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Voyage Century Online

Voyage Century Online, also known as Bounty Bay Online, is a unique MMORPG set in the 16th Century that features accurate historical representations of multiple coastal cities and unique seafaring mechanics. Become one of five classes to captain a ship and sail the game’s massive seas in search of adventure, wealth, and glory.

Publisher: IGG
Playerbase: Low
Type: MMORPG
PvP: Open World
Release Date: December 22, 2006 (NA/EU)
Pros: +Massive world. +Ship vs Ship combat.
Cons: -Poor English translations. -Awkward UI. -Pay to win elements.

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Overview

Voyage Century Overview

Voyage Century Online is a client-based historical MMORPG available on Windows. Players take control of a character that can pick from five professions: Royal Military Officer, Imperial Guardian, Caribbean Pirate, Treasure Hunter and Armed Businessman, each focusing on specific aspects of the game to suit different play styles and roles within the game world, although the character’s class does not necessarily limit the player into the recommended role. Players can level a variety of skills, from individual weapon skills, to bartering and ship building skills that are leveled up with experience, none of which are tied to the player’s profession, allowing the player free reign on how they choose to play. Characters can fight on land and at sea through the game’s MMORPG-style combat and its unique ship combat system that allows players to board enemy ships or sink them. Voyage Century is one of the few nautical MMOs along with Uncharted Waters Online and Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Voyage Century Key Features

  • Five classes – Pick a class and gain access to a plethora of unique abilities, then customize your skills to make your character unique. Play as a Royal Military Officer, Emperor Guardian, Caribbean Pirate, Treasure Hunter or Armed Businessman.
  • Auto Battle - Game has an auto battle system that plays the game for you, similar to many web based MMORPGs.
  • Customizable Skills – Pick from 17 different skills to customize your gameplay experience, allowing you to fight, collect and produce in unique ways.
  • Open world PvP – Fight other players on land or at sea, but beware of notoriety points that send you to jail.
  • City-to-City Trading – Take the role of trader and move from port to port, buying and selling goods to make a large profit, taking advantage of bartering skills to create huge multi-player trading fleets that fight off greedy pirates.
  • World exploration – Travel all over the world to find rare and unique treasures, fighting animals, sinking ships, authenticating plants and completing quests on the way.
  • PvE Instances – Tackle 22 different PvE instances for unique loot, which take place both on land and on the sea.

Voyage Century Screenshots

Voyage Century Featured Video

Voyage Century Online - Official Gameplay Trailer

Full Review

Voyage Century Review

Though it’s been available for many years in Asia and parts of Europe, Voyage Century wasn’t officially released for the North American market until April 2007 by IGG. The game has gone through several major updates since its inception. Originally, there were no classes and players started in different cities based on their character choice. The old tutorial has since been ditched in favor of a more robust questing system that slowly introduces players to the game’s basics. Voyage Century today is a much more approachable MMORPG that still retains its unique characteristics. If sailing from Lisbon to Athens than on to Seoul sounds like an exciting evening to you, read on!

It’s All Greek To Me

For such an otherwise in-depth game, Voyage Century’s character creation process is a major let down. There are four character models to choose from (two male and two female). Each has a small selection of hair and face styles but are otherwise identical. Players are given three character slots on each of the (currently) four live servers, so players should feel free to experiment with the multiple classes. You don’t actually get to pick your profession until entering the game for the first time. New players start in Athens next the all important Profession Mentor. A screen prompt asks whether the player is ready to choose a profession; answer yes and a screen appears that gives a brief description of the five available classes. If the class names sound a little odd, don’t get your hopes up for the rest of the game’s text and grammar. For more info on the classes, you can see the overview tab. Just remember that all classes are capable of fighting, gathering, and crafting, so don’t be too concerned with your first class choice.

Chose Your Profession

Remember that Profession Mentor NPC I mentioned earlier? Well, he plays by far the most important part in your character’s development. The quests he gives are simply the only way to progress in Voyage Century. Each of his quests yield an experience reward large enough to level your character up well into the late teens. Compared the quest reward experience, the small experience gained by hunting at land or sea is negligible. The point I’m trying to make here is that these quests are not optional, they act as both the game’s tutorial and primary mode of advancement. Luckily, Voyage Century as a great auto-walk feature. Not only can players pull up an area map and click on it to move, but they can click quest objectives in their quest log and automatically start walking there. The auto-walk even goes through zones and keeps going on its own! It even works at sea, guiding your ship from one port to another (more on sailing later.) The auto-walk does get stuck on occasion (the pathing is rather poorly designed), but even having to re-click once in a while is favorable to manually searching for a particular monster spawn or NPC in a capital city.

Quests and More Quests

The first few quests introduce players to the key NPCs in the city, then to land-based combat. Combat and movement work just like in most MMORPGs; point and click with the mouse. My only complaint with land-based combat is that the animals have small hit boxes, which makes it difficult to target them while either the player or target are moving. A more general problem that makes itself evident at this point is the complete lack of difficulty. New players have over 600 health and only take 1-5 damage per hit from monsters their level. The fact that players can defeat anything near their level range with two or three hits adds to the lack of challenge. I went through the first 20 levels without ever having to use a healing potion, rest, or even look at my health bar. At around level 15 you’ll be sent on your first sailing mission, which involves buying commodities from one city and delivering them to another. The ability to play on land and sea adds a whole layer of depth to Voyage Century and is a feature found only in a select few games (like Florensia and Water Margin Online).

Turn to Port, No Don’t Drop Anchor!

I have yet to play a sailing game that did not frustrate me. Whether it’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or Sid Meier’s Pirates!, trying to control a ship during combat while struggling with the wind always manages to drive me crazy. Before even setting sail, players must purchase NPC sailor crew members, provisions, cannons, and ammo. This means that during a fight there are nearly half a dozen ways for you to be screwed. The first and rarest is having your ship’s health run out. Considering the starter Dragon Ship has over 11,000 hp, this isn’t a problem. The second way is for your sail’s durability to drop to 0 rendering you immobile. This too is rare. The third and most common is for all your crew members to either die or become injured. Every time your ship is hit with a cannon barrage, it chips away at your hull but also has a chance of injuring your crew. Since the max crew on a beginner vessel is only around 100, this can happen within a few minutes of sustained attack. The final way you could end up a sitting duck is by burning through your provisions or ammo. Luckily this is a mistake generally only made once; after running out of cannon balls in the middle of a fight I learned to always carry a huge surplus. You wouldn’t believe how fast a ship with 70 cannons can burn through 2,000 cannon balls!

Skills & Advancement

Voyage Century has a standard leveling system that compliments the more important skill-based progression. There are 17+ different skills ranging from weapon skills (swords, falchions, axe, guns) to crafting and sailing related skills. Each skill ranks up as its used with a max rank of 120. While players can learn every skill, they may only max out a select few. This is because a skill will stop gaining experience at rank 31 and require a ‘phase 2 upgrade’, which is only available through a special NPC. Players only receive 8 phase 2 upgrades unless they’re willing to fork over cash at the item mall. While sailing the high seas, players will notice a particular skill that quickly gains in rank: voyage. Voyage is a special skill that all players can max out to level 100. You don’t even have to move for it to gain in rank, as long as you’re out at sea. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that this and many other skills can be grinded out even while you’re not in front of the keyboard. The game also has a built in botting system similar to the one in Jade Dynasty and GodsWar Online. Players can bring up a AFK system menu and set the game to play on it self, loot items, and so forth. This does cheapen the gameplay experience, but seems to be a standard feature in Chinese developed MMORPGs.

Grind While You Wait

Which leads me to my next complaint with the game: AFK grinders. Players can set themselves to automatically attack a target that strikes them first. Dozens of high level players activate this feature, go to a monster spawn and leave themselves afk all night. There are of course two sides to this issue: it makes ranking up much easier for everyone, but can frustrate newbies who are trying to kill ten wolves and have to compete for the spawn with a bunch of jerks. Luckily, Voyage Century boasts open PvP in most areas on land and sea. Killing innocents comes with a price, though. NPC guards and ships will attack players with high notoriety on sight. There are also dozens of different factions which players can either gain or lose reputation with. Killing NPC pirates off the coast of Crete will increase your standing with the Greeks, but lower it with the pirates. This adds a layer of nuance to the game often only found in pay-to-play games.

Advanced Techniques

Raising skill rank not only improves their use but also allows players to learn various ‘stunts’ based on those skills. For example your rank in the voyage skill effects your ramming and grappling ability. Ramming is the best way for a large vessel to knock out a small, weaker vessel in a single shot. Grappling allows one crew to board another and turn a ranged sea battle into a melee one. Certain classes are more proficient at melee so they’ll always be attempting to sail in close enough to pull off a grapple while the other ship tries to stay at a safe distance. Each profession has different stunt trees; land based, sea based, and profession (crafting.) Leveling, skills, and stunts are a lot to wrap your head around, but it all reveals itself in an orderly manner while playing. Few free games give players this much control over their character’s growth.

Explore The World

Combat is not the only road to take in Voyage Century. Those who prefer a more calming career can pursue the life of a merchant who is only interested in turning the highest profit. Each city has different commodities: Athens is renowned for its fish while Istanbul has the best olives. Buying a cargo full of one item and transporting it to a distant shore can net a huge profit. Similarly, players can mine ore, cut trees, fish, farm, become shipbuilders, blacksmiths, tailors, or alchemists, but even the most honest businessman would be a fool to travel unarmed. The open PvP aspects of the game make it a necessity to always be ready to defend yourself from scoundrels at sea. Players who just want to explore the vast oceans or have a completionist streak can travel the world in search of discoveries. The exploration feature in Voyage Century is much lauded; visiting Alexandria will unlock information about the ancient city in your log book, so will visiting the Spanish port of Genoa. There are literally hundreds of discoveries to be made and filling your guidebook cold take many months of gameplay. I’ve tried to cover the most important aspects of the game in the space I had, but I’ll end by saying that Voyage Century is large enough to have its own database program which details all the game’s cities, quests, items, monsters, nobility titles, ship types, and so on. Such an in-depth game is not for everyone, the learning curve is much higher than in other MMORPGs, but for those looking for a game to get absorbed in, Voyage Century makes a fine selection.

Final Verdict: Good

Voyage Century is a breath of fresh air in a market saturated with generic fantasy titles. The ability to hunt on land or wage war at sea along with the option to become a merchant or explorer add a great deal of depth to this already massive game.

Screenshots

Voyage Century Screenshots

Videos

Voyage Century Videos

Playlist: Voyage Century Online

Links

Voyage Century Links

Voyage Century Official Site
Voyage Century Wiki (Database / Guides)
Voyage Century Wikipedia

System Requirements

Voyage Century Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows XP or later
CPU: Pentium 3 500 MHz or better
RAM: 512 MB
Video Card: GeForce 2 MX400 Series
Hard Disk Space: 4 GB Free Space

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows XP or later
CPU: Pentium 4 2 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Video Card: GeForce 9500 Series
Hard Disk Space: 4 GB Free Space

Music

Voyage Century Music

Additional Info

Voyage Century Additional Info

Developer: Snail Games
Publisher: IGG

Release Date: December 22, 2006

Voyage Century Expansions:

Doom Treasure Released November 30, 2007
Colony Age Released June 24, 2008
New Era of Conquest: Released February 24, 2009
Atlantis Released: March 1, 2010
Harbor Blockade Released: June 27, 2011
The Gate to the Poseidon Temple Released: December 14, 2011
The Pirate King's Treasures Released: May 9, 2012
Hurricane Island Mystery Released February 12, 2014

Voyage Century Online is developed by Snail Games and published in the US by IGG. It was the first game developed by Snail Games after its founding in 2000 by Shi Hai, and has been online in multiple languages and countries since 2006. Snail Games is one of the first 3D gaming development companies in China, and has released multiple successful titles such as Taichi Panda, Ministry of War, and Black Gold Online. Many of their games have been commercially successful, and are moving into the future as a worldwide developer and telecommunications provider through Snail Mobile, which offers innovative mobile hardware directed at a gaming audience.