4, and a bit, years ago I would've never even considered an always online, multiplayer, live service, AAA, PvPvE, shared world, sandbox pirate game would be my personal favorite game of all time. I was always a traditional single player kind of person and had a very jaded view of live service multiplayer games after the huge myriad of greedy and soulless games the plagued that market. But then Rare came along and showed me just how much potential there is in a game like this when a passionate team with a proper artistic intent are behind it.
In an industry that reeks of soulless corporate sequels and remakes that release every year, comes a game that's just oozing with love and passion and a vision. From the brilliant game design of the moment to moment gameplay of efficiently sailing a fully crewed galleon that gets players to fold into specific roles on the ship and has the players basically roleplay without them even realizing that they're roleplaying to having such an interesting and cool world building moment by just experiencing dying and respawning, this game is just incredible.
And that's without even mentioning the brilliant way they are constantly trying to use the live service of the game to elevate it even further. To make it feel like you're actually experiencing moments in time in this weird world, pieces of it's history. And then using cosmetics and those pieces of history to be the setup, the motive if you will, for players to have their own stories and then for them to tell others those stories they had and potentially have an actual item or cosmetic that represents that story for the player.
Waking up in the tavern to show your pirate is getting blackout drunk after you log off and waking up the next day when you come back. The mermaids returning you back to your ship and repairing your ship after you sink as a part of a deal with the pirate lord being an immersive way to explain those mechanics. The entire Sea of the Damned existing purely as an explanation for respawning in universe. The Shroud being an in universe explanation for the world border. Heck the main thing at stake during the Pirates of the Caribbean crossover being the respawn mechanic if you really think about it. And so many more things like that just show the absolute genius of the folks working over at Rare.
This game may have had a slow start and it may have some pretty annoying technical/server issues but, the talent and passion and the imagination of what Rare has done and has always been trying to do with this fantastic game has never been the issue. This game and the team behind it are genuinely some of the best in the AAA games industry right now, in my opinion of course.
I genuinely can't wait to see where they go next with this wonderful gem of a game!
