Picaroon: Review - Pirates Are NOT Your Friends

SBFord

In the latest review here at MMORPG.com, columnist Greg Dodd takes a look at Picaroon, a game where pirates are present but they are NOT your friends. Check out what else Greg has to say about Picaroon and then add your comments.

Before taking a look at the game, let’s take a look at the name. The definition for Picaroon is: a pirate or pirate ship. To picaroon is to act like a pirate. That being said, pirates are in the game but are no friend of yours. Picaroon is an MMORTS set in a large swath of ocean peppered throughout with small islands. The player starts each game on one of these islands and, through naval and aerial bombardment, will seek to expand their empire by taking over uninhabited islands or conquering the islands of other players.

Read more of Greg Dodd's Picaroon: Review - Pirates Are NOT Your Friends.

odinfish

Looks like crap to me... Kudos to those that do/will enjoy it though. :-)

lynnara

I personally did not find it very fun. The show stopper for me was the "specials".

When I played, I managed to become the 2nd most powerful player on my server, and was the leader of the largest alliance by far. I had many islands, a maxed fleet, and defenses that could stop an alien invasion.

But then there are those specials.

The equation goes like this: if you are not online, nothing you built matters. Your defenses, no matter how much or high level you got, are nothing at all, completely useless. If you are not online when someone attacks your island, its a gonner, no questions asked. There is no defense capable of dealing with a player dishing out specials nonstop. Travel is realtime, so any alliance members you have will need 20+ minutes to make it to your island, which is 15+ minutes too late to do anything at all.

Without specials, it might be fun, and perhaps a persistant world would be interesting.

Also, the beginning of the endgame is pretty much the end of the game for many, its utterly pointless to bother playing when the top guys can roll through with nukes and other super specials.

If you happen to be online when you are attacked, it can be quite fun. Especialy if you get some notice of enemy fleets moving through your territory and you can meet them ship to ship on the high seas. When specials can be countered with other specials, it becomes a bit more strategically interesting.  Sadly most attacks happen when the target is offline... because duh they are way easier to defeat when they aren't there to counter your specials.

Well anyway, I'm sure for some people (who live online 24/7) its the best thing ever. My entire alliance quit before I did... we needed sleep and food and sometimes had to run errands or even go a weekend without playing... any and all of which ended in disaster in-game.

Oh well, it was a really interesting concept. Maybe if they implement some sort of player programmable AI or at the very least allow the player to have an offline specials queue so that being offline wasn't such a massive disadvantage, it might be better (and more peeps might keep playing).