Tempest - A Pirate Fantasy

[UAZ-469]

MMMM!

Today, I like to introduce you to a nice little gem in the currently MMO-dominated pirate game-sector:

Beware: It's an early access-trailer, but the game is finished since 2016. The developers are also continuing on improvements and new features.

As usual, you are a pirate on his quest to find precious booty, which means that you will have to visit cities, tackle with various factions and their needs, fight enemy ships and buy/seize bigger and better ones. This time in a fictional world with its inhabitants, that have no similarities to real ones. Tempest also offers many storylines and quests, that are admittedly only told with text, but garnished with lots of black humour and accompanied by beautiful artworks in your journal to keep it interesting. But if you enjoy reading, maybe from games like Sunless Sea, you might like it - especially because there is a lot of it here.
And it doesn't even end after the main story.

Now, what separates Tempest from the other competitors?
Its heavy emphasis on ship customizing and fantasy.

During your travels, you will find loads of different pieces of equipment and ammunition types, like sails, cannons and hull plating, which you can use to increase your ship's stats. The gear can even be improved further by adding special parts to it. There are hundreds of different combinations to enable you to build a ship that suits your playstyle: Want a close-range-fighter, that completely annihilates your enemies with a storm of cannonballs? Install bombards! Prefer a slow, but impenetrable swimming fortress? Slap heavy armour plating on it! Or do you like to wear down your opponent with hit-and-run-tactics? Cotton sails! This way, players can have completely different ships despite using the same type.
As most gear comes with drawbacks to prevent your ship from becoming overpowered, like the aforementioned armour plating reducing your speed and manoeuvrability for giving you better protection and limiting your options with a set number of slots, you are encouraged to experiment to find the right setup for the right situation. Of course there are parts without any drawbacks - but they are rare and often require you to do dangerous quests for the factions.

The fantasy part comes with the inclusion of sea monsters, undead/ghosts and magical artifacts, which cast from a "mana"-pool to destroy your enemies with meteors (As seen in the trailer above), strike them with thunderbolts or simply protect your ship with a shield. And there are more, effectively spicing up the sea battles and giving you more tactics to utilize.
Last but not least, the legends. They are separate storylines, that often lead to unique gear and give you a small, but still informative insight on real existing myths. I don't want to spoiler you on that part, as the legends are one of the most interesting parts in the game.

Tempest also has an online-multiplayer, that not only lets you blast the hell out of each other, but also offers coop-gameplay up to three players.

On the technical side, we have worth seeing graphics (The 1st-person-view on your deck is excellent), stable FPS even in massive battles, an exemplary translation and a beautiful soundtrack. It did crash on me, but it's very rare and the automatic saves everywhere lessens the problem somewhat.

It's available on Steam for 14,99 €.

 

Screenshots

The main menu. Your current ship with all its configurations is displayed on the left.

One of the larger battles, this time with some giant crabs.

Look at my drunken pet cat!

1st-person-view.

The new and improved boarding. The old one was sort of a tactical battle, that got tedious fast and was rather complicated.

The world map. There are actually two more.

This... is going to suck...

Docking at a port during a thunderstorm.

One of those screens where you will probably spend a lot of time: This is the place where you outfit your ship with all kinds of (magic) equipment.

[Arashikage]

Here I was hoping THIS Tempest was making a comeback

[UAZ-469]

I'm afraid, not. Sorry to disappoint you.

Screenshots added.