I’m talking about things like:
most realistic physics most aesthetically pleasing sea most fun to play most immersive (pun intended (I’ll sea myself out)) most activities available at sea most variety of sea going vessels
Games with impressive seas that I’ve played so far:
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Triremes and heaving seas) Just Cause 3 (Sparkling blue mediterranean seas) Sea of Thieves (Monsters and pirates) Sailwind (Gentle seas and actual sailing mechanics) Silent Depth 2 Pacific (Sneaky WW2 subs) Cold Waters (Sneaky modern subs) Uboat (Beautiful WW2 seas, rare shooting opportunities) Subnautica (Thalassophobia and crafting)
I’ve also noticed that Ships at Sea has just gone on sale. If you’ve played it recently was it any good?
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has some of the most fun sailing physics of any ocean game I’ve ever played.
And the physics were realistic enough that you could fill out the map before you got the ability to control the winds just by tacking the boat.
From the creators of Cold Waters you have Sea Power, I like it a lot but it is more about strategy fighting with missiles and stuff from the Cold War rather than really enjoying sea.
Ultimate admiral dreadnoughts and War on the sea are also cool options for naval warfare.
Ships at Sea for normal modern sea stuff (fishing, cargo etc).
Naval action for slow wooden ships in the Bahamas.
But the best pirate game still is Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. You can mod it a little and find good shaders to have it look a bit better on today’s hardware.
(I often play Assassin’s Creed Rogue on the Steam deck as it is the small successor of black flag and looks very nice on this screen size)
Really appreciate the effort you put in your reply :) Thanks, lots to look at!
Good luck playing Black Flag unless you pirate it. Ubisoft fucking broke it with their shitty app. If will still work if you’ve previously installed and launched it, but if you’re a first time player, the launcher will prompt you to log in to you Ubisoft account, and then just never run.
Is Black Flag good to play if you don’t like or follow the over arching story of Assassins Creed?
I felt like it kind of pulled me out of other games in the series
Naval action for slow wooden ships in the Bahamas.
I haven’t seen this prior to now. The idea of a nice age-of-sail combat game sounds interesting, but…man, looking at the Steam description there has some surprises:
-
That is an appallingly low Steam rating.
-
It looks like the split is between players who think that the game is too-slow-paced and those who are fine with that, so I could see someone who wants a slow game being into it.
-
Jesus Christ, the DLC prices. They’re selling each additional ship for ~$50? Like, the game with all ships is ~$700? I mean, I know that DCS World and Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad use that model, but I can’t imagine that the ships function as differently from ship-to-ship as the combat aircraft in those games, bring as much additional gameplay.
The developer is a cash hungry idiot, with no intention to ever listen to the community.
The community is great, battles intense, and the skill ceiling sky high. Sailing mechanisms second to none.
There’s a lot more ships than the DLC ships. But yes, it’s almost inevitable you will end up buying a couple of them, because the DLCs let you spawn a ship for free every day.
I stopped playing when the Dev decided to split the already low-populated PvP server into two separate instances, which is currently being reversed (to noones surprise).
There’s a lot more ships than the DLC ships. But yes, it’s almost inevitable you will end up buying a couple of them, because the DLCs let you spawn a ship for free every day.
In fairness, I didn’t notice that the game was F2P, no entry fee, so they have to get money from somewhere.
Yep, I don’t know what happened with the reviews lately. I know they did something with the servers, maybe with the PVP server so that might have made all those players angry.
I don’t have any DLC ships, except maybe for some gifted ones and I only play solo pirate/merchant on the PVE server and don’t engage too much with the community.
It is a very slow game, combats takes ages as well as trade runs. But that is what I like in those games, I just relax sailing and trying to demast some merchants. Maybe if I was participating with the community (port raiding for your nation etc) I would be angry too.
-
Not the best to any degree but just wanted to shout out the Pimps at Sea mod for Halo MCC that adds boats
Gotta go with the old school here, Sid Meier’s Pirates! No water physics, graphics from 2004, etc, but so much fun that I’ve been playing it since the original came out in 1987. Hell, i was playing the 2004 remake just last week even.
you might like Jaws on the NES play it online here https://vimm.net/vault/?p=play&mediaId=426
Holy shit that is cancer, the audio is so bad I can’t even turn the volume on like 1%. I’m gonna go ahead and say I probably missed the boat on that one, but I appreciate the suggestion.
If you’re super-into it, have you tried Port Royale 2, which also came out in 2004 and is kind of the same sort of game on the age-of-sail combat side?
Yeah I’ve played it, I preferred Pirates! because it’s more about the adventure than just endless combat. Honestly I rarely even shoot the cannons on my ship except to very occasionally chain-shot someone’s sail or grape-shot their crew before I go board the ship and win it via fencing, so I’m not even all that into the combat.
Wow… 1987! Shows that fun isn’t necessarily about high end gfx :)
I haven’t played it, but there’s a game called Salt 2 that I’ve been interested in for a while.
The steam page says it’s basically an infinite ocean with different islands and such. It sounds like it might be procedurally generated, but you can customize your ship and it’s basically your mobile base and all.
Ooh that looks really interesting. Feels a bit like a single player Sea of Thieves maybe? Also 50% off right now on Steam… nice.
There’s also Atlas, which is a pirate game from a spin-off studio of the ARK devs, so a lot of those basics like taking animals and such are very similar. But in that one, you can actually build your own ship from scratch
Just nabbed Salt 2 and it’s so good already and I’ve only just started! I love how colourful everything is. Also, I made the mistake of going for a wander on the first island too late in the day without realising how DARK night times get. Fumbled my way to the nearest beach and managed to spawn my little raft and just about navigate back to camp. Thanks for the recommendation. I can see this is going to claim many, many hours of my life already 🤣
Breakwaters Crystal Tides. I’ve never played it but the water sim looks really good.
Also Flotsam and Raft
I like Anno 2070, a game which takes place in a world where the sea levels have risen to a barely-sustainable level. But it’s okay, because you can repopulate with the power of solarpunk machinery!
Dredge is pretty fun and different!
Cold Waters
Best simulator ever. And then you find the mods.
Abzu? Dave the diver, maybe? Dredge?
Or, this might be a might more out of left field or maybe completely stupid and not at all what you had in mind, but what about coral island? You don’t get to experience the water surface except when fishing or doing other stuff on the shore. But you get to do stuff on the bottom and there’s mermaids and stuff.
Stardew valley with a tropical island vibe. So definitely fun and immersive. Definitely more adjacent than something like sea of thieves or black flag or subnautica, but I feel like it fits better than just cause 3, imo
Ooh Coral Island sounds interesting… Wishlisted! Thanks :)
Glad to hear it :D
Ecco the Dolphin. (Genesis)
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (PC)
Subnautica (PC)
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons (SNES)
I would really like something that is a modern Uncharted Waters or Pirates! game. They are both very similar games, and both are also quite old.
I just replayed Subnautica in VR. Such a great game.
Which sid meiers i play the og way back.
I’m here for Sea of Thieves, so much fun.
Sea Of Thieves has amazing ocean effects. The fog sometimes also is very atmospheric with how it seems to occlude sounds etc.
Same, it’s a lot of fun with friends. They also added peaceful servers where you can’t PvP a while back so you can fish in peace.
Fair warning though: This game needs to be played with friends, it can be tedious with randoms that barely communicate and disconnect whenever they feel like it.
Ooh I didn’t know about the peaceful servers. Might have to revisit that soon :)
They HEAVILY reduce the amount of rewards you get though, so if you actually want gold then it’s not worth playing compared to PvP servers.
I had a lot of fun with Blackwake when it first came out, haven’t played recently though.
Free on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/420290/Blackwake/
That game was the best!
Definitely not the best, but still worth a mention is “Stormworks: Build and rescue”. Basically a Lego like “build a ship/plane and do missions on the oceans” game - missions nowadays are also including far more than rescue.
Dave the Diver!
Dave the Diver has a very good early game, but eventually the grind just became needlessly tedious in my opinion. I liked going down and getting the fish etc. but the grind in mid to late game is just very time-skip heavy
