Hello steemit community or Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh! Ahoy!
Last few days I've been playing the beta of upcoming open-world multiplayer game Sea of thieves and here I would like to share my first impressions and hopes for this game.
Sea of thieves is an open world, exploration and action combat game that sets you upon the seas as a pirate. As advertised: Discover your inner pirate and plot your course for hidden riches in a treacherous shared world. Sounds cool? Of course, it's about pirates. So let's go through some of the aspects of a game.
What is it all about
Sea of thieves is a large open world adventure game where you need to work alone or with teammates to sail a ship, raid and defeat other crews, find treasures or just explore high seas and islands.
Just sailing along
Naval and close combat
Naval combat in Sea of Thieves relies on players operating mechanics of a ship. You can shoot cannons, operate helm, adjust sails and anchor. Every ship mechanic requires a person to do it. You have resources, gunpowder, cannonballs, ammunition, wood for repairs. Incoming cannonballs from other ship can blow holes in your ship's hull, which can be repaired. If a ship takes on too much water from holes, it will sink. Are you out of cannonballs? Ram, board and engage in first person combat. Feeling like you are overwhelmed? Find a wind and sail away if you can.
Best part of the game
This is where this game is going to shine. Playing with your friends and yelling at each other while trying to turn the ship and load port side cannons. Every member of your crew is valuable and needs to do their job. You need to be careful to engage in combat well supplied because encounters can take a while.
First person combat is a big meh. Sword fights feel unsatisfied, you can block or swing a sword and that's about all you can do. Shooting a gun is the better experience and it does a job pretty well but yea, I hope they'll make some modifications to a close combat. You can sink your opponents ship, kill the crew and steal their plunder. The biggest issue I have is the respawning system they have currently. Nothing like destroying your opponents ship with your cannons, boarding them and killing the crew, then getting shot or stabbed in the back when they respawn on the same ship.
Waiting to respawn on the "Ferry of the Damned"
Quests and progression
There is a lot of talks about progression and quests after beta rolled out. Currently, quests feel vague, mostly you sail to an island, you have a map with treasure marked with “X”, you do little tinkering and killing, find a chest and return to a vendor that gave you a treasure quest. For a reward, you get gold, some upgrades and you unlock next quest that scales with difficulty but is similar to the one you did before. There is so much potential in the open world game and in setting like this that I doubt we'll see this version of progression on release. Hopes up, but in a case this is all we see from progression and story it will backfire really, really bad.
After a treasure hunt, you return chest that you looted to an NPC.... and that's about it :/
Graphics
I love the Sea of Thieves’ gorgeous aesthetic. While the game features cartoon-ish visuals, water and wave effects are unbelievably stunning. Enough said.
Yea. Just your normal waves.
Solo play
I've been playing couple sessions solo and I must say at first glance I didn't like it. You get 1 man version of a ship and while all mechanics are same it feels uninspiring and pretty boring to do all tasks alone. In later runs, I must admit I had few runs that I encountered 2 man and 4 man crews and I had a blast out-navigating and stealing loot from bigger crews. There's great pleasure in boarding enemy ship while they are on an island, stealing their chest and simply sailing away.
They did their job in aesthetics department :)
Conclusion
I must say, I didn't expect to have so much fun playing this game. I know it's beta, and I'll reserve my judgment for full release but the game at a current state needs more stuff to do in the game, more different quests and tasks, more factions and more incentive to play a game. The game is beautiful but despite gorgeous aesthetics, the world feels empty at this moment. I hope current server population limit is just for the beta. I would like to see bigger player hubs like trading ports or some island villages where you can talk or trade and then head to seas and steal or fight each other. This game is meant to be played with a few friends, so you can be fully immersed in pirating and sailing a ship. Also, I feel like the game will have a casual approach with not much difference between newbie player and veteran pirate. So if you are looking next multiplayer game with hard progression, leveling and grinding this game won't please that kind of a crowd. On another hand, if you are in to have one or two hours of a blast with friends this game might be just for you.
This game is currently in beta stage and this review is based upon a current beta version of a game and beta weekend. The game is due to release on March 20, 2018, on Xbox One and Windows 10.
Images were taken ingame or from the official site ( https://www.seaofthieves.com/ ).