Corsairs to each their own how many officers can be hired. "Corsairs: To each his own!" Almost "Debriefing"

Prisoner - this character is on your ship against his will, and you can always get a ransom for him or offer to become your officer if he is a pirate. You can captivate any passenger on your ship when he begins to resent the long failure to fulfill obligations to deliver him to his destination; Also, those captains who surrender to you upon boarding become prisoners. The prisoner can be interrogated in the hold of the ship, and also find out his identity. Then you can obtain a ransom from the authorities of his state. The largest ransom amount is given by the governor of the same nation as the captive, but they also have a range of prices across different cities.

Officers

If the main character is not strong in any skill, he can hire officers to more effectively perform the required functions. For example, if you specialize in trade and defense, you might need a navigator and a gunner, while an experienced sailor would need a purser and a carpenter. A hired officer increases your skill by the difference between your level and his level. So, if your navigation skill is 33, and the officer you hired is 43, then your skill will be increased by 10 points. In the case where your skill is increased by an officer, the difference will be highlighted in green.

Note: The penalty for the ship class is calculated from the navigation skill, taking into account the navigator’s skills.

The main character can appoint officers to the positions of Navigator, Boatswain, Gunner, Doctor, Treasurer, Carpenter andBoarder. Each officer can increase only the skills and abilities specific to him. There are a total of 9 positions on the ship for officers and one captain - the hero himself.Boarding officersYou can nominate three. These officers will accompany the hero on land and during boarding, covering him with their body, sharp steel and pistols. Equip them with bullets, elixirs of life and good blades corresponding to their skill types (for example, heavy weapon masters should be given swords and axes, then the damage will be maximum). Officers have part-time and part-time generalist abilities. These abilities allow one officer to occupy 2 or 3 positions at once, respectively. Thus, only three officers are enough to help the main character as effectively as possible with their skills and abilities and at the same time also serve as his bodyguards in battle.

HiringAndappointment of an officer

Worthy candidates for the role of officer can be found in taverns. Usually they sit at tables and offer their services themselves. When hiring, you can look at the character’s characteristics and pay attention to his skills and abilities. Having paid the rate they requested, the officer becomes the hero's passenger. Then he can be assigned to the position of a ship’s officer on the “Characters” form or made a companion by purchasing or capturing a ship. Every month, officers and sailors are paid a salary; officers can occasionally ask for an additional increase or categoricallydeclare disagreement to workwith the hero if their loyalty has dropped to zero.

The purpose of the companion is discussed in the “Ship and its characteristics” section.

Removal from office and dismissal

Removal from the position of an officer back to passengers is carried out by double clicking or pressingEnteron the officer holding the position on the general list of passengers.

You can fire an officer in dialogue by meeting him on land, if heboarder, or in the wardroom, if he holds a different position.

You can fire a companion by first removing him from the ship (cm. section “The Ship and Its Characteristics”), and appointing an officer to appear in the wardroom or on land.

"Pumping up" officers

Officers, like the main character, gain experience in their skills by the fact that they perform actions using these skills. For example, an officer's skill with light weapons will increase if he is armed with a rapier and actively uses it in skirmishes. Companions will have increased ship skills. Also, the experience gained by the hero will be distributed among all his passengers: officers - 25%, companions - 16.5% and the rest - 5%. If the hero has the ability to “share experience,” then the value increases to 50, 33 and 10 percent, respectively.

As the officer's skills increase, his rank, life, and free ability points appear, which the player himself can distribute.

Officer's outfit

You can see what any passenger has in their pockets on form F2/Items. But it is impossible to transfer and equip items for officers there. The transfer takes place when the officer and the hero are in the same location.Boardersfollow the hero everywhere, and officers of other positions can be found in the wardroom (on ships that have one). The hero approaches the officer and pressesEntercalls the command menu, selects exchange there, after which an interface similar to searching corpses and chests opens (cm. section “Searching Chests”). During combat, exchange in this way is only possible if the hero has the “exchange experience” ability. Equipping items is carried out automatically; the officer himself chooses the best saber and pistol for him, according to his skills and attributes of the weapon.

Loyalty and salary

An officer's loyalty is determined by his reputation and the actions performed by the hero. "Good guys" will become less loyal if the hero does "dirty things" and vice versa. If the loyalty bar on the F2/Characters form has dropped to zero, then such an officer will leave the hero at the first opportunity, and it will not be possible to stop him.

Every month, payroll includes payments to officers, regardless of their current position. The higher the officer's skills, the more money he will demand.

Sometimes, after being with the hero for some time, the officer may “kick” and want to leave the hero for free bread. A small one-time cash prize can stop such a “sufferer.”

Recently, Mikhail Naritsa and Maxim Kulakov conducted two streams on the game “Corsairs: City of Lost Ships,” the penultimate part of the cult pirate game series. In this blog I will tell you about the latest installation of the saga - “Corsairs: To each his own!”

For the sake of atmosphere

First, let's take a short historical excursion for those who are unfamiliar with the series. "Corsairs" is an Action/RPG with strategy elements in an open world. The series has five official games, as well as a number of additions.

The first game in the franchise, developed by Akella, was released in 2000 and became a commercially successful project for the Russian company. Moreover, in North America the game was published by Bethesda, and in Europe by UbiSoft, which is very, very commendable. The second game was related to the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and was released in 2003 to lukewarm reviews and comments. The third part was released in 2005 and was almost universally criticized by both critics and players for being buggy and having a weak plot.

Then the series came under the development of the company Seaward, which had previously worked on fan mods for the second and third games. And strange as it may seem, two worthy games came out of the hands of amateurs - “Return of the Legend” and “City of Lost Ships” (both 2007). The latter was a global revision of the previous part and brought the game mechanics to mind. According to the developers' promises, the fourth "Corsairs" was supposed to be a revolution, but the financial crisis and lack of budget buried the project, and it was never released.

In 2012, “Corsairs: To Each His Own!” was released. (KKS for short), developed by BlackMark Studio, which previously worked on fan-made additions. And, in fact, this is the patient of our review and analysis. KKS is a light attempt to rethink the “City of Lost Ships” (CC for short), introducing a number of new features to the basic game mechanics, which will be discussed now.

Gameplay "Corsairs"

The gameplay consists of three modes. The first is land. In it, the hero, under the control of the player, runs through cities, jungles and caves, fights while boarding and plundering colonies. In this mode, the hero explores the land, communicates and fights with non-writings.

The combat system is interesting and challenging. The player can perform different types of melee attacks depending on the situation. Enemies surrounded - a circular strike, the enemy settled in the block - a piercing strike. In addition, the hero can equip firearms - both muskets and pistols. The former are more powerful, but take longer to recharge and are useless in close combat, the latter recharge faster, but are weaker. Recharge is automatic. In addition, the hero can equip amulets that will give bonuses to his skills.

The second stage is tactical. In this mode, the hero controls a ship, participating in naval battles with other ships and forts.

The ships are divided into 7 classes: from the tiny tartan to the giant manowar. Ships have three “health” scales: plating, sails, crew. Damage to the hull will sink faster, damage to the sails will slow it down, and on command will force you to reload guns, control the sails more slowly, and will also reduce the number of fighters during boarding.

The third allied ship is not visible, because God knows where it is due to a bug

Even ships of the same type are not of the same type and may have different characteristics. Among them are guns that differ in type and caliber. The larger the caliber, the greater the damage and weight of the guns; the type affects the range and reloading.

The movement of a ship is affected by the wind; some ships move better with the wind, others perpendicular to it. In calm weather, naturally, everyone swims slowly.

The third mode is strategic, in which the hero travels on a global map, which is a Caribbean archipelago with part of mainland America. The player encounters encounters that are pirates or ships from one of the four nations; in addition, the player can get caught in a storm. If the player enters into a confrontation (both with NPCs and with the elements), he is transferred to the tactical mode, which in turn, in the event of a boarding, goes into the land mode.

Leveling up characters

Characteristics are represented by the PIRATES system: Strength, Perception, Reaction, Leadership, Learning, Endurance, Luck. They affect the character’s skills, giving an increase to certain points. A strong hero hits harder and carries more things; a leader has a better-behaved team and officers.

In this part, the characteristics affect only the initial stages of the game, since it has an extensive plot and does not focus on freeplay. This means that the developers are forcing you to be a terminator, both land and sea. Which in turn gives little space for roleplaying, since the plot is set on rails, which, however, sometimes offer the player a very serious choice.

Abilities are divided into land and sea. The first are responsible for all sorts of increases in stamina and health, are responsible for the ability to handle pistols, and so on. Upgrading ship abilities allows you to open up new opportunities in naval combat. Boarders will allow you to capture ships from a great distance, inflict preliminary damage to the team with a musket salvo, the skills of a carpenter will allow you to effectively repair a ship in battle, and so on on the list.

However, before using ship skills, you need to hire the appropriate officer with the same leveled skill. Have you upgraded your cannon damage bonuses? Be kind enough to appoint a gunner with the appropriate ability to the position. In addition to the gunner, the ship has the following officers: a navigator (speed, maneuvering), a boatswain (boarding), a doctor (protects the crew in battle), a treasurer (trade), a carpenter (repair) and three boarders who accompany the hero on sea and land. Officers can combine up to three positions on a ship with appropriate skill. In addition, the ship can transport passengers and prisoners.

And finally, the hero’s skills. They are also divided into personal and ship. Personal ones are responsible for handling different types of bladed weapons and firearms, and are also represented by secrecy (responsible for successful forays into an enemy fort under a false flag), charisma (reputation and leadership) and luck.

Even with 100% luck, the game trolls you like the first Witcher

The ship's officers are responsible for: navigation (control of ships of different ranks and the ship as a whole), accuracy and guns, boarding, repairs, trade and defense. Skills are upgraded as in the TES series - with practice.

Difficult? Enough. But, like contour maps, it is not as incomprehensible as it seems at first glance.

The player can complete quests, most of which are repetitive tasks. They can be issued by prominent figures of the colony: merchant, moneylender, shipbuilder, port manager, priest, governor. In the city, NPCs may approach you with a request: to transport or accompany you somewhere, to find someone. As a reward, the player receives pesos or doubloons, an increase in skills during the completion of the task. Quests also affect the character's reputation: failed tasks will lower it, which in turn will not allow you to do some things in the game (playing cards with governors, for example), and can also incline officers to mutiny if they have a reputation opposite to the player.

So, the very large introductory part is finally over and we can move directly to “To each his own!” where this blog started.

I must say that I played the game back in the year it was released, in 2012, and then it was, to put it mildly, a disaster. The developers clearly went too far with the hardcore, and as usual for the KKS series, they had a bunch of bugs at the start. Now it’s 2018, and it would be nice to check not only the presence of qualitative changes in the game (fortunately it is still supported), its strength, but also the series’ compliance with the realities of current game design standards.

KKS is almost no different from GPK in terms of the basic part of the gameplay. All the same three modes, the same Storm Engine, which overclocked the very first part. However, there are still changes.

Craft appeared. The player can make potions and other useful items such as amulets, paper cartridges, and means of determining latitude and longitude. Crafting is simple and quite useless, it does not affect the balance in any way and is used, often only because of the periodic need to determine the location.

And there are probably grenades here too

By the way, about this - new mechanics after all. During quests, sometimes you need to find an island hidden on the global map, or some specific meeting place, which is helped by an astrolabe, compass and chronometer. Such an innovation fits in well, does not cause any particular rage because of its crookedness and, most importantly, looks appropriate and authentic.

They reworked the concept of amulets. In their current form, they do not operate together from the hero's inventory, but only when they are directly equipped on the character. Moreover, their action is limited in time. Again, this is not a serious innovation and does not have a significant impact on the gameplay, because you can do without them. They are rather a small bonus, which is not significant for a pumped-up hero.

But a more or less significant innovation is the new currency in the game - doubloons. They are more expensive than pesos and, unlike them, have weight, so it won’t work to carry thousands of them. The new currency is used mainly in quests and is of little use in freeplay, since pesos are generously poured in both for quests and for boardings. Doubloons, it seems to me, were introduced only for the sake of extra spokes in the player’s wheels. Like many things in this game.

Compared to the GPK, the KKS ship fleet has expanded slightly. New items were added, some colonies came into the possession of another power, and a little more random events and quests appeared. The F2 window has been slightly changed. In short, the developers touched on a little of everything, without touching any vital organs. Almost.

KKS, following the second “Corsairs” (the same as “Pirates of the Caribbean”), made a big story campaign. And it is the main innovation of this part. The main advantage and the main disadvantage at the same time.

Main quest and game problems

Walkthrough of the plot “To each his own!” Taking into account additions, it takes about 70 hours. Not counting saves/louds.

The second half of the 17th century, the heyday of piracy in the Caribbean, the era of a collision with the unknown and not yet known, the struggle of the powers of the Old World for the redistribution of the New. A young nobleman, Charles de More, arrives from Paris to the French colony of Martinique - a typical rake who wasted his life senselessly in high society until he was 25 years old. He was called to America by family duty - it was necessary to rescue his half-brother Michel de Montpey from the French prison in which he was imprisoned for a debt of a million pesos by Governor General Philippe de Poincy.

Naturally, everything will not be so simple, even after the protagonist’s brother is free. But we still have to go before that. The game starts with a fairly detailed introduction, in which you complete simple quests and become familiar with the game mechanics. As a result of the starting tasks, you will have control of a ship, a crew, possibly first officers and, most importantly, experience in doing business in the Caribbean.

Then the macroquest begins, during which the hero actually earns the coveted million pesos in one way or another. This is one of the few tasks in the game that asks you to choose a side in the conflict. In this case it is: Holland, as well as two different options for England. And here both the advantages and disadvantages of putting the plot at the forefront begin to emerge.

As already mentioned, the plot is very large, sometimes it even seems endless. The plot itself does not shine with some kind of genius; the player is more interested in participating in local fights, getting from one adventure to another, which is why a crowd of characters flashes in the narrative, whose names (if not their existence) you will forget when completing the next quest. The tasks, although well-developed, are quite similar. But, it seems to me, this will not stop the Corsairs lover, since the gameplay itself is the same beloved and unique Corsairs.

Sometimes the game wants to fuck you

But what is a problem is the saves/lows mentioned above. I can’t even guess how many times I rebooted in this game, if you believe the statistics at the end of the game - 419, and this doesn’t even count the fact that I had to replay some moments.

If earlier the game had troll encounters and troll storms, then troll wind and troll time were added to them. No, they were also present in the Civil Procedure Code, but here they lead to complete exhaustion.

The game now has an indecently large number of quests that require completion within the allotted time. And everything would be fine, but the wind troll puts the spokes in the sails every time, so failure of quests as a result of being late due to unfavorable wind is a common occurrence. There are often times when you seem to be completing a quest and find out that it has already been failed for a month (in my case it was “The Pirate Saga”) because you were late. And no one tells you that there was any time limit - load an earlier save, start a few hours of the game again.

And no one is stopping developers from increasing the time it takes to complete a quest or one of its stages by several days. No one is stopping you from adding more notes in the ship’s log in the spirit of “we need to hurry.” And in the end, instead of hardcore, this results in nothing more than crooked game design. Something like a lite version of troll games.

We are no longer talking about directly completing quests. The game has an indecently vulgar number of situations like this: the hero is left alone with a crowd of enemies - fight them. And in the end, it’s not interesting, but again crooked and even funny at times, especially if you play with shoot-and-run tactics. The only thing missing is the music from “Benny Hill” or “I Got You Babe” if this episode is replayed several times. Or something more authentic, like a cut of Chuvash anger.

And you think that's all? Damn it, the game can bring surprises, for example, force you to collect some amulets or dueling pistols throughout the archipelago. And if the latter is even more or less excusable (no), then the first is a facepalm. And then they will force you to look for all sorts of plates, large pearls and candles. And yes, all this is not something impossible and hardcore, it is rather infuriating with its absolutely dull and unoriginal routine.

No, I'm serious, clearing locations alone is complete bullshit.

Let's return to the plot, which I will now mercilessly spoil. The fact is that it was interesting for me to go through the main quest as a fan of this series, but as a person interested in all sorts of cinema and other subjects, the game began to disappoint me from the second half.

Why? Because there is no problem or idea in the story. In essence, this is just another game on the theme “the boy was on his way to success,” and that’s all. The main character's change and the revelation of his inner qualities are shown quite well. That's all. And the story does not have any core around which the game is built. The hero spends more than half of the plot in subplots, solving other people's problems over and over again. Therefore, it turns out that the story is not about two brothers, but about how one of them wandered around the Caribbean for months, so that then the second, with one dialogue, sent him on another voyage.

And besides, after crossing the equator of history, the paranormal actively begins to invade the plot. First we have a terrible curse that keeps the pirate on the ground. The woman herself, naturally, died a long time ago, and now exists in the form of an almost indestructible corpse that revives other skeletons. Is this not enough for you?

How do you like an entire Indian island made up of dead people? Cool? How do you like the fact that the plot descends into Indian game related to the rebirth of gods and time travel? Amazing? Of course, this is so in keeping with the spirit of pirate adventures, which are made quite realistically, and most importantly, presented with a serious tone.

And as a result, as I progress through the story, I have a double feeling. It seemed like it was not bad, and it was quite exciting to go through all this; I was pleased with the rare opportunity to have different options for completing the quest. But the crookedness of the game design and the occasional wildness in the plot make the gameplay almost unbearable at times. The main distinguishing feature of the game turns out to be its weakest feature.

What besides the plot? Yes, the same endless “corsair” freeplay, in which the player entertains himself, and which I have already written about in sufficient detail above. By the way, the developers decided to get rid of the national quest lines due to the vastness of the plot.

DLC for the game cannot offer anything significantly new - they are macro-quests for several hours of playthrough, with all the disadvantages and all the advantages of the main game. It makes no sense to talk about them in more detail, and it seems to me unnecessary.

Results

These are the elaborate, contradictory, complex, crooked and unique “Corsairs” they are. What can you say about “To Each His Own”? We can say that the mechanics of the game in 2018, although they still look fresh and interesting, reek of the budget game development of the early 2000s. By the standards of the series, the gameplay was, in general, the same as in 2003 and 2007, and it remains the same. And for a modern gamer, this is, by and large, a death sentence, because KKS does not forgive the player at all. And some old people or even those who have played before may simply get tired of playing the same thing.

The immortal Storm Engine produces graphics that are, by and large, ten years old (at the time the game was released), periodically bugs in such a way that it can ruin the save or crash, and is also not friendly with minimizing; and I’m not even talking about the periodic appearance of crooked scripts, when something didn’t happen as it should, and in the end you can’t leave the location because everything is locked. And, of course, we should not forget that the dialogues are not voiced, and the gameplay sometimes amounts to ten minutes of reading the text at the bottom of the screen, and even if there is no voice acting, then what can we say about the production.

The plot, which started out sounding good with realism, slipped into a paranormal shambles, which, to be honest, was not very fun to go through in the finale due to hackneyed techniques in the spirit of the same crowd of enemies for one player. However, this is still a good adventure that will captivate a fan of such games for dozens of hours.

"To each his own!" can offer the same unique pirate experience that no other game has been able to provide so far. “Pirates” by Sid Meier and AC IV: Black Flag are light arcade games, in comparison with which any part of “Corsairs” seems like a real simulator of the life of a sea wolf.

Therefore, I would advise doing this. For beginners and those unfamiliar with the series, I advise you to completely forget about the plot in the first playthrough and engage exclusively in freeplay. And only then, having gained experience, begin the plot. I wouldn’t advise old-timers to hope for some kind of revelation, but I would recommend playing it in view of the fact that there is simply nothing like it on the market - and this game, with all its ambiguity, is capable of satisfying a feeling of nostalgia and giving at least something new.

And the best “Corsairs” are still “The City of Lost Ships”.