Pirates of Black Cove Review
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The second major portion of the role-playing side of the game comes in the form of quests. The three pirate factions will have plenty of different missions available for the taking throughout the game, some relating to the main storyline and others simply improving relations with each faction. In a slightly disappointing turn, it's necessary to finish all the missions to finish the game, story-related or not, and since you'll receive a new hero for each faction you fully win over, the game encourages you to follow a more rigid structure than the open world gameplay would suggest. The upside of this is a more cohesive and better-paced narrative, and a reasonable difficulty curve, but in this sort of game, it's hard to really consider that a priority. The actual mission design fares better. There is a fair mix of different quest types, with simple naval raids, escort missions, theft of enemy vessels, combat-heavy strategy missions, and more. It never gets to the point where things feel very complicated, but there is enough variety available to keep missions interesting. Some of the high points include a naval battle against a giant Kraken, the rescue of a captive from Montezuma of the Aztecs, and a raid on a colony of Sirens. All of it is executed firmly with tongue in cheek, and there's plenty of entertaining dialogue to go around. Unfortunately, once again, the real-time strategy portions stand out as the weaker of the bunch, with the large and often rather empty environments making lengthy, uneventful marches commonplace. Smaller levels coupled with more multi-stage objectives would have gone a long way towards alleviating this problem.
There are a few other features to be mentioned, though they probably aren't integral to enjoyment of Pirates of Black Cove. The biggest stand-out is a crafting system, though in keeping with the game's simplicity, it's fairly barebones. Ingredients collected on the overworld map can be collected and then brought to a Mad Alchemist at each of the pirate strongholds, which yields anything from health-bestowing Grog, to potions that grant temporary invisibility or invulnerability. These potions aren't necessary to completing the game, but they can definitely be useful from time to time. The ability to wander the open seas is, of course, appreciated, and when not on missions it's possible to attack other ships, or stage raids on just about any of the islands... if you want to unlock all the ships and upgrades, and level up your heroes fully, then the open world side of the game becomes significantly more relevant, though a faction warfare system or randomly-generated/repeatable quests would have added a lot of incentive to keep playing after the credits roll. On top of this, there's a wide variety of collectables throughout the game world, though they're really only there for the OCD types... with no Steam integration at launch, there's no achievements to satisfy that crowd, though Facebook and Twitter integration allows for status updates on your conquests.
As far as presentation goes, Pirates of Black Cove fares much better than its decidedly mixed gameplay. Visually, it's vibrant and warm, with just the right amount of colour, and a cartoony, but not entirely exaggerated, sense of style, one which instantly reminds of the newer Monkey Island games by Telltale. Thankfully, the ocean you'll be spending much of your time looking at throughout the game also looks very nice. although some of the textures and character models are a little bit primitive by modern standards. The game runs quite smoothly, and should run well on even older systems, unless you turn on the ambient occlusion option, which, on my fairly high-end rig, cut the framerate down from 100 to 35. If there's one real complaint to be leveled against the visuals, it's simply that the presentation is rather repetitive, with no dynamic weather or time of day, and the same textures, vegetation, etc. appearing again and again, save for some parts of Mexico, South America, and the final location seen near the end of the game. The game clearly isn't concerned with providing a realistic Caribbean setting, so seeing more desert, swamp, deep jungle, snow and ice, etc. would have been nice.
Likewise, the audio is equally cheery, with catchy Latin-influenced music punctuated by some more dramatic orchestral pieces when in combat, though, like the visuals, the music does tend to grow repetitive after a couple of hours. Sound effects are equally competent, with the sound of the sea breeze, lapping waves, gulls, and crash of steel doing a good job of establishing the atmosphere on both the water and in battle. Voice acting, on the other hand, is a mixed bag, with some characters provided great performances, and others clearly voiced by members of the development team, or perhaps friends and family - it's nothing offensive, but the inconsistency in quality is noticeable, and one gets the sense that with more voice talent, the game's sense of humour would have been that much more effective.
The only quirks I experienced with my review copy come down to more technical concerns. I fell victim to a fair number of crashes during gameplay, without apparent cause, both while out at sea and during loading screens. These were frequent enough to bring me out of the game, and combined with the lack of an autosave feature, I ended up losing a couple of hours' worth of progress during my play-through. The number of options on offer is also less than I'd prefer from a native PC game; for example, the graphics settings, while serviceable, don't allow for any anti-aliasing. More significantly, there's no way to rebind keys, so if something about the controls doesn't suit you, you're out of luck, though the defaults will be fine for most players. Whether or not any updates will be released to address these issues remains to be seen.
Now, to be honest, I'm sounding overly harsh on Pirates of Black Cove, and perhaps rightly so. When taken in the context of a strategy-RPG along the lines of Mount & Blade, or even an adventure game like Pirates!, it's hard not to feel a little bit disappointed. While all the ingredients are present and accounted for, some of them feel undercooked and, at times, sub-par. The legacies of other games loom large, and while it may be an unfair comparison in some respects, Pirates of Black Cove fully invites that comparison by drawing both its foundation and additional elements from other games. To speak frankly, if you go into this game expecting the same level of depth or polish as the above-mentioned titles, you will probably walk away feeling a little disappointed.
In spite of all this, when one examines Pirates of Black Cove from a different perspective, one that acknowledges it as a lighthearted strategy romp with some basic RPG mechanics and adventure gameplay to liven it up, it's much easier to be favourable, and I think this is the audience the game is intended for: those who want something easy to pick up and play in short half-hour sessions, and who may want gameplay that recalls prior games without necessarily requiring the same investment. It's got a good sense of style, it's visually attractive, its mechanics and gameplay are solid and varied, the RPG elements are enough to give a little bit of flavour to the proceedings, it's got enjoyable and arcade-y naval combat, and the sense of wit in the writing is fun even if it never quite reaches the examples it aspires to. If all that sounds appealing to you, then Pirates of Black Cove becomes far easier to recommend. For those looking for more, perhaps in time, given a sequel, future patches, or expansions, Pirates of Black Cove will develop into a more consistent game, with more substance to match its style.
