Game Reviews

Age of Wind 2

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Age of Wind 2
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| Age of Wind 2

Being a pirate is one of those childish daydreams a lot of people never quite grow out of.

There's a long-lasting attraction to the way it makes being a psychopathic 17th century crook look like a glamorous career choice rather than a quick route to a painful death at the end of a rope, probably with all your teeth falling out from scurvy beforehand.

Developer Galapagos's Age of Wind 2 has some flaws, but it still nails that intangible pirate fantasy quality.

Dead man's war chest

Age of Wind's story starts you off as a mighty pirate captain on one of the most powerful ships in the game – but you begin surrounded by mysterious attackers all intent on sending you to the bottom.

Once you lose that opening battle, you're plucked out of the ocean by other pirates interested in finding out what happened.

They give you a tiny sloop and send you off to fight and trade your way back to the top of the heap.

There's virtually no pressure to follow the narrative, though. You can complete missions one by one as they come in, or sit on them for ages while you run around earning the cash to buy a bigger ship and stuff it full of the nastiest arsenal you can get your hands on.

The one behind the wheel

Your steer your ship either by tilting the handset or tapping a wheel displayed on screen, while touching an empty space fires your cannon.

The gameworld is a series of diddy little islands, each with a port you can dock at and AI ships roaming the ocean in between.

Other vessels are either neutral, and won't attack until you attack them, or hostile and make straight for you once you get in range.

When anyone starts a fight, the camera switches to a higher angle until you've won or run for it.

Your gunners auto-target, so it's up to you to jockey for the best position, constantly swerving back and forth to give your cannons a good shot and get your opponent's broadsides to miss, or get into position to make sure your special weapons hit.

It's a simple but hugely exciting handling model with a surprising amount of tactical complexity.

Run aground

What stops Age of Wind 2 being great, rather than just very good, is its paucity of content.

Combat is a lot of fun, and levelling up with the promise of bigger and better ships makes it all worth the effort, but the game is still fundamentally a grind.

The story isn't especially gripping, not least because of a hopelessly mangled English translation, and irritating glitches keep souring your first impressions. AI ships get stuck on scenery, ports won't let you dock, and music starts or stops at the wrong time.

Age of Wind 2 is still full of terrific moments, like fighting off multiple ships several classes up without taking a scratch, but you're always aware you're making excuses for a lot of little problems.

Still, if your inner child ever wanted to be a pirate, you should definitely give it a try.

Age of Wind 2

Age of Wind captures the simple thrill of plundering the high seas, but the excellent combat and controls don't quite make up for a lack of polish and long-term content
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Matthew Lee
Matthew Lee
Matthew's been writing about games for a while, but only recently discovered the joys of Android. It's been a whirlwind romance, but between talking about smartphones, consoles, PCs and a sideline in film criticism he's had to find a way of fitting more than twenty-four hours in a day. It's called sleep deprivation.