The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt

The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt is a multiplayer naval combat game that lets you step into the shoes of a pirate, freely navigating the vast open seas as you build an invincible fleet from scratch and rise to dominate the ocean. You must develop your base to produce goods and gold, using your earnings to upgrade captain skills, construct new ships, and unlock special weapons to steadily expand your fleet. The game also features multiplayer modes, allowing you to host your own matches and invite friends to compete against one another or team up to battle other players, relying on coordinated teamwork to secure victory.

Story:

There are for the moment four different campaigns in the base game. The first of them are the battles against the pirates, which concludes in a final battle against Henry Morgan for your survival and for the Caribbean. Along the way you will capture over 10 different pirate bases that you can develop and use.

The second campaign is similar to the first and starts right after you finish the previous campaign. However, instead of pirates, you fight against the West Indian Company for the piracy survival and for the Caribbean in a series of 3 epic battles.

The third campaign is relatively recent in the game, and it's different from the two previous campaigns. Entitled "Jewel of the Caribbean," This story starts with Lady Tarrot, a friend of yours, which asks you to do several missions for her (sinking, capturing, escort and smuggling missions). In the course of the story, you meet with important characters, such as Captain Bloode and Angela, that also will ask you to do several missions for them. In the end, you will be forced to choose a side between these three characters.

In the end of the third campaign, you will be able to make a choice between Lady Tarrot (peaceful end with Europe), Captain Bloode (War against Europe) and Angela (Hero in the Caribbean). Any of these three choices will reward you with a government port of your choice to be your new base; there is no mechanical difference between the choices, only flavor text.

The fourth campaign is the newest yet. (Patch 9.0) Entitled "A Siren's Chilling Melody." This campaign picks up directly from where "Jewel of the Caribbean" ends. It begins when you receive a message from a character you have previously met from the previous campaign, Grimy Bob. To unlock this campaign you must first purchase both maps of Brazil. He tells you of King Phillip III, the newly crowned Portuguese king, whom has been wreaking havoc upon the people of Brazil. Grimy Bob gives you a mission to put an end to Phillip's Tyranny, in a campaign that is both satisfying and rewarding. Along the way, you meet Anne Bonny, a "potential lover." The campaign ends in a glorious battle for the port of Rio De Janeiro, after which, if you are victorious, get the opportunity to capture a rare premium vessel.

Features:

Variety of Ships: Jump behind the wheel of 20 unique classes of ships, from speedy schooners to massive war galleons. Build yourself a fleet with no cap on size, and take command of multiple ships in the heat of battle.

Intense Combat Choices: Whether you like peppering enemies from afar or getting up close for some serious ramming action, there’s plenty here. Pick from an arsenal of cannonballs, chain shots, grapeshot, bombs, and double-shots—or surprise your foes with flaming oil and explosive barrels.

Ship Customization & Upgrades: Soup up your vessels with 30 different upgrades and pile on captain skills to unlock fresh ways to crush your enemies or defend your new ports.

Sailing Simulation: Realistic sailing means you’ve actually got to consider distance, timing, and even the weather. Don’t expect the wind to always be in your favor.

Expansive World: There are hundreds of islands and dozens of bustling ports to explore, complete with a day and night cycle and the chance to build and upgrade your own bases.

Endless Scenarios: Every trip offers something new—escort a merchant convoy, hunt for lost treasure, stand up against rival pirates, or try your luck at smuggling missions. There’s no shortage of things to do.

Strategies:

Attacking ports - yields 5,000 gold coins.

Capture and sell ships and their supplies separately, this includes pirate ships in open world.

Take in port and map based smuggler missions.

Buy cargo at cheap prices and sell at expensive prices. These are highlighted next to ports on the map by a red and green icon. Be sure to read the port news to see what cargo is rare.

Best way to build gold is to keep crew levels at minimum levels on ships not used regularly. Be sure to keep a minimum required maintenance crew so your ships don't become damaged.

Reduce the frequency of that weekly crew payment by sailing in open world, pay attention to the time required to sail port to port if you use this method of sailing. One week equals a crew payment, travel further distances.

If you have not built the merchant guild yet by collecting rubies from completing the daily challenges, winning rubies as an award in multiplayer tournaments periodically, or purchase them in the premium shop, be sure you visit your bases often to sell the items produced in your buildings. Remember, it's easier to keep even a sloop at each base for crew payment purposes, and not sail port to port racking up crew payments. Simply switch to each base with this method.

Build and upgrade all available buildings at your bases. There is a premium package available in the premium shop called Pile O Houses, this aids in increasing gold earned.

Gold and experience points can also be earned by playing pve and pvp in multiplayer mode.

There are a variety of in port and map based missions that you can earn gold by completing them.

Collect treasure maps and locate treasure, this amount increases by 200 coins with each completion.

Locate the hidden smuggler ports, yields 3,000 gold coins to keep their location secret.

Remember you're a pirate, raid, pillage and plunder!

Player Comments:

Overall, this gets an 8/10 from me.

Without going into overwhelming detail (which is hard, because I really love everything about this game):

It's gorgeous, and it makes you FEEL like batman a pirate.

The gameplay's great, but simple. There's a really high skill ceiling involving a lot of skeevy pirate tactics.

You can fight anybody, any time. Doesn't matter. Just swing your broadsides out and go to town, even if they're an ally.

You can steal anything, if you can fight for it. You can steal ships, you can steal goods, and you can steal towns.

You can use your loot however you want. You can sell the ships you steal, or tear them down and sell the sailcloth and planks, or you can keep them for your fleet, or you can crew 'em and send them off to do piracy in your name.

The economy is simple, but really fun. Lots of stressors and lots of solutions make for good trading.

There's an open world mode that you don't have to use, but it offers a bunch of content if you're okay with getting where you're going slowly. Also, immersion.

You can only have 4 ships in your fleet when leaving a dock, but once you're out there you can capture and sail as many ships as you can man. When you dock again, you'll only be able to leave port with 4 of them, but it's cool to sail home with like 20 captured ships.

You can win with basically any ship against anything if you play it smart.

You can also lose, very easily, if you're dumb.

You don't have to buy anything to win, or even to advance quickly. At 60 hours in, I bought the $7~ town DLC so I could build more stuff in my bases, but it's completely unnecessary to spend money. By that point, I was capable of taking on anything in-game with ships I stole for free.

The game world is absolutely enormous, and it's introduced to you bit by bit as you buy new maps so you can actually take your time and get used to each area.

There's a good variety of game content, from boss fights with rival pirates to missions for your allied state to slave ships to be liberated and plenty more.

There are good reasons to use any ship over any other ship, even when performing the same role.

There are a ton of ships, and each class of ship is also broken up into different variations. There's like 7 different galleons, not counting the premium ones.

This game is free, and it has multiplayer.

If you like Mount & Blade, this should feel familiar to you. If you're wishing you had a cool pirate game with good ship combat, this is it. If you just wanna relax and listen to some shanty tunes and sail the open seas - this is the game.

Final Verdict:

Enter a living world full of character and chaos - live in a tropical island paradise or sail into uncharted waters. Fight with other players in PvP battles or coordinate PvE raids against larger vessels! Optimize your ship for battle and learn new skills upgrade cannons to destroy enemy forts, chain guns to pierce shields, grapeshot balls to kill enemies from afar, and burning oil bombs to burn them from above!