Building A Pirate Utopia: A Republic of Pirates Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: PC

I'm a sucker for any game involving pirates, and I've been lucky enough to play several such titles this year. Most of them focused on the pirate part of the equation, as in sailing, exploring, adventuring, and plundering, but the game we're looking at today leans into the simulation side of things. Republic of Pirates is a city builder that was developed by Crazy Goat Games, and published by PQube. It seeks to fill the void left by other classic games in the genre, a point that we'll discuss in more detail later. It's out now on Steam, and we're going to dive right in now that the intros are out of the way!

I'm not sure what to say regarding the story found within Republic of Pirates' Campaign Mode, as it really is the thinnest of tales put in place to drive in an attempt to disguise the rather long tutorial. I guess that's a very unfair way to start this review, so I'll give it a shot anyway. You're the son of a well-respected pirate who was betrayed by people he thought were comrades. This gentleman among pirates resided in an area known as the "Republic of Pirates", which is a sort of Pirate Utopia. In short, it was a place where pirates did their pirating only against other people, and not amongst themselves. That was the idea at least, but that all fell to shambles when a pirate named "Lucky" Jack Howell ended your father's life. It's now up to you to restore his legacy, and rebuild the Republic, one pirate enclave at a time. This task requires the taking of several islands, the building of what are basically several small towns on each of them, and gathering the resources and manpower to finally take back the seas from the "bad" pirates. You'll meet old friends of your father, new allies who you can hopefully put your trust into, and even face off against Jack Howell himself. It's not the worst story out there, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to look up some of its details in order to write the last few sentences. This is a game that's places of its focus onto gameplay, and the story suffers a bit as an unfortunate side effect of that. With that thought in mind, let's move on to discuss gameplay next.

Republic of Pirates notes several games as its inspiration, and it plays like a mix between Port Royale, Tropico 2, and Sid Meier's Pirates. I was also pleased to note that the developers cited the Anno series, as those games really came to mind as I was playing through the Campaign. At its core, Republic of Pirates is mainly a city-builder, but it also has several gameplay elements that lean into the real-time strategy genre. Each game begins with you setting up a base of operations on a nearby island, building housing for your workers, and slowly stripping your island of all its resources. Following that, you'll need to see to the needs of the aforementioned workers by building brothels, taverns, marketplaces, and more, in order to keep them happy. Once your island becomes big enough, the focus shifts to maintaining a steady flow of goods and materials that are needed to allow the game's hidden tech tree to continue to grow. I say hidden, but more building options become available once you hit a certain population threshold. Not all islands have every resource available, so you'll eventually have to claim more from other pirates if you want your population to continue to grow. This is done by simply killing every pirate in sight on whatever island you've set your sights on, and then simply claiming it for your own. While it may seem that taking control of all the islands on a single map quickly is the way to go, you'll soon realize that each new island needs an entirely new town infrastructure to go with it. The process of building a dock, worker housing, material-gathering buildings and amenities, and everything else, begins all over again with each new island. Though this admittedly does get a bit stale by the third or fourth go, it is a satisfying gameplay loop for the most part.

Seeing as defending your pirate empire is an important aspect of the game, let's zero in on that for a bit. Ships will be your main line of defense, and you'll need captains for each one you build. Hiring captains requires the building of "captain's inns", with each of these buildings allowing you to recruit five captains from their randomly generated pool of candidates. Captain's inns can only be built on the ruins of an older one, so there is a limit to how big your fleet can be at any one time. Once a captain is recruited, you can then build for them ship in your shipyard, and set them loose on the world once said ship is completed. You can also keep defenses closer to home by building defense towers build on the shores of your islands, but your fleet of ships will do most of the heavy lifting in combat. Each ship attacks automatically when set upon an enemy, but a secondary attack can be activated by the player too. These powerful AOE attacks can do heavy damage to specific enemies, but have a cooldown when they are used. If one of your ships sinks, its captain goes down with it, and you'll need to recruit a new one if you want to replace the sunken ship with a new one in the shipyard. Damaged ships can be repaired when close to a friendly dock, and that pretty much explains that. You can go out hunting for trouble with other ships, or play a more defensive role. Most pirates will attack you on sight, but ships belonging to big powers like Spain and England will mostly leave you alone if you don't bother them. You can choose to take them on, but they're very likely to sink an entire fleet if you're not well-prepared for the ensuing battle.

There's so many other parts of the game that I want to discuss, but I think that I've already covered enough as far as this review is concerned. I'll still mention a few more things in brief though before we move on. Besides completing the core tasks, you can take on sidequests, conduct diplomacy with other pirate groups so you don't have to always go in guns blazing, and you also can basically start a war with the nations mentioned earlier. There's even a lot more nuance to the city building and resource management aspects of the game that I think are best left for players to discover for themselves. Besides the Campaign Mode, there's also a Free Play mode where you can take on difference maps that have most of the features open to you without the need of story progression. There's still that tech tree tied to population that you have to go through to unlock more resources, but it's a great game mode to just jump in and out of randomly. It's that mode where I had the most fun messing around with builds and random city design, and I'm sure most players will find it endlessly enjoyable.

With all those positives out of the way, I guess the only thing left to do is to discuss the negative aspects of Republic of Pirates. If there was a single thing that bothered me the most during my time with the game, it would have to be the controls. I can only guess that the developers were aiming for a console release at some point (might still be for all I know) since there seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on playing with a standard controller. There was even a post-launch update that expanded on that control scheme. I decided to give it a go using my tried and true XBox 360 controller, and found it to be the definition of clunky. Then there's the fact that things are still a bit off if you choose to go the keyboard and mouse route too. I'm not sure if this is due to separating some things for potential controller support (Like adding in an entire radial building menu that was the bane of my existence.), but there were several control choices that boggled the mind. I found myself wishing that the developers focused on single control scheme, and stuck to it. Other than that, another big issue is one that I've already mentioned: the rather thin gameplay loop. It doesn't take long for Republic of Pirates to feel like a chore, and there isn't enough character or charm in its world to drive things forward. Sid Meier's Pirates and Tropico 2 had that hard-to-define x factor that made them masterpieces in their own right. On the other hand, Republic of Pirates sort of just expects you to get through its more banal sections by sheer force of will, and not by offering things that just feel fun and cool by their own merits.

Visually Republic of Pirates isn't all that much to look at, even if it also is far from ugly. The graphics are serviceable, and there are some impressive bits to see here and there, but everything has a generic feel to it that comes off like placeholder models that were just left in the final product. Everything has a dry feel to it, and I couldn't help but wish that the game took itself far less seriously. More humor, sillier gameplay aspects, or anything along those lines would've really helped the drab look and feel of the game. You can take hours laying out the most organized city, but it'll always look rather atrocious until you upgrade every building and amenity to their final forms. I get that progression is a thing, but it can takes hours and hours before the game world starts to look visually appealing. Thankfully the ships look far better than the cities themselves, but there's not a lot of variety between them. Yes there are some customization options, but I was surprised how limited shipbuilding is in a game about pirates. I know this isn't a game that's reliant on the ships themselves, so I guess I should understand the developers not going all in regarding options for them. Lastly, and this might be an issue only I experience, I found that the game didn't like running at the same time as my screen capture software. This is actually why my screenshots are rather limited in this review, as I typically record all my gameplay and take screenshots from those videos. I eventually managed to get graphics settings to a point where it didn't fight everything else running simultaneously on my computer, but I found it strange that I'd have issues with a game that looks as simple as this one does.

While Republic of Pirates has some decent music, I think it shines most sound-wise in other areas. I guess I can't skip over the music like that, so let's cover that first. Most of the game's soundtrack consists of generic tunes that are meant to loop endlessly as you go about your many city-building tasks. There are mellow tracks for the more peaceful moments, and tracks that get more intense when danger is on the horizon. It's not a bad collection of music all things considered, it just doesn't do much to stand out. Thankfully, things fare far better elsewhere. The voice acting is all on point, and there are large chunks of the game that feature it. Most of it happens in the cutscenes, but there are some cool quips and one-liners scattered about too. Just as neat are the sea shanties that the crews sing whenever you select a ship. I have no idea why there are several threads in the Steam community tab asking for the developers to remove the crew's singing, as I loved every second of it. I guess putting in an option to turn it off can be a fine addition for some, but they're just so cool that I don't personally think it's necessary. Lastly, and this is something that rarely gets a nod in reviews, I think the sound effects are all perfectly implemented. It's not often that I find that sound effects help accentuate a scene, or add to the gameplay, but that's exactly what we get here. The creaking of the ships, the random chatter of your workers in the marketplace, and other little touches like that really bring the world to life. If only the music stood out as much as the rest, I'd probably be giving it a perfect score.

Even though I don't think that Republic of Pirates has as much content as other similar games in the genre, I still think that it does a good job standing in amongst them. I'd have liked more Free Play maps, and a more open campaign in general, but the game is great for what it is. Even though it definitely is in its full release state, I should mention that there is a roadmap that promises more content on the horizon. Most of the roadmap deals with improving already existing systems, but one can hope that things like more maps will be added in eventually. Even if that isn't the case, you're still looking at dozens of hours if you want to complete the game completely, and the gameplay loop is definitely made for gamers of all types in mind. Having said all that, it probably comes as no surprise that I think Republic of Pirates' current $24.99 price tag is perfect considering the amount of content you get. It's not the best simulation game out there, but it’s priced competitively enough where it doesn't have to be.

If you're a fan of Sid Meier's Pirates, Tropico 2, or the Anno series, then you're going to want to give Republic of Pirates a try. It's not totally fair to compare it to those games which are considered classics in their own right, but it does a good job emulating what made them great and fun. It's also a simple enough game for casual players to jump into. I also can't shake the feeling that it might be coming to consoles at some point either. Nevertheless, I had tons of fun with the game, and I plan to continue to play it for a while to come. Pick it up now, or maybe wait for it to go on sale if the price feels a bit high to you. Either way, you can thank me later. See you in the next one!

Check Out Republic of Pirates on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2103470/Republic_of_Pirates/

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Story: B
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: B+
Value: A

Overall: B-

Pros:
+ Skillfully mixes together city building and real-time strategy elements into something that feels like a mix of Tropico 2 and Sid Meier's Pirates.
+ Each run of the game takes dozens of hours to clear, and it can be quite fulfilling seeing your empire grow from very humble beginnings.
+ The Campaign Mode does a good job of walking new players through the game while also delivering a good story.
+ A Free Play Mode, as well as several maps and difficulty options, mean that you can play this for quite a while before seeing everything the game has to offer.
+ Though the game has rather lackluster presentation overall, the voice acting and sound effects are both spot on.
+ Priced very affordably for the amount of content you get.

+/- Even though they seem to get a lot of hate in the Steam review, I for one love the sea shanties the pirate crews sing!

Cons:
- It doesn't take too long for the gameplay loop to become repetitive.
- Having to build an entirely new town economy and resource ecosystem for each island can be quite tiring after the second or third time.
- Controls in general feel very clunky, no matter which method you choose.
- The graphics, story, and music all leave something to be desired. They're not bad, but they don't stand out at all, and lack charm.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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I didn't even mention that the loading screens have random pirate facts!

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