Uncharted Waters (1990)

Uncharted Waters is unlike any game I have ever played and I completely resonated with it. This game takes place in the age of exploration (early 1500s) and you are Leon Franco. Your family used to be Portuguese nobles, but has lost their status since your father got lost out at sea. At the start of the game you are given a ship and told to go make a name for yourself. That’s pretty much all you get to go off of. You are then thrust out into the world with a tiny amount of cash and get to do whatever you please.

This is not a simple game. There are many different systems taking place throughout the world and you will need to manage a plethora of things in order to succeed. The first issue you may discover is that a crew of people does not survive off of air. Food is pretty expensive in the early game and, more importantly, takes up room in storage. Each ship is only able to house so much space and everything will take up a portion of that space: bunks for the crew, food, water, cannons, and cargo. You need to manage how much cargo (gold, grapes, sugar, coral) to buy so that there is still room for food and water for the crew.

My early game was mostly focused on trading throughout Europe and building up a wealth of money. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t expose any trade routes here; however, the idea is as old as time. Buy supplies in a port where they are cheap and sell them in a port where they are expensive. Interestingly, UW has an economic system in it that will affect the price of goods in that port. After dumping thousands of dollars worth of an item in a port, the local populace will want it less and the price will go down. Conversely, buying the town’s supply of sugar will cause prices to go up.

Eventually, I decided on two things. First, my crappy starting ship was not going to cut it in the long haul. Second, I should probably acquire a fleet of ships instead of only one. There are two options for buying a new ship and they are the same as buying a car in real life: new or used? The docks will have a selection of used ships available to purchase instantly. The issue is that they may not be the model you want or have the correct configuration of bunks, guns, cargo. You are limited to that port’s stock of ships. I only purchased used ships until I was ready to create my end-game galleons.

New ships are cool because you can specify the exact parameters you want on them. Plan on being the world’s richest person? You will probably want zero guns, minimum crew, and a ton of cargo space. Plan on bringing honor to the nation of Portugal and viciously killing any Turkish or Spanish fleets with the misfortune to show up on the same screen as you? Max out your guns and bunks because you will need as many as possible to take on the harder fleets. My recommendation would be to wait until much later in the game before engaging in the combat system though. Creating a Naval fleet is expensive and maintaining it even more so.

You can also have up to 6 ships in your fleet and in order to have more than one, you will need to recruit captains to man them. They can be found throughout the world at the bars and will decide to join you based on your sailing or combat level. The mates all have their own stats and will also level with the player as the game goes on. I guess this is also a good place to discuss stats. From my experience, they don’t matter at all. I didn’t even take them into consideration throughout my playthrough. Max out charisma in the starting screen because it helps you get mates. Other than that, it really does not matter.

After building a merchant fleet, I got a strong desire to explore the world. Northern Europe and the Mediterranean are cool and all… but it was time for me to spread out in search of greater riches. Therefore, like any 16th century adventurer, I attempted sailing to the Indies… only to find that there was no Suez canal. You know, I should have known that the Suez canal (and the Panama Canal too) didn’t exist, but a man can hope. Instead, I needed to make the excruciating journey around the Cape of Good Hope to get to India, the Middle East, East Africa, and the Far East.

Good f*****g luck traveling around West Africa. The seas over there suck and you will constantly be stuck in storms. When a storm hits you may as well put your controller down and pray. You have no control over where you are going and will constantly be losing ship durability and crew members. If you did not upgrade your ships at all then you may as well restart the game. You will die.

In addition to storms, I only encountered one other (non-human) danger and that was seaweed. This is definitely worse than a storm if you have good ships. Seaweed will destroy the rudder on one of your ships, making you unable to move. You are now at the mercy of the currents. You now can choose to either cut that ship loose and sail without it or wait up to 10-15 real minutes for you to drift near shore (where you can land and fix the ship). Seaweed was most prevalent around the Caribbean and China for me.

The good news is that the power of money can potentially save you from these natural disasters, and they are disasters. If you fit a figurehead on your flagship then the chance of a disaster is reduced. The best figureheads reduce this likelihood significantly enough for them to not be much of a problem any more.

Eventually, after exploring the world and making a fortune, you will start getting tasks from the King of Portugal. These quests range from killing a specific fleet, acquiring a trade good, or finding a treasure. This is the real end goal of the game. After completing each of his quests, you will gain a rank in the nobility of Portugal. One of these quests will eventually be the final quest and you will beat the game after completing it. The story is really basic and doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Piece of advice: If you are tasked with defeating another fleet then find out where that fleet is headed and constantly enter/exit that portion of the map. It may take you 10 minutes before the captain arrives, but it is better than wasting an hour actively hunting them down.

Sea combat is a lifestyle choice in Uncharted Waters. Much like how one day a man will quit going to the club and pick up golf, you will need to make the conscious decision that you are finished with the life of a trader to become an admiral. It will take millions of gold, tons of food, and the best ships to be successful in combat. In order to battle another ship, you need to go up to that ship during the day and choose to attack it. You are then brought to a strategy RPG map. The goal of this is simple: kill the enemy flagship. Nothing else matters unless you want to grind combat XP. Also, put cannons on your ship. The other guns are useless and boarding is not as good as just shooting the ship down.

I loved Uncharted Waters. I spent multiple nights lost in this world and immersing myself in exploration. Places like Australia, South America, and the Arctic really feel foreign and unexplored. You will die if you are stuck around there without money to feed your crew. The systems are deep and barely explained, so I would recommend doing a little online research into tips/tricks. The issue is that there isn’t a ton of documentation around. I am by no means an UW expert, but I did beat the game. Please comment on this post if you ever have a question and I will respond if I see it.

You need to be the right person for me to recommend this game to. There is rarely ever immediate feedback and quick rewards. Just traveling around will take 10-20 minutes. However, if you are a person who wants to engage with deep systems, explore the world, and are willing to write things down (pen and paper) then Uncharted Waters is calling you to take action. I don’t think I will ever forget my time with this game. It was a masterpiece.