3/50