I suspect this game was rushed. It has some technical issues, and sometimes doesn't feel like one contiguous whole, sort of fragmented. It functions well enough to play, but seeing all the missed potential can be frustrating.

Was pleasantly surprised by this game. It features a steam punk version of the Caribbean in the civil war, where you engage in sea battles and sword fights while leveling up in a simple RPG fashion. The game certainly has a style of it's own.

The naval battles are fun with a very arcade like feel. The upgrades to your ships are a blast to play with, allowing you to outfit your ship with howitzers and Gatling guns.

The sword fights are bloody but a bit boring and predictable. You mix up basic button mashing combos with gunshots and can choose to specialize in either but they all play out essentially the same way.

The first hour of gameplay gets you really excited for the game. Though after a few hours in you realize that you follow the same formula the entire time. The setting and concept is great but the story is slow moving and boring leaving you little reason to stick with it. While you can just cruise the ocean pirating vessels and trading it becomes tedious quick.

PIRATES! Shoot things! Steal stuff! Yar har fiddle dee dee! Fun game! Some of the mechanics aren't that good, and the graphics can be improved on, but it's an well-made game overall.

Swashbucklers I think was rushed. I wouldn't say it's a Sid Meier's Pirates! clone... every pirate game has had this formula: sail around the world, capture cities, get more boats and more crew, capture more cities...

As fun as this formula is (I know it doesn't sound fun haha), Swashbucklers missed something and made it tedious. There's glitches everywhere and ultimately I was left thinking: "what could I do instead of playing this?" (and that's not something that should come to my mind while playing a game).

The setting is interesting, the American civil war is often overlooked in video games and its naval battles even more so, but it's not enough to save it.

This is an interesting game, kinda like fighting and strategy together. Do not expect it to be outstanding, while you may have some fun playing it. It may play nice on medium spec laptops.

As other reviews have mentioned it borrows heavily from Pirates! It does give it's own spin on it by setting the game in the time of the American Civil War and being more over the top. Similar to comparing Saints row to Grand Theft Auto. An example is when an enemy vessel fired what looked a nuclear missile at me.

There are a few issues, such as repetitiveness and subtitles over grunt-speak, but overall the game is fun and looks very nice.

It's a fun game to throw ten hours to get the best boat with the best dishes. Once you have that, the game no longer has interest in its subject matter repetitive and limited resources, but to be a modest game, which takes up 500 mb, and has cost some money, it's pretty good. Of course, not a great game of first line. It is a game that copies many things from others and has a modest production with good design, if you have this in mind as much as I surely will enjoy.

Pirates by Sid Meier ripped off and given a civil war twist. Who thought this was a good idea? Not a bad game per see but a superfluous one. I could forgive this if there were any redeeming qualities like humor or story or characters but no dice. Still you could do worse.

The game is to easy to play. A constant repaiting of the same captains/boxers/bosses fights. At the last mission they tried to be funny, but they didn't succeed. It had great potential, but they messed it up

If you want a relaxing game, to play in between other games, you can play this.

Otherwise

Don't bother

This is a virtual clone of Sid Meier's Pirates!. It has mini games, naval and shore combat, duels etc. just like that classic, complete with the cutesy style of graphics that the 2004 remake of Pirates! has. It's nothing you haven't seen before but the setting is pretty interesting, not being set in the done to death 1600-1700 pirate era. I had fun with it even though much of it I've seen done before with more style, but that's not really a fault of this low budget production. The lack of gameplay innovation hurts more than ripping off Pirates!.

An ok game but i feel it could have been made better if more time was put into it and it gets repetitive after a while. You will probably like this if you liked sid meier's Pirates!.

This is a great Sid Meier's Pirates! clone. It has very good graphic, both characters and environments are really good, with a distinctive cartoon style and hand drawn textures.

Gameplay wise, it's a collection of minigames, you can sail away and make commerce, or assault other ships, whe attacking you'll be able to duel first ship vs ship, maneuvering your vessel in the best spot to open fire with all your cannons, then you'll be able to board the enemy ship and a beat 'em up sequence will start, after that you'll have a one vs one combat versus the ship captain, sort of like a boss fight.

Sadly the game can also be very repetitive after a while, but funny dialogues and a somewhat interesting plot help a bit

I recall playing Sea Dogs and Sea Dogs 2 which was actually named "Pirates of the Caribbean".

These were great games at the time with the second one vastly improving upon the first with heavier emphasis on RPG elements. This game is made by the some of the same people I believe and it works better. The problem with Sea Dogs/PoC (SD 2) was the RPG parts were shoddy, as if they were trying different things to experiment with what works/what doesn't, and then making changes in the "next game". That was the feel of those. The ship combat was great, slow, but great, with some degree of realism, the ocean/weather effects were the cherry on top.

All that bells/whistles and uber ocean/FX stuff is completely tossed out with this game.

And that's a shame. In Sea Dogs, you could be sailing over huge, titanic waves, in this wave, the ocean is pretty flat and that sucks. The weather FX are a bare minimum. Ship combat is easier, but can still be challenging, especially in the later stages. The computer AI seems dumb at first but when you begin to advance and obtain new weapons, the AI gets much, much better so watch out!

Still, that it is simple is not so bad because it works very smoothly. Despite the dated, cartoonish-looking graphics, the game feels very polished. It also feels rather bare. They didn't do much as far as details. It seems the developers played it safe, focused on keeping it simple, kept it to a few things, and just made sure to do those few things very well.

The only real nag I have is the wish for more details, more character and ship customization, and also to skip through the needless cinematic animations everytime your character enters a building. Geez! The animations are slow, in that its as if everyone moves around in slow-motion during these sequences. There should be a feature to turn it off. You could save several hours of play time probably.

The trading is simple and easy. The main challenge is just to be sure you keep tabs on which colonies import/export what so you can make a good trade. There are always trade missions/jobs at the major city ports. It may take some time to get a good chunk of money but not too long, and not like a lot of other games from 1C, like Spells of Gold, that takes you FOREVER to get a paltry few coins. Where is the fun in that? Swashbucklers keeps it simple and fresh, and its rewarding.

Another feature of the game is the up-close-and-personal combat with your character and bad guys. Some sequences have you in a third-person type mode hacking and slashing and firing the occasional round or two off into a baddie. The enemies die with a lot of blood flying everywhere, and sometimes, with their heads or limbs flying everywhere too. By the end, the decks are drenching with blood.

Another combat mode is when you fight a special character or captain of another ship. In this sequence, the combat is done in fighting-game style, like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but VERY dumbed down and simplified.

A cool thing about leveling your character is that you can get special abilities, such as learning new combat moves, or obtain perks. The perks are similar to those in the Fallout games. Again, it's very simplified, but it works well.

Technically, the game works well, and I use Win 7. I didn't have any issues but probably 1 out of 5 times I load the game, the main menu screen has glitching graphics or sound issue. All I do is exit and reload the game and it's fine. If not, and I try to play, I get a CTD. This isn't too common at all, the game is pretty stable aside from that oddity.

All in all, I can say is that this game is enjoyable, it's simple, light fun. Not too complex, but not tooo simple either. Don't expect an epic. If you want to jump in and frag some ships and plunder their goods for a bit, that's fine as well.

This is a pretty decent game. Its playable but something feels like the developers rushed and then just abandoned it.

Combines several genres like strategy rpg or navigation, but without going into any and her story, her story does not exist. However, given eight hours of entertainment and its price is pretty good.

I purchased this game as part of the 1C Complete Pack and had not heard of this title before, however I decided to load up this game and give it a try to which I was not disappointed. I instantly fell in love with this game, the graphics and animation are excellent, land and sea battles are great fun, the open world keeps things interesting and has great replay value.

A fun RPG/ action game. This game turned out to be alot more fun than I expected, the combat is very smooth even using the mouse and keyboard. The missions are a little repetitive, but for the price of this game, it is worth it.

This title basically is Pirates set in the American civil war.

Sea battles are a bit more on the arcade side than pirates which isn't exactly a simulation either though.

You can fight, trade and plunder and also follow a main quest line or do some minor quests for characters you meet in town.

Ships can have steam engines and special guns which are quite fun in my opinion but overall the game is considerably worse than pirates so i'd only recommend it if you already own pirates or really are into the setting.

I run it on windows 7 but it required a bit of tweaking so i am not sure if it would run on all computer configurations.

I had alot of technical problems getting the game going on my Vista laptop and WinXP Desktop.

What I did get working was to listen to a "WAA WAA WAAA" Charlie Brown type voices when talking to the shop keeper while subtitles gave soemthing useful.

Walking in town is done with you going horizontally and vertically along diagonal streets. So you must key wiggle to go anywhere. (Why????)

Just getting to that took a week and several rounds with the Gametutor here on Gamersgate. When it came to the ship battle again I was crashing out. Gave up at that point already unimpressed.

Not bad, could be better. The idea here was clearly that someone wanted to write a clone of Sid Meier's Pirates!, except set in the American southeast, and that's exactly what they did. You can raid, pillage, and plunder up and down the eastern seaboard to your heart's content, and venture into the Gulf of Mexico as well.

...but that's about it. It's skimpy on features, the main plotline is weak, and in general it lacks the polish of Pirates!. But, that said, it's still pretty entertaining, especially if you're jonesing for a quick plundering fix.

This is a pretty decent game. Its playable but something feels like the developers rushed and then just abandoned it.

Combines several genres like strategy rpg or navigation, but without going into any and her story, her story does not exist. However, given eight hours of entertainment and its price is pretty good.