Sea of Thieves is a new open world multiplayer pirate life game developed by, ‘Rare‘ and coming out 20th of March on the Xbox One and Windows 10. Sea of Thieves is a very large game with lots going on and lots to do. All about exploration and adventure. Let’s take a look.
In Sea of Thieves gamers get to live the pirate life. As in cutlass, drinks, shanties, scaly wags, bar wenches kind of pirates. Straight away it’s clear that it is a multiplayer game but you can be a legendary solo pirate or a powerful pirate crew. Grab your boat and head out to sea. The world is very large with many islands to discover and explore. The ships can be fully interacted with. You can raise or lower the sails, raise or drop the anchor, control the helm to steer the ship, go up into the crows nest and be a spotter. The sails actually have an effect, to raise the anchor you need to literally turn the wheel yourself to slowly raise it up. Also the crows nest is important as spyglasses are in this game and can be used to see other ships from a good distance away giving your time to decide what actions to take. That’s right you aren’t the only person in this game. There are countless other pirates and many pirate crews who are all about building their reputation as well. Are they friendly and want to socialise or do they draw their cutlass and flintlock pistols and want a battle? Be careful though as cannon balls do what they should do, which is damage and cause water to fill up in your ship meaning you need some crew members to get rid of the water and patch up the holes in your ship but that means their are less hands on deck to fight the attacking pirate ship. So crews must work together to handle battle.
There is so much more to this game then originally believed. There are a bunch of other NPC characters who have their own reasons goals for being in the sea of thieves so make to check them all out. It’s important. There are trading companies like the the order of magic who want to control the ancient and magic of the pirate world, the merchant alliance who’s goal is to control and handle trade in the seas and Gold Horders who are all about the treasure. Each of these trading companies are essential for building your reputation and making progress. Players must decide what trading company they want to be affiliated with because each one represents a certain play style. So what is your pirate crew about? Are you the riches pirates who can buy all the rum they want, are you top level business pirate men who buy and sell or are you a cursed pirate crew like Barbossa from pirates of the Caribbean who deal with magic? It’s actually cool when you think about this way. As you build reputation with them, you get promoted within their ranks and get cool items and titles for you to show off and prove how far ahead you are. So take on their favoured activities and voyages. As you make progress they get much harder and more mechanics to take into account.
Since Sea of Thieves is a game all about pirates that means you can have or be part of a crew. This means multiple pirates on a ship. Each crew member has their own voyages and personal progress in the sea of thieves. Crew members can propose voyages to the whole crew and so the team can, as a team can decide what missions to go for. This also means some players have voyages that others won’t have so having them in your crew is an advantage. So having a player who is much ahead of you in terms of personal progress is actually a good idea because they will have bigger and more difficult voyages and that’s a good thing for your reputation. Remember that voyages are based on your reputation with trading companies. There are no barriers in place concerning players playing together. The most challenging voyages can be accessed by your lower progress friends meaning you don’t to wait for your friend to be a level 100 for example (no levels in sea of thieves). This is also means you won’t have to worry about running into too powerful enemies. it all comes down to how you use your weapons. There is the guns and blades. With the guns it’s just a matter of landing your shots, you all die just as fast. With the blades, you have to know when to block players attacks and when to actually strike back. There is actually some skill gap here in terms of combat so make sure to get some practice in.
If you thought that other pirates was the only threat on these sees then boy are you mistaken. Remember how some are interested in the magic and ancient of the Sea of Thieves? Well on some islands there just happens to be some skeletons who walk around and wield weapons as well. These Skeletons are not here to play, they can hit hard and even block your attacks. They also do not fight alone and will come in numbers to defeat your crew and keep you off the islands and away from treasure. If that wasn’t enough, skeletons don’t really die do they? Skeletons seem to keep coming over time, after all they are already dead. It’s pretty much like fighting the cursed crew of the black pearl from pirates of the Caribbean. There is more. There are sharks that inhabit the waters so falling of your ship or being blasted of by a cannon is the last thing that you want because we heard it takes two bites from a shark to kill you and they are off course faster than you. It gets worse, even the weather is against you, there can be storms which will make you lose control of the ship, make you crash and even send you way of course. Worse a lightning bolt might strike your ship which will cause real damage. It has been hinted by the developers that there are more threats in the Sea of Thieves so be on your guard and don’t get caught “unprepared and unawares”.
Sea of Thieves do have other things to take into account. For example if you and your crew are on a voyage and go to a island, you drop the anchor and head on to the island. The problem is that your ship is sitting there alone unguarded. So what if another pirate team came along and saw your ship, two of them climb on board, raise the anchor and then they leave with both ships and your crew is left with the treasure on an island with angry skeletons on land and deadly sharks in the sea. What do you do now? We believe there is some sort of respawn system that brings you back to your ship, so there is a chance to get your ship back.
We checked out some gameplay and it so far looks like a top level game. The art style works well with pirates. the graphics are very good and the sounds are excellent, especially when you use the instruments to make good pirate-y music. We like the acceptable level of interaction like dancing, music and even drinking, which by the way actually gets your pirate drunk meaning blurry and moving vision and harder to control and throwing up (all included). Sea of thieves will also be enhanced on the Xbox One X Sea of Thieves isn’t a released done and finished game. It has been explained that it’s a ever growing game and that new features and adventures will be added after launch continuously. This makes us at X35 Earthwalker wonder what else they could put in. There is a lot of opportunity here. For example what if they add a massive Kraken that becomes another threat that forces players to keep an eye out on the seas as they may end up going near one. What about their own version of Davy Jones with a ship that also can come out from under the water to fight or what about NPC famous pirate crews with larger ships that move around through the game and players can take them on. All possibilities.
Overall Sea of Thieves is an awesome game with lots of potential. It’s a simple game but just has a lot going on. Travel around, have fun, meet other players, go on voyages, enter duels, fight skeletons, get drunk, go for a swim, dance around with music and much more. The developers, ‘Rare’ did a fantastic job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker look forward to seeing what Sea of Thieves fully has to offer. Now pirates are very popular but definitely not as much as…the ‘Earth Walk!’
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