When approaching Pirates of the Burning Sea, it's wise to conveniently forget that the reality of what pirates of the 1700s actually did for a living was far from the harmless tomfoolery so recently portrayed by Johnny Depp and company. No, these were quite vicious and despicable individuals who raped, pillaged and plundered the Caribbean of its riches - or at least attempted to. The truth is that if many pirates didn't accidentally cause themselves serious brain damage by getting drunk and running into bulkheads, they often died a sad, lonely and penniless death. That's not quite the image of pirates that Flying Labs Software has taken a shine to however, so their vivid interpretation of the golden age of piracy focuses more on the eccentric personalities of the most famous of pirates of the age. It's also a massively multiplayer online game, which is so apt a choice of genre for a pirate-orientated game that you kind of have to wonder why it's taken so long for someone to take the initiative.

The events take place in the Caribbean during 1720 - and it's not just a piece of the Caribbean either, but all of it; every port from the Southern coasts of North America to the islands surrounding it right on to the Northern coasts of Central America is available and it's a massive playing field to be allowed to roam in. But Pirates doesn't just exclusively deal with pirates or their dastardly trade; it also tackles the power struggle between the British, French and Spanish, who all have a claim in the region and each faction fights one another for control of the lucrative resources. And so you've got a choice to opt out of the life of a no good sea lubber and pledge allegiance to any one of these three other nations to help fight for their cause.

Deciding on this can dramatically alter your choices of class, as it's only these three other superpowers that actually give you any choice. There are the free-traders, sea merchants who attempt to gain their riches through legal, honest trade, while Naval Officers act as the strong arm of whichever country they are in service to, and they are one of the only classes capable of commanding some of the largest ships in the game, while Privateers act as legal pirates, tasked with hunting down and looting ships from other nations, but not allowed to attack their own. Pirates on the other hand, can only be pirates.

There are advantages between each class and despite opting to go for a more historical approach (no sea monsters or giant enemy crabs here!) you still gain new abilities and skills every time you level up, except these skills aid you in combat with your ship rather than blessing you with any fanciful magical spells and whatnot. Each class also gets their own unique skills, and while Pirates may be disadvantaged by not being able to ever call on the assistance of the other three classes in the game, they do get to capture and keep any ship they encounter in battle, which for a game dominated by the sea is a very big plus point.

In this game the ships you captain are the characters; they've got just as many custom options to use for their appearance as the avatars you have behind their wheel and Pirates is also one of the few, probably only, MMOs that actively encourages user created content, with the promise of user made flags and sails eventually making an appearance. But you aren't restricted to the sea; there are also some on-foot sections that require you to actually get off your ship and explore the streets of the many ports in search of trade and missions. While graphically inferior to some of the stuff you'll witness at sea, these social hubs do serve their purpose and they showcase some of the impressive sound and music of the game, creating a lively atmosphere for what could have otherwise just been some dull, static backgrounds. This doesn't prevent the feeling that these areas merely act as a go between for the really good stuff at sea though.

Out on the ocean waves is where the real action takes place, a vast, open map that you can explore at your own pace. The Caribbean bustles with life, teeming with trade convoys and smugglers travelling from port to port, while pirates and pirate hunters track down their prey. So long as these ships aren't allied to you, you're allowed to attack anything providing you've got the skill and level to not come off worse. When combat does eventually rear its head, you're flung into a full-blown third person perspective encounter and it's here where the game reveals one of its greatest features.

Naval combat defies the usual laws of the MMO genre by being both tactically complex and at times quite addictive. Rather than the constant and repetitive button mashing so often favoured in MMO games, in Pirates you're in direct control of your ship throughout each skirmish. The basic principle of battle is to pelt an enemy craft until its hull and crew have been so significantly decimated that you can either move in to board the ship and defeat its captain head on or just continue blasting it out of the water. Inevitably though, it's not quite as simple as that. You see, there are dozens of other things that you always need to take into consideration - everything from the size of a ship and the number of guns it carries to the size of the masts it uses can drastically alter how effective you might be when going up against it, assuming it's alone and not, as is often the case, surrounded by other vessels. Different ammunition types can also be used for different results, whether it be using bar-shot to down a ship's masts or langridge to wipe out their crew. You must balance all of these factors with keeping your own ship afloat, because one thing you can always be certain of is that those tactics you rely on are being used just as effectively by the enemy.

By far the most important factor to deal with in battle however is that of the weather and particularly the wind, which is both a great blessing and a curse depending on which direction it decides to blow. When it's against you, the speed at which you can move and turn is greatly reduced and dramatically effects just how capable you are of getting into the right position to do damage to your opponent. In these instances, the enemy can usually bide his time by weakening your hull. When it's behind you it offers the opposite effect and it's also great for outrunning larger ships whose huge firepower is no match for the nimble speeds at which smaller craft can travel.

Pirates has a surprising amount of tactical depth to it that ensures that almost every encounter feels different in some way, so it doesn't end up as yet another repetitive keyboard-stomping encounter. And the ships themselves, as well as being diverse in looks, speed and armaments, have a great deal of customisable options for you to exploit to improve their performance in battle, with upgradeable slots for cannons, masts and armour. It's the Burning Sea's answer to Epic Armour, only without the painstaking hours of work needed to invest to collect the appropriate equipment.

The only real downside is that the almost snail-like pace at which some the battles can move may put some gamers off; this is certainly not an aspect of the game for those who are impatient. These people would also likely scoff at the game's strict policy for defeat as well - no durability costs for any of your weapons, just the loss of your ship should it get sunk. Despite such a strict penalty, it's a system that does ensure that you take these battles seriously before jumping in.

It gets a little less exciting when you enter combat with your captain though; the swashbuckling elements certainly had all the potential to be as good as the ship combat, but they're lacking in numerous areas, perhaps largely due to the fact that this is an element that wasn't introduced into the game until late in the beta stages after the beta testers demanded it. Why sword fighting was never planned as being a prominent feature in a game in the first place when the whole 1700s Pirate era was popularised for such antics remains a mystery though, and despite the obvious best efforts by the developer, it's clearly a feature that's not up to scratch.

Unlike the ship combat, the swordplay is exactly like every other MMO, only far more repetitive and requiring even more mashing of buttons. There are three sword disciplines to choose from, yet whichever you opt for the result is always the same - continue hammering down on the attack keys until the other guy lies dead. Occasionally successful attacks fill up a special bar and allow the use of more potent attacks and there are some slight nice additional squad command options for you to use when guiding a band of your own crewmen to defeat the crew of another ship, but even so, it doesn't prevent these instances becoming deeply repetitive.

This is a real shame, as much of the rest of the game does boast some significant features that have benefited from greater care and attention, the economy being one very significant aspect. It's all player orientated, and missions still award new pieces of equipment that can be attached to ships or their captains, but for the really good stuff, such as new and more devastating cannons or ammunition, you have craft it yourself, or buy it from someone.

This is where things get a little bit more technical, as Pirates' crafting system is far more vast in its scope than anything you'll have seen in any other online game. Almost every port contains a certain amount of resources and by building warehouses in areas where you need specific resources you gain access to new buildings and structures. These can help gather resources, while other buildings refine them, some can help you combine what you've collected to build new items and it's all done on a massive Furthermore, you're not limited to what level you might be, meaning that so long as you've the gold you can start your business up almost immediately. Labour and maintenance costs, as well as a huge price hike for any additional warehouses in other ports, makes this a feature with far more depth than the simplistic crafting systems offered in other games - it's at times almost as challenging as some single player management games, only on a staggering scale. With such potential to make riches from this system, it wouldn't be surprising if some players ended up favouring this aspect of the game over that of pillaging the shipping lanes.

These lucrative resources also give enough of an excuse for other players to forcefully remove the occupants from certain ports and it's here that yet another exciting and different feature of the game comes into play - Player versus Player combat doesn't quite work the way you might expect. Players generally can't attack one another unless they've flagged themselves for PvP, but by increasing tensions in the waters around ports they can create special PvP zones where anyone can enter and attack players from other factions. This is achieved by preying on trade convoys leaving a harbour; destroying and looting these vessels raises tensions in the region until the creation of the PvP hotzone allows for players to battle for control of the area. The more unstable these areas become through constant attacks, the larger the zones become, until eventually, although it's not happened much yet, control of the port can be swung into the hands of an entirely different faction. This won't prevent players from the other three factions visiting them during peacetime, but they will be slapped with a rather hefty tax penalty for anything they buy there. The potential here is huge and it's made even more exciting by the sheer fact that this is all player-controlled; PvP zones appear where people decide to cause trouble, not where the developer has defined.

These brave and new interpretations of familiar ideas are what sets Pirates of the Burning Sea apart from a great many other MMOs out at the moment. It's far from a perfect game - some niggling bugs still need to be worked out and areas such as the swordplay aspect and in particular the user interface that can at times be far to unwieldy for the amount of icons you have to do deal with, can spoil things - and it's doubtful that it will topple any of the big names of the genre, as some of its features may be a little off putting to some. However, it is a game worth investing in, if not for the fact that it offers something significantly different to the countless other fantasy-based massively online games out there already, then certainly for its excellent ship to ship combat, in-depth economic structure and staggering freedom of choice. And it's a Pirates game online - if that hasn't sold you on it then quite frankly nothing will.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).