I’m pleased to be playing another game that I can recommend. This came out a few years ago and reviews have been disparaging, but, with Patch 4 installed and playing it with a trainer (so you don't have to worry about your character's health, or your ship's condition, or money), it seems fine to me, except for things you can put up with, like the awful voice work or momentary pauses when boating around. I came across it the other day when I was doing a concerted search for a new-to-me pirate or Age of Sail-type game that looked good, wasn’t an MMO or all about trade, and had some cheats available. I saw the poor reviews, but still went ahead and bought the download for 10 bucks. The first issue was that the trainer kept crashing during launch, but I eventually found out that this was caused by updated versions of Internet Explorer. Since I’m using Firefox browser and Eudora e-mail, uninstalling my IE 11 resolved this. Then, I wanted to change the "on ship" and "on land" key bindings for the controls from their stupid defaults. Shamefully, there's no way to do it in-game, but I found a "keyboard" game file, editable with Notepad, and spent hours tweaking it to my liking. When I next went to the game, the default controls were unchanged, but, leaving it, I found a dupe of the original "keyboard" file elsewhere and, after clearing it, then pasting a copy of the other into it, my improved controls worked. I also changed the resolution from "something too high" to my 1024x768, to make the text more readable. Also adjusted the audio, checking the jaunty music way down and the annoying character movement acknowledgements (phrases like “Right away”) all the way down to nothing. On top of that (and, again, shamefully), the game download didn't include a PDF of a manual, which, with no walkthrough, guide, or FAQ out there, would've been nice, but I checked ReplacementDocs and found one, so that helps a bit getting used to its idiosyncratic conventions, and learning about the other factions, units, ships, upgrades, and special weapons in the game.

The object of the game is basically to unite 3 good pirate factions against a bad pirate faction and the colonial forces, but you can also raid colonies and sail around for random attacks, both for booty. The way I like to work it when we’re boating around is we mind our own business unless we’re attacked---when we are, we will return fire and sink whatever it is. At this posting, we're up to having the biggest, best Pirate faction ship, called Hedgehog, because it's bristling with 74 cannons, one of which is the bow-mounted, forward-shooting Mortar upgrade. The one time so far that I used it, point blank, it sank the enemy ship in one shot. We also have the Spiked Cannonballs upgrade and the Slowdown Harpoon, which fires a harpoon that has a weight attached to it with a rope to slow down enemy ships. You need to find blueprints as you explore to unlock the upgrades, as there's no trainer cheat for that, but you’re given a special item as part of an early quest reward that helps you locate undiscovered shipwrecks, where you pick these up, so that's good. Looking forward to getting the Scopes and Rapid Loader upgrades for our cannons, the Underwater Turbine and Sensitized Rudder upgrades for our ships, the Homing Rockets, and the Human Catapult, which shoots a crewmember onto an enemy ship, who then tries to capture the vessel--if he's successful, he automatically steers it to the nearest stronghold. Oh yeah, I like its main menu screen, too, which features a good-looking captain’s “great cabin.” Hope this gets a few people to give it a try, or maybe a second chance.

Sounds interesting.
Thanks for the information and comments.

Thanks, Sig. Sounds like you did a lot of work to play this game, but are having a rewarding experience as a result!

Yeah, L4L, that’s exactly right. Took a while to get it goin’ good, but it was well worth it, cuz I’d been wanting to play a game like this for at least a few years, and I wanted to get it to the point where it was fairly easily playable for me, and I could go all the way with it, and maybe even wanna replay it when it’s over. Here’s a good comment...there’s these items called Windcharms that you pick up at strongholds that you can use to teleport your ship and crew back to a stronghold after completing a mission, but I haven’t used one yet, because I keep preferring to sail back. It’s enjoyable---steering and propelling or slowing the ship with the arrow keys, maybe having a ship battle or two, or picking up another blueprint or some potion ingredient floating on the water---you collect those and give them to alchemists at the strongholds, who make you various potions for free. The ocean’s beautiful, as are the highly-detailed ships, with their extra-long mainmast banners flapping lazily in the breeze, and their color schemes which can be modified at any shipyard for 50 bucks. Here’s a link to a decent clip of it that I probably should’ve put in my first post...

Pirates of Black Cove release trailer

Thanks, Sig, it sounds like a sail lovers' dream

Looks interesting Sig. I will refer back to this if I decide to try it. Sounds like your suggestions will save some headaches. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, BobH, I should’ve mentioned that, too---that I had to discover everything on my own, so this topic can save others a lot of time, if they wanna try it. Here’s another time-saving tip, which isn’t explained in the game’s tutorial tips or even the manual...If, after a mission, you just want to top off a unit of 3 or 5 guys before heading back out (because some of ‘em got killed, without the benefit of your character’s health cheat), click on that unit’s side-tab when you’re engaged with the building where you hire them, but not on the small “selection dot” that’s at the right end of those tabs. When you do, you’ll get an active “Replenish” button, instead of a “Hire” button, which, even with the “1,000 gold per key tap” money cheat, will save you some moolah. You get a glimpse of the hiring interface I’m talking about in the clip I linked you to above.

What else?...The mission’s are kind of fun, some with light-hearted wrap-ups when you get back to the mission-giver, but I don’t wanna do any spoilers here. Of course it’s satisfying to work your way up in ships, upgrades, special weapons, units, and character stats. At this posting, we’ve done all the missions for the Pirate faction (at which point that mission-giver joins you as a hero unit, who, like your character, can have 3 units of his own), we’re a few missions into the Buccaneer faction, are (I think) 5 blueprints shy of being able to unlock, buy, and outfit their top ship, called Ringmaster, and have most of the ship upgrades and special weapons in the game---the last of these are obtained from the 3rd and last “good” faction, the Corsairs, but we haven’t had any contact with them yet. It’s also satisfying to get better at controlling your ship as you go---I’d recommend rebinding to the arrow keys like I did for steering, go forward, and slow down, and to the handy Num + key for pausing the game, which I do a lot of. Even though this wouldn’t matter with the ship health cheat, when you start doing things like slowing your ship down to a crawl as you ease it towards an automatic-disembarking indicator at a dock or beach, you’re gettin’ better at it. Don’t ask me why, but you can’t save at all on land, so I recommend doing one as soon as you get back on your ship, and pausing to do one just before docking anywhere. I have our cannons fired by clicking on the side of the ship I want ‘em fired from. Some of the original key bindings are okay, like the M key to bring up and reclose the map, and the spacebar to shoot what you have your special weapon set on---that’s now the first thing I tap when we’re attacked, before coming about to give ‘em a broadside, because I keep it set on the homing rockets that we now have. That’ll shiver their timbers.

Sig-

I got this game a while ago on Steam and was having some issues with the waypoints not working very well on land missions, so I uninstalled it. But since your post, you've got my interest up for this again. I've also checked some gameplay videos on Youtube, so I've re-installed it on Steam and look forward to giving it another go. Thanks for posting.

Ewil, I hope it works better for you this time...

Ewil, that’s just the effect I was hoping to have on someone---thank you for posting. Yeah, give it another go---I got the Amazon download, which subsequently installs Patch 4, so I’m using that trainer from CheatHappens, but I know that the Steam version was kept up-to-date, even beyond that, and CH has 18 trainers covering all the version numbers, so, if your issue was resolved by a later patch, you should be fine. I actually have Patch 5 waiting in the wings if needed, but the only tech issue I’ve had is the rather frequent momentary pauses when boating around, with all the wave action, and billowing tall grass on islands, and sea gulls and parrots flying around, etc. They could’ve left out some o’ that, but I really like the ocean effects---not just the wave action, but the realistic ship wakes, and things like deeper or shallower water being darker or lighter blue, or how you can see an enemy ship’s sails beneath the surface a bit when they’re sinking. By “waypoints,” do you mean the 3 stronghold islands of the “good” pirate factions? I’m wondering if you might’ve been on the mission I just did last night for the Corsairs. Lemme touch on that---I think it’ll just count as a tip, not a spoiler. The deal was to capture a new Colonial luxury ship for the Corsair fleet (not with a Human Catapult, but with some land fighting), then to sail it back (actually, lead it back) to their stronghold. When it was ours, and since the sail-back was in a southerly direction (not my favorite), I tried to skip ahead by using a windcharm to teleport back, but, when I got to the Corsair mansion, I couldn’t engage it for the wrap-up, and, when I tried to reset (?) by getting back on and off our ship, I got a “Mission failed” message. Loading the save I’d done after we’d captured the ship, I found that you have to lead it back in order to complete the mission, so just be aware of that. Also last night, I got hip to your character’s skills. With a trainer, you don’t even have to worry about ‘em, but, just for the record, as far as I can tell, you’re stuck with whatever active (land) skill you started the game with. You periodically get to select a new skill, but, apparently, these are all passive, “always in force” skills. We’re up to having the top Buccaneer ship, with the Corsair color scheme, and are working on finishing the missions for the former before continuing the ones for the latter, so we can get the Buccaneer leader to join us and beef up our land forces. We fought the Kraken, which was interestingly different---cuz I’ve even fought more than one Kraken---LOL.

Hi Sig-

I'll admit that the game looks great with the visual effects on the water (waves, birds flying, fish swimming etc.) Thanks for the tip on using the trainers-I'll definitely have to get a trainer-I'll check CH- I'm not sure if they'll work with the Steam versions of the game??, but I'll probably sort it out.
I guess what I was referring to with the waypoints, was that the A.I. seemed to be flawed with the land missions. I was frustrated as there were several times I'd tell my pirate crew to go somewhere and they'd get stuck behind something like a rock or pillar or get easily gunned down by the enemy. I'll give it another go and see what happens.

Oh, CH definitely has trainers for the Steam versions of this game, and of course you want to get the one for your exact same version number of the game. Yes, the pathfinding (it’s called) and the AI of your pirate units leaves something to be desired---these are 2 of the game’s flaws that are touched on a lot in reviews. But I don’t have a problem cutting games some slack on this or that if there’s merit elsewhere, and the game can still be largely fun and enjoyable, if you play it right. You need to keep an eye on their pathfinding, but I honestly haven’t had much of a problem with that. Oh, if you just want to tighten them up at a landing zone to make the “rowboat back to the ship” button active, just click on that---they’re real good about massing for that. And you can also draw a box around them with the pointer to select them all---there’s things like that that help a little. Sometimes they do seem to take some defensive initiative on their own, but other times I have to right-click on an enemy to get them to even notice who’s hurting them, which is pretty pathetic. But the patches have helped some since these early reviews were written, and I’m not one who’s looking for lightning-fast action, or easily bored with something enjoyable, or one to complain if something’s too easy. I’d definitely recommend playing this game with a trainer, for the ship health, character health, and money cheats. Unless you’re looking for a super challenge, which I’m not, you don’t wanna have to worry about the condition of your ship when you’re engaged in sea battles or dropping mine barrels, or worry about your character’s health when your land units are being decimated and you can’t even save on land, or not have the money to upgrade your ship when you want to---in fact, I just decided that I like the Hedgehog best (the top Pirate faction ship) and went back to that, having to re-buy all the upgrades again, but it wasn’t a problem, because of the money cheat. BTW, I think it’s charming how the 3 factions have names for their ship color schemes---I think the Hedgehog looks best in the Buccaneers’ color scheme, called “Le Blue Elegance.” That’s pretty cute...for pirates.