Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat

The Good
With a pirate for a mother (deceased) and a governor for a father (almost deceased), you’d expect Katarina de Leon to have some issues or at least some sense of conflict. For instance, doesn’t it make her dad’s job harder if he’s trying to rule Buccaneer Bay while she’s blowing up any ships around it? It’s not like the Black Kat sails under a Letter of Marquis; the Wind Dancer flies the Jolly Roger. Unfortunately, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat isn’t the type of game to answer questions.

Black Kat begins her quest shortly after her father’s dastardly death at the hands of Captain Hawke. Her first goal is reclaiming Buccaneer Bay from Hawke’s men. I’m not sure who she’s reclaiming it for since crabs and monkeys are the only lifeforms aside from Hawke’s men. Making her way afoot (think Tomb Raider), Kat finds and engages enemy the pirates.

Combat requires a degree of give and take. Going head-to-head against sword wielding opponents means Kat will have to time her attacks and blocks to keep them off-balance. Attacking (pressing the X button) swings her sword. She can perform combos (pressing the X button a few times) harrying a single foe or spreading her swings to several foes if she’s surrounded. Every time she scores a hit she charges a meter which lets her briefly freeze opponents while she unleashes a flurry of blows on them.

After Kat accomplishes her goals on land, it’s time to take to the sea. Controlling the Wind Dancer (also from a third-person perspective) Kat engages Hawke’s ships. Pirates has a battle camera which locks on to the nearest enemy ship, but it’s up to the player to line up the Wind Dancer’s broadsides before unleashing a barrage. Kat also faces enemy forts to liberate and enemy towers to destroy.

Ocean combat is relatively easy once you’ve figured out range and aiming. Depending on how much damage ships take, they might lose sails or masts affecting their steering. Direct hits knock cargo overboard for your crew to retrieve. As ships take more damage they catch fire with the blaze eventually spreading to the powder kegs resulting in satisfying explosions.

Of the two combat systems, sea combat tends to be more satisfying than land. I perceived a bit more strategy in the random ship encounters and going up against a fort is always dicey, but with a great payoff. Liberated forts swell Kat’s coffers and they also sell great items. Kat buys lumber and cloth to repair the Wind Dancer during combat. She can also upgrade her ship (ultimately to the prized Galleon), add more cannons, or buy special cannon balls: chained ones, incendiary, or stink bombs.

Back on land, Kat’s actions progress the story. Different islands hold maps unlocking more islands on the world map. The islands contain treasure chests, visible and buried. Kat senses the buried ones (the controller shakes) and she digs them up with the press of a button. Islands also house special items. Kat finds hearts ala Zelda to increase her health. As the story progresses, Kat finds better swords and ranged weapons: throwing knives and bombs. Magic items abound: tikis which freeze enemies or cause earthquakes, potions of invisibility, and more await. And, of course, there are many enemies.

Pirates is set in a fantasy world. While running through an island, Kat might find a teleportation circle which transports her to a haunted island crawling with skeletons, flying skulls, and banshee-like Sirens. She faces creatures like teleporting voodoo warriors and, later, demons and worse. Bosses, which require the most strategy, are the best realized. A battle against a Giant Crab is a multistage effort requiring getting the crab to flip over and reveal its vulnerable underbelly.

Pirates has great ambient sound and some nice scoring, especially in the earlier tropic isles. Graphics, however, are a mixed bag. The different islands have their own theme: desert, graveyard, snow, but textures aren’t convincing. Character models have smooth animation, but lack any real detail. Aside from a few slowdowns, the most jarring effect is when Kat almost falls into the water and she’s teleported back on to dry land. The sea mode, though, looks great. Terrific water effects show schools of fish and sunken reefs. Combat looks spectacular, with each cannon ball being shown—often ripping through a ship’s hull.

The Bad
Between the land mode and the sea mode, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is really two games in one. Unfortunately neither one is that good. The core of the game is sailing around a group of islands, finding an island to land on, and finding a map which leads you to another group of islands. There are several quests for Kat, but they all involve finding the 5 widgets scattered across the land, where widgets stands for flowers, masks, pieces of a map, and/or fallen stars.

Exploring an island involves finding the path which leads around the island and back to your ship. Whatever enemies appear on that island respawn, so there’s little point in fighting them save for whatever treasure they drop. Typically they don’t drop enough to make it worth your while.

The real treasure is to be found in the treasure chests, either the ones just lying around or the buried ones. Finding the buried ones would be more enjoyable if it didn’t entail inching around until you hit the correct hotspot while fighting off respawning enemies. Then there’s the bother of having the right key. When you do find a new key, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth revisiting the islands you’ve seen just to get more treasure. If anything, it makes sense to wait until you have all the keys you need before backtracking, but I can’t see caring that much.

For how much time you spend on land, it’s amazing how dull and repetitive it is. The enemies are either nuisances or ungodly menaces like the mad bombers or the annoying automated turrets which spit out cannonballs with unerring accuracy. Luckily you can run past most non-boss enemies. Boss battles break up the monotonous gameplay, but they’re too far between. Where’s the sense of adventure? Kate controls very well and is a skilled jumper, but none of that seems to matter. Pirates is bereft of any sort of puzzle and any type of exploration is limited to venturing just a little off the path.

Luckily Kat can save when she’s on land, but there is no option to save while at sea. You’d think anytime the Wind Dancer docked you’d have the option, but Kat has to disembark and find a “Save Parrot.” Not that there is often a need to reload at sea, since (like on land) most sea battles are pointless and are easily avoided. The only thing that matters (except for a few plot battles) is liberating the forts. Enemy ships respawn like enemies on land, so there’s no need to engage them unless you’re interested.

Pirates is a long game that begs for depth. There’s no character interaction save for a few quick cutscenes. There’s nothing intriguing about Kat, except for the fact that her figure warrants codes for ten different bikinis. She’s voiced by someone who sounds like they are attempting an accent, but since Pirates bears no resemblance to the real world, I couldn’t even guess as to what kind of accent it is.

The Bottom Line
If a demo was ever released of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat, I’m sure it presented a compelling product: Lara Craft meets Captain Blood. It actually would work well in small doses, but play for any length of time and it’s painfully obvious that Pirates relies on the worst type of rinse-and-repeat design. Every new area on the world map offers the same experience, just a little bit harder. I know I’m in a bad spot when I refer to a walkthrough just to see how much of game I still have to slog through (I’m looking at you Return to Arms). I’m the type of gamer who mourns out-of-print or rare games, but this thing needs to go back to the vault.

Frankly I blame Sid Meier, who created the ultimate pirate simulator back in 1987. I might have enjoyed Kat’s press X to attack if Meier’s game hadn’t given me three attack options. I might have been excited unlocking different sections of the World Map, if Meier’s game hadn’t let me sail anywhere I wanted to in the entire Caribbean. Blowing up countless ships might have been more entertaining, if Meier’s game didn’t have features like letting the enemy surrender, or boarding parties, or capturing ships and adding them to my fleet. Hell, I might not have loved inching around a patch of dirt trying to hit a hotspot, if Meier’s game didn’t have crusty sailors sitting in the back of the taverns with treasure maps for sale.