Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships

I have a soft spot for games that feel like they were built by people who loved a genre more than they loved shipping a stable product, and Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships is exactly that kind of game. Originally released as Age of Pirates 2 back in 2009 and later re-released on Steam under its current name, this is a sprawling open-world pirate RPG that predates the era where "open world" became a marketing checkbox. The bones here are genuinely interesting: three character classes in Merchant, Corsair, and Adventurer, each with their own quest lines, three weapon weight categories to spec around, and a custom stat system called P.I.R.A.T.E.S. that tracks Power, Insight, Reaction, Authority, Talent, Endurance, and Success. For an RPG nerd, reading that acronym on the character sheet is either charming or a red flag depending on your tolerance for Eastern European game design philosophy. I say both. The meat of the game splits between naval combat and land skirmishes, and the two halves feel like products of different teams with different ambitions. Naval engagements have a genuine tactical weight to them: wind positioning matters, your cargo load affects your ship's speed and maneuverability, and hull damage is not just a number ticking down but a real strategic concern. You can own a fleet, command officer ships, and eventually work toward iconic vessels like the Flying Dutchman if you put in the quest work. That side of things holds up surprisingly well. Land combat is a different story. One-on-one sword duels against named captains can feel surprisingly dynamic, but the moment you are swarmed by a mob of ten bounty hunters in a port alley, the fatigue system turns the whole encounter into a slow, grinding slog. And as your notoriety climbs, those swarms become a constant tax on your patience. The quest design is the biggest swing and miss. There are over forty procedural quest generators, which sounds impressive until you realize that a large chunk of those quests are timed, badly, and often do not tell you which island you need to sail to before the clock expires. The handcrafted story quests are more interesting, pulling in threads about vanishing tribes, South American jungle mythology, and the sort of supernatural maritime lore I actually enjoy in a pirate setting. But the path to those moments is blocked by some genuine jank: bugs that have persisted since the original disc release, controls that feel like they were designed in 2000 and never reconsidered, and a tutorial that manages to confuse more than it teaches. The community's unanimous advice is to install the Gentlemen of Fortune mod before you do anything else, and I think that tells you most of what you need to know about the vanilla state of this release. Who is this for, then? Hardcore CRPG players who finished every Pirates of the Caribbean game, who read patch notes for fun, and who can forgive dated visuals and rough edges if the systemic depth is there. The P.I.R.A.T.E.S. build space is real, the faction alignment between English, French, Spanish, and Dutch navies adds replay incentive, and the sheer amount of content in here means a committed playthrough can run into the hundreds of hours. But newcomers expecting a Sid Meier polish level or even a mid-tier modern RPG UX will bounce off hard. This is a game that asks you to earn it. Whether that is a feature or a flaw depends entirely on who you are as a player.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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