I’m not really an arcade player, but I do enjoy some forms of these games on Android, especially if they’re like War Wings, pretty well done. However, I recently came upon Ships of Battle - Age of Pirates - Warship Battle and it seemed like a decent age of sail arcade simulation. It has over 5 million downloads and an aggregate score of 4.5 based on almost 120,000 reviews. That’s a hit game right there, by all accounts.
However, when I first tried it, I came across a combat system that is both unclear and really unrewarding. Sail ships games must be all about broadside fire and visual trajectories of the cannons so that they can tell you where you’re firing and hitting. Also, you have to have an indicator which side of your ship you want to engage and fire their cannons. None of that exists in the game as far as I can see. Instead, you have an unrealistic chase mechanic where you drop your sails so that your ship is either very fast or super-fast and you fire blindly against the enemy (again, I’m not sure how can you tell if you’re making damage aside from watching their health counter).
It’s possible that the development team focused on other things, like the base-building and general (I’m guessing wildly here) F2P elements, but it seems wrong to me to have a pirate sailing game where ship combat works this awfully.
To be completely honest, I didn’t give the game too much of a chance after my first duel on the high seas - it just didn’t seem worth it. From what I have experienced, the reviews and number of downloads of Ships of Battle - Age of Pirates - Warship Battle truly are odd and mysterious.