Hello kai2 and everyone else!
My favorite 'age of sail' game propably is "
Pirates of the Caribbean" (aka "Sea Dogs 2" from 2003), closely followed by "
Corsairs Gold" and then by "
Sid Meier's Colonization" (original DOS version) and the first "
Patrician".
Each of the other Sea Dogs iterations that were released in th West had some likeable aspects, incorporating more realism, details and more roleplaying elements, but none could replicate both the 'simplicity', the handcrafted and the 'adventurous feel' of the second game in the series, which got Disney's licence slapped on only late in development.
For instance, newer versions did improve technical details of the water simulation or ship models in the StormEngine, and improved on the not so common control scheme. However, only "Pirates of the Caribbean" (Sea Dogs 2) left a more 'romantic' impression with its composition of the water shade and reflections together with the color choices (and lighting of the sky(boxes) both at day- and nighttime) and background music. Although, it features less islands and settlements, each one of those are more detailed, distinct and interesting, giving incentive as well as providing actual rewards for exploration!
My biggest disappointment in the whole Sea Dogs series is the fact that trading is implemented like an afterthought and not really a viable option. Sooner than later the player always have to rely on capturing other vessels!
"Corsairs Gold" ("Der Korsar" in German) is an intriguing mix of "Sid Meiers Pirates" on the sailing map view with a realtime strategy mode for boarding action and fort conquering. The atmosphere and design of the top-down sailing map view is outstanding mimicking an old paper map that you uncover piece by piece. It also incorporates a convincing enough 'simulation' of sailing with wind direction and strength influencing the ships.
Unfortunately, technical issues can render the game almost unplayable on certain modern hardware combinations.
Regarding both "Colonization" and the merchant-oriented "Patrician 1" it is hard to explain why, but I still prefer the original DOS versions instead of their newer versions or sequels. For me, their skillful use of the lower pixelated graphics, subtle animations, great musical melodies and sound effects stirr much more my imagination. And the intro sequence of "Colonization" is unforgetable: welcome to the new world!
"Sid Meier's Pirates!" is a really iconic game, nonetheless, I learnt to appreciate the highly improved sailing map with other ships and storms moving visibly on it in his own remake from 2004. However, its gameplay loop gets repetitive and boring rather quickly, especially in the 2004 remake, since it simplyfies a lot of aspects and rehashes too much assets--hunting treasures and infamous pirate captains becomes quite trivial in the remake.
And, it seems that I am belonging to the minority who actually misses the original's implementation of sextant and sun position reading for determining ones location (longitude) on the map.
What I do not like in the majority of 'modern' games set in the 'age of sale' or 'age of exploration' are the lack of scale and over-populating their game worlds! I mean, you as a player do not get to feel the vastness and loneliness of sailing to the seas. Developers tend to cramp too much into too little of the virtual space in order to keep players 'close to the action' or 'on their heels'. Combined with an in realtime updated automap and the all-seeing compass for map markers those take away all sense of distance, time passage and discovery. "Pirates!" had a fantastic idea of rumors and logbook entries with dates of actual sightings of other ships, fleets or pirates as lead to follow on.
I do understand the benefit of fast travel and/or better time acceleration options within such games. But sometimes I just want to get lost in experiencing the actual 'sailing' instead of being bomarded with quest markers, pop-ups or battle encounter every few minutes or seconds...
Kind regards,
foxgog
P.S.: One game I am looking forward to hopefully be released here on GOG.com in the future is David Evan's "
Sail Forth".