While the world of pirates is usually filled with colorful characters and unusual personalities, Pirate Dawn opts to simply hand you a ship. Exploration and naval combat are the two primary focuses of the game, though neither is particularly well done or exciting.
At this point I need to disclose the fact that this game is touted as merely an alpha. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's understandable as usually it's a species of game rarely released into the wild as it's generally as close to unplayable as something can be. I feel it's prudent to put this disclosure in early because I don't have much in the way of positives to say about Pirate Dawn.
The missions are the meat of the game, though what's there is fairly scant, especially given that there are seven missions currently and only five more planned. There are generally two types of missions. The first has your ship battling human foes. Some are aboard vessels of their own while others man land-based turrets. Unfortunately there's just not enough of a challenge to defeating other ships; the enemy AI moves sluggishly and maneuvers poorly, often getting stuck on edges and in corners. The other missions have you battling denizens of the sea itself. Unsurprisingly there's a kraken and later a flame spewing sea serpent. Both deal out heavy damage but aren't particularly durable themselves, making a victory more a matter of luck than real skill or strategy. There's little variation to the missions and they fail to give you a sense of story or purpose. Throw in the fact that completing all of them takes roughly fifteen to twenty minutes and you're not looking at a worthwhile prospect.
The game touts itself as an open-world game and while you can spend as much time as you'd like sailing around, there's little incentive to do so. Occasionally you'll stumble across a small cache of treasure or a foe to blast into Davy Jones' locker but there are no secrets to find; no reasons to wonder what lies just beyond the next island which completely invalidates the idea of an open world game.
Pirate Dawn looks rather nice; though the majority of that comes down to the marvelous water physics. I did smile to myself every time a pod of dolphins would swim past my boat or a flock of tropical birds flapped through the air, but in terms of visual touches those were the only interesting embellishments. It is hard to improve upon the design of a setting that comes with such huge, pre-established looks in the mind of the general public and to be fair what is present in Pirates Dawn is engaging the problem is, as elsewhere, there just isn't enough of it.
Further down the road this title might be worth taking another look at, though even with several more missions it seems unlikely that the game would be extended long enough to be even worth the current dollar asking price. Dev House is going to have to populate their title game with engaging characters, settings, stories and quests and quests before Pirates Dawn will be anything more than a demo showing off cool water effects. I'm never afraid of spending money for a good game, but I've played titles that had far more polish and were completely finished that only set me back a dollar.
