Looking for a pirate-themed, RPG with naval warfare similar AC: Black Flag, many varied roles/builds to try, and person-to-person combat mechanics like Shadow of Mordor?

Basically I want something that is just the naval part of AC: Black Flag but with more complexity/upgrades/missions, etc. The interpersonal combat mechanics in BF weren't bad and are actually somewhat similar to SoM, but SoM is just perfection in that department and would work well with the verticality of ship rigging and tight spaces so that's why I mention it. That's not terribly important though. What I really want is for it to be more of a pure RPG than Black Flag is. Like I want options and paths you have to choose between, not just a checklist of upgrades you eventually get all of.

How I'm picturing this game is you start with a rickety old boat and a couple bros and go raiding, slowly building up your ship, fleet and abilities with highly customizable upgrades and skilltrees. Like the ship upgrade aspect would almost be like Gran Turismo, where there are tons of different cars and parts you can buy and it's possible to really customize any given car in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes or just buy a fancy one that's mostly there and tweak it.

It'd be nice if there were many ways to be an effective pirate, too. Like you could have a stealthy ship that's hard to detect, especially if you approach at night or in fog, until you've got knives at their throats. Or you could have a raw power type ship that just has more firepower and hitpoints if that's what floats your boat. Or a fast and nimble type ship that can evade attacks really well and just sort of swoops in and jabs bigger ships to death or does smash, grab and run type of attacks. Or a trickster type ship that flies false flags and has a crew that impersonates nicer people to get other ships to let their guard down. Or a ship with very long range cannons but not much of any defense/armor that basically tries to snipe other ships from a distance. And then you can build a fleet with several of those different types of ship to come up with a wide variety of uniquely effective tactics (e.g. sneak ship plants a bomb that weakens a big target enough for your raw power ship to be able to take it; or maybe the trickster ship manages to distract the crew enough that long ranges ships could get closer without getting blown to bits; etc). Wouldn't even mind a magical system either, though they'd have to do that very carefully to make the world still feel like a part of the Age of Sail and not just a medieval-type RPG game with a pirate skin slapped on top.

I don't think such a game exists, but I'd enjoy anything in the same area code. AC: Black Flag is still my favorite AC game purely because of the naval warfare aspect. And to date it's the best pirate game I've played, which is pretty damn sad considering the pirate part was really more of a side game than the main event. Why aren't there more pirate games? Seems like such a fertile setting for an RPG world and sounds technically feasible to me. If you work in the software industry, please make this game. I would seriously pay $100 just for the base game if it were well-executed.

Posted Jun 4, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

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