Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment
Developer: Flying Lab Software
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Genre: MMORPG
ESRB Rating: Teen (Online content not rated by the ESRB)

When something finds success with an audience or brings great innovation to the table, you can bet others will stand up and take notice, perhaps even borrowing a few elements from that product. Imitation is after all the sincerest form of flattery. Video games are anything but an exception to this rule.

All one need do is look at the dozens of Dragon Warrior clones on the NES in Japan, the sea of imitators that followed in the wake of Pokemon’s success, and more recently the swell of FPS and tactical shooter games on consoles, coming largely on the heels of Halo’s success.

MMORPG’s were certainly crying out for some innovation, and not just in any one area. The genre had been, and continues to be, saturated with copycat games that generally all look the same, play the same and sound the same. Innovation has slowly crept into the genre though, and one of the first areas this has been seen is in the settings, which ultimately leads to new ideas and innovation in game-play.

Fantasy is of course the dominant setting, with two general styles, the American and European medieval fantasy style, and the Asian anime fantasy style. Recently we’ve finally seen a break from the endless fantasy, with first science fiction settings popping up, and lately the more modern style settings seen in superhero games.

Only recently have we seen the pirate theme enter MMORPG’s. Spurred no doubt by the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie trilogy, games like Tales of Pirates, Voyage Century Online, Bounty Bay Online and Pirates of the Caribbean itself in online form, have all popped up in this vein. Which brings us of course to Pirates of the Burning Sea.

As someone who’s played many MMO’s both old (Tibia, Runescape) and new (LotRO, WoW, FFXI), I was definitely looking for a change from the tried and true. I had also tried Tales of Pirates previously of which I had heard good things, but quickly dismissed it as yet another Asian item mall MMO (which I’m not fond of, and which sadly seems to be the future of MMO’s) with a shoddy translation (seriously, how hard can it be to hire a good English translator?)

There’s absolutely no excuse for releasing a professional game with such shoddy writing, especially one produced by an American company, and yet every Asian MMO does it. Even the English websites are cluttered with broken English). Granted I may not have given Tales a fair shake, but there’s plenty of other quality games and only so much time to play them in.

PotBS has some nice features that make it an interesting experience and let it stand out in the crowded MMO genre. One of the most important elements to a game where you’ll be doing a lot of battling is the combat engine. PotBS has an incredibly fun ship-to-ship combat system that requires a fair degree of skill, instantly setting it above the many mindless point and click games.

This makes combat not only fun, but PvP more interesting as well, as levels don’t play nearly as significant a role as they do in most MMO’s. You also have melee combat, which while not quite as good as the ship battles still suffices, and nation wars.

The game begins rather unlike other MMO’s as well by completely outfitting you with a ship, crew, and supplies, with nothing but the wide ocean blue in front of you. No hacking slimes up for hours just to get out of your birthday suit.

The economy is nicely player-driven at this point, with the ability to buy and sell anything in the game through the requisite auction house system. Even better is the crafting system, which is not restricted by race or class, and operates much differently than most crafting systems. By acquiring building plans you can have a crafting building constructed, be it a forge, shipyard, etc.

These can then be used to produce the items they’re designed for. When your items are complete they must be travelled to and personally delivered to whichever port you plan to sell them at, which brings the risk factor of losing them on the choppy seas into play. This is a nice element and adds a unique twist to crafting.

Sadly it’s also rife with many of the complaints that surround a majority of MMORPG’s. The quests are not very interesting and don’t elicit much excitement, the game is somewhat repetitive and the story is transparent. The dialogue at least has some flair and is well written.

Maybe these are just unavoidable staples of the MMO genre, as very few companies have been able to best any of these complaints. The game world is also fairly large, with a lot of travel time involved and many missions requiring you to criss-cross the globe, which may be a positive or negative depending on your preference.

Graphics are top notch, and as the game largely takes place at sea, you can bet a lot of attention was paid to the water effects, which are beautiful. The music is enjoyable swashbuckling fare, not incredibly memorably, but a good complement to the setting.

All in all, PotBS shows a good deal of innovation and can be a blast to play. It has not left many of the MMORPG genre’s more irksome qualities floundering, but has at least sunk a few of them.

News: A recent patch has added a new character class to the game, the buccaneer. The buccaneer functions mainly as a support class, with the ability to buff allies and debuff enemies, making them quite useful in PvP battles.