This kind of annoyance is repeated over and over in little oversights that are forgivable individually, but add up to a distinct lack of polish. Ships can be set to fire automatically (which is indispensable in large battles), but there is no way to direct them to ignore forts or towns, so in actions with a land component, you'll find yourself having to keep your ships on manual fire to avoid wasting broadsides on land batteries. You also can't set automatic fire for one broadside while controlling the other one manually, which, when combined with the ability to only reload one broadside at a time, can lead to premature discharge and an uncomfortable wait for a reload.
The notoriously bad AI of the previous game has been replaced by a functional computer opponent that acquits itself well in battles on the open sea. But when land is introduced, a number of problems show up, such as ships running themselves aground, which gives the graphics engine a chance to show off its clipping prowess. Fortunately, Age of Sail II is outstanding in multiplayer, with a small but fanatical following, despite the fact that the game currently doesn't work with third-party multiplayer clients. If it eventually does, multiplayer Privateer's Bounty will be the ultimate way to take advantage of what is the best real-time naval combat system available on a computer.
When land is involved, the AI can demonstrate numerous failings, like shooting its own ships while aground and stuck in a mountain.
Having gotten the strategy part down so well, Akella unfortunately couldn't seem to resist the urge to try to inject some role-playing into what is otherwise a perfectly good wargame. It's as though the developer thought that, since it created the pirate-themed role-playing game Sea Dogs, it would have to keep forcing you to pretend you're a pirate. The campaigns all feature multiple-page mission briefings full of inane text that tries to create an atmosphere of swashbuckling adventure but ends up sounding like a fantasy novel that substitutes pirates for elves instead. The real problem is that some of the briefings fail to adequately define your objectives, so you'll end up playing certain missions over and over until you figure out what all that high-seas fiction was trying to say. The premise is sound--win battles, capture ships and refit them, buy more ships, fight new battles. The execution is less so, especially because the campaigns all incorporate some version of the "puzzle mission," which often involves land and thus triggers the awful AI. Privateer's Bounty incorporates some new units like submarines, fire ships, paddleboats, bomb vessels, and even balloons, but other than when they're brought to the forefront by scripted scenarios, they're generally ancillary units. Even worse, the scripts can't even keep their stories straight--while there are supposed to be separate campaigns for the English, French, and Americans, the French campaign briefing text clearly states that you're in the British "Special Boat Service." And you go fight the French.
Based on this description, who is the elf?
Despite the fact that this is really a "fix 'em up" update of a previous game, Privateer's Bounty still has some bugs. For example, ships on automatic fire are not supposed to shoot when friendly ships are blocking them, but they do anyway (with painful consequences). Possibly the most irritating bug, however, is the inability to load campaign games that were saved in mid-mission. Doing so causes a crash to the desktop with the same "internal program error" dialogue box that appeared in the original Age of Sail II but was finally fixed with patch 1.56. It now makes a reappearance. This means that campaign games can be only played from the beginning of a mission. This makes little difference in some missions, but in the aforementioned puzzle missions, it can get quite frustrating. Furthermore, some of the scripted events that are supposed to take place in some missions fail to come about.
Despite these problems, Privateer's Bounty is a strategy game that offers something for anyone interested in commanding a fleet--except perhaps fans of role-playing a pirate. Since Age of Sail II is so appealing in multiplayer, it makes sense for fans of the game to buy the latest version, especially since it features improvements that make for a markedly better game. For everyone else, thanks to this update, you can now go to the store and buy an excellent strategy game about the age of fighting sail that generally works right out of the box. It's definitely worth it.
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