It’s a fair assumption to make, upon a cursory glance at Pirates of Black Cove, that it intends to be a modern follow-up to Sid Meier’s Pirates!. As one of the first of its kind, Pirates! combined aspects of strategy, management, and exploration to provide a unique experience that many fans still enjoy decades later, whether it be in its original form, the 2004 remake, or even the recent iOS-powered entry. Pirates of Black Cove, developed by Nitro Games (East India Company, Commander: Conquest of the Americas) and published by the strategically-minded Paradox Interactive, attempts to invoke much of the nostalgia, aesthetics and gameplay many have grown to love, and for the most part is successful. And yet, while Pirates of Black Cove does use the framework set down by Sid Meier’s classic, it instead bakes in role-playing and real-time strategy elements to provide something distinct. While the budget-priced ($20 USD) result is competent and well-presented, some unfortunate flaws, coupled with a decidedly casually-oriented approach, mean that both fans of Pirates! and more dedicated role-playing gamers may find themselves left wanting.
The story on offer in Pirates of Black Cove is simple, but well-told. Set in the Caribbean, the eponymous Black Cove pirate clan are terrorising the seas, while three other rival clans, the Buccaneers, Corsairs, and, uh, Pirates, try their best to one-up and prey on each other. As a rising star in the world of pirating, your character must first gain the respect of those three factions, and unite them against the Black Cove. It’s all fairly predictable and standard, but it’s told with a degree of witticism that clearly draws from the Monkey Island games of old. It’s admittedly not on the same level of quality, but there’s an earnestness and underlying cynicism that’s hard to ignore. When a game somehow manages to include an Arabic pirate faction in its Caribbean mythos, in conflict the Aztecs and worked with an, er, liberal retelling of the story of Aladdin, it’s tough to deny myself a silly grin or two.
As mentioned, Pirates of Black Cove doesn’t so much build upon the original Sid Meier game as it does take the framework and use it to build something different. Split into two components, open-world exploration with naval combat, and real-time strategy land battles, it achieves an enjoyable balance between the two, at least on a structural level. While there are indeed role-playing aspects to Black Cove that run throughout it, it’d be inaccurate to call the game an RPG, as those mechanics are built in as augmentations to the two other modes of play, and don’t really have as much impact as you’d expect. In fact, in many respects the game opens itself to comparison to another Paradox strategy/RPG title, Mount & Blade, but with a much more defined narrative, simpler mechanics, and a completely different aesthetic. The two titles aren’t entirely identical, of course, but there are enough similarities that calling Pirates of Black Cove a more casually-oriented version of Mount & Blade isn’t at all disingenuous.
If you’ve ever played Sid Meier’s Pirates!, you’ll know roughly what to expect from the seafaring portions of Black Cove: you sail the ocean, hunt down caches of treasure, search for collectables and special artifacts, and, of course, other ships to plunder and towns to pillage. The naval combat that periodically springs up both during quests and during free-roaming is action-oriented and fairly arcadey, opting to go for a fast pace and precision timing rather than any real simulation elements. It’s a game of cat and mouse that relies as much on your positioning as it does on your timing with port and starboard cannons. The physics simulation does add a good sense of weight to the fighting, with different ships featuring significantly different handling and firing characteristics. The controls are straightforward, with WASD used to control ship navigation and speed, while Q and E serve to fire port and starboard cannons; mouse controls are also an option, and I typically found myself using a mix of the two depending on the situation. For the most part, this side of the game works well, and is probably the most enjoyable aspect of Pirates of Black Cove.
The real-time strategy portions of the game don’t fare quite as well. You’ll be controlling the game through a top-down overhead perspective reminiscent of just about any modern strategy title, with standard point-and-click controls for unit selection, moving and attacking. Much like Blizzard’s Warcraft III, you’ll control a hero unit (and later several), who will level up persistently throughout the game, gaining increased attributes and additional characteristics, which can apply either to the real-time strategy mode or to sailing. Each hero has three slots for unit squads under his or her control; effectively this serves as a unit cap, though you’ll control the swashbucklers and sharpshooters under your command as groups rather than individuals. The units never get all too creative in their designs, but there are definite tradeoffs to be had, and you’ll be best served with a varied and balanced army, as the special abilities of certain units can make battles go more smoothly when used well.
Unfortunately, while this portion of the game is playable, it doesn’t quite offer the same finesse of control and strategic depth of other games in the genre. For instance, while units are organised into squads in a manner similar to Ground Control, or the more recent Company of Heroes and Dawn of War II, there’s never a real need to micro-manage, use cover and terrain, or even bother much with positioning – you’ll be well served by simply moving your units forward and slaughtering whatever’s in your path. The main exception to this is friendly fire, where the more powerful units require some additional management to use properly without destroying your own forces. While the combat can be fun on occasion, it’s rare be truly challenged, especially once you gain a large army; because of this, the combat grows tiresome even fairly early into the game.
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.
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.
