Windward Review (PC)

Set sail and listen to plenty of Awolnation. What? Windward is a game heavily inspired off of many games of old such known by Sid Meiers. Or at least feel that way. The game itself features a straight forward approach to the type of genre, with a easy to use control system. But do not let me get ahead of my self in the terms of gameplay. Lets’ go over the backdrop of the game. Being handled like a trading company kind of game with plenty of combat you control just a ship. You barrel down to fighting pirates, moving through trade routes to give goods to neighboring communities who need certain required supplies. Past that point the game does not need really a plot beyond that point.

The game itself in terms of controls are easy to understand. Offering various ways to control the ship that anyone could grasp. You can push forward with the modern standard of AWSD, or your mouse. Combat is automated by moving around side by side of pirates among the sea. Leaving you to simply make sure you dodge if possible gun fire, or make a clear enough shot for your fellow caravan. You may also hire two additional fleets to move about with you as you travel about. The Ai with the said fleets are to be desired, but are not that bad, if anything when it comes to combats, their freaking aggressive. The enemy Ai on the other hand at times just feel derpy. I mean sure the higher ranking they are they begin to hit like a mac-truck. At least with my experiences with the game, I hoped they would have been a little more intelligent.

What you see is what you get with Windward. It is not bad game by any stretch of the thought. It offers what you make of it. It is a pretty great idea in the long run. Games of the past like Uncharted Waters were more then likely felt while playing this game. A nice feature is the fact you may build your ship the way you wish. Its talent tree is pretty easy to understand.

Talents, also known as abilities, are either passive or active (the latter being marked with a star). Talents usually provide passive benefits for a ship, and can be obtained by spending talent points. Talent points are gained through experience. The game doesn’t track your actual level, but you will receive a notification indicating you have a talent point you can spend.

Specialization talents are enabled only by groups, and only one set can be enabled at the same time. Designed for more dynamic group play, each specialization aims to assist both the player and his/her team with area of effect buffs, and other special skills. Check each heading for further details.

Specializations have to be explicitly chosen in order to work by clicking on the box around the specialization talents. This can only be done while docked.

– Windward.Gamepedia.

If you like to have heavy damage, that can be added. Prefer to toss around some poison gas in a area, that can be done. The games multiplayer is solid. Working quite well around the community at large. No one is rude to one another and play by the rules(from what I seen anyway). I tagged along with some random person at the time named PeachySeas. Or something like that. We made a private instance and ran a campaign together. This mostly consisted of playing a sort of domination of the location we were given by claiming towns back from crummy pirates. After awhile I upgraded my ship, noticing a impressive boost in all of my stats. Along the way as you visit towns granting you  fast-travel to them. I noticed you can customize your sail colors. With that you can also upgrade your crew, your cannons, your haul (by upgrading your ship of course), and rest is mostly cosmetic. The game starts off slow. By slow I mean not crawling, just paced at a steady rate. Money itself  is not as easy to come by. You are granted quests, or salvage along the water you trek that can grant money, but just not in the doses needed to really get your wrecking ball status. This game does offer a offline mode too. For those jokers who enjoy being introverted from others. For some weird reason. Going back to the combat of the game, this is mostly handled by moving in circular motion to a enemy. Everything else is automated, you do have some options to use a heavy cannon attack(Volley) which does do some considerate damage to the other ship. After each engagement of battles, you can repair your ship. One of the most important materials you require through out the game is in fact the logs, or lumber.  After while, you begin to repair Lookout Stations, that require lumber as well. A great feature is your progress with your ship is tracked for both online, and off. So if you feel like flying solo, just do some time around in a single player run. If a friend invites you coast around some sea, knocking in some pirate skulls. Your ship will carry over from ether/or. Graphically the game is very pretty. The water looking somewhat real. I sort of got a kick out of going by some coasts and seeing sunken ships by the sandbars.  The combat itself is good, the animations are not as pretty to look at. Feeling somewhat cardboard to look at during intense engagements sadly. Cannon blasts sticking out like a sore thumb versus everything around them. Out of everything else, that is the only let down.

In Closing:

Windward hits the right spot in many things. It is not your next Pirates! game, it still does the genre justice with a active and good community online. Offline, and on its own, it provides you plenty to run around and do. This without over complicating anything beyond picking out how you like your ship to look, and what stats you wish to build into, with a easy to understand tree for skills.  Originally Playing offline was fine and all, but I decided to tag along with people online, that is when it really got fun. The online servers were solid on my end to connect too easily. Not once did I feel a hick-up during this. A suggestion to the Developers is to allow us to build a persona in the game, for example, a avatar. With the clothes, face, etc. A small idea, but I think it personally would bring some more immersion into the whole games’ world.

Recommended – The process of building up your fleet, or just yourself can be addicting. The semi randomly generated worlds were fun to explore. If you loved games like Sid Meier’s Pirates. You will not quite get that sort of thing here. If you enjoy playing online with buddies, be sure to bring together three others and have a blast, blasting away many pirates, and making yourself a fleet to be reckoned with.