GB Feature: Pirates of Black Cove Review
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What about the role-playing, then? Well, as I've mentioned, Pirates of Black Cove isn't so much a straight role-playing experience, as it is a game which adds RPG elements to provide a level of persistence and progression throughout the story and open-world pirating. At the beginning of the game, you'll choose your main hero for the duration of the campaign, the three of which have differing dialogue, personalities and abilities, but don't deviate greatly other than possessing slightly different stats and special attacks. Throughout the game, your main hero character levels up and gains new abilities, allowing for a well-realised sense of progression.
Unfortunately, that feeling of progression is hampered by a lack of control over it. Since there's no real way to anticipate level-up progress or to increase stats manually, it often feels like the leveling is on auto-pilot, happening at arbitrary intervals rather than at predictable measures one can plan around. The only direct influence you'll have over your hero's progression is which "badges" you select at given intervals, which are simple passive upgrades that provide bonuses like "faster ship movement speed" or "more accurate ranged units". The differences are significant enough to be felt, but without more defined role-playing mechanics, they don't cover enough distance on their own to make for a satisfying system. The ship-building side of the game is a bit more sophisticated, with a wide range of vessels available to unlock, purchase and commandeer, then later upgrade and enhance with new special weapons. Even so, there's little in the way of real choice to be made - all upgrades are more or less flat improvements, rather than real trade-offs, and without that dynamic, the mechanics feel half-baked, when with a few tweaks they could have been a good deal more compelling.
