Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat - Review

I remember a few things about Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat when I originally played it. I remember enjoying it, I remember thinking it was very fun, and I remember getting fairly far in the game. This time around things were a bit different. First off, as far as I can tell I didn't get far in the game at all. My original save was maybe three to four hours into the game. And as for the liking and enjoying it? Boy how times have changed.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat isn't a bad game per se, but it does have a ton of little things that all added up to me not really enjoying myself while playing it. It was the little things here and there that turned what could have been a very fun game into something that was frustrating and annoying.

First things first, the targeting. There is none. Before I go off about this I just want to say that I'm not sure there was targeting in games on the Xbox, it might not have been capable of it... but good god does this game need it. What I'm talking about is locking on to one target. If I want to throw a keg of black powder at a bad guy, I want it to hit. In this game I don't know how many times my hits were off to the side because I wasn't looking directly at my target. This goes for the land battles as well as the sea battles.

The camera. The camera wasn't awful on land, but at sea it occasionally would get very annoying. By the end of the game I had pretty much figured it out, but camera angles should be something very intuitive and natural. Not something I have to "figure out."

The voice acting. The voice acting ranged from awful to decent. I've heard worse, but I've also certainly heard better.

The goddamn fetch quests. Hey! Katrina! I need you to find these stars for me. Hey! Katrina! Would you see if you can also find these headhunter masks? There's several of these in the game. You have to find some trinkets for some person. And of course they're scattered all over the many lands. Now granted only one of these types of quests is mandatory to do to finish the game but it was still annoying as hell. Especially when you considered that they gave you no real clues as to where some of these items were. Not even a "Hey, this item is on this island." You were supposed to go exploring and find them for yourself, or have found them in the past. I finally had to get a walkthrough to find some of the items because I had no clue as to where they were. It ruined the pace of the game completely for me. I didn't want to have to wander from island to island trying to find a treasure chest. Especially when I had to go a loading screen every new island I went to, and loading screens is where I tended to get dirty disc errors.

I'm not saying that all of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat was bad. Exploring the different islands was kind of fun, the story was decent, and the different islands where very well themed and each had their own feel to them. The bad guys were interesting and the bosses were fun, though some where incredibly difficult. I think the thing that disappoints me the most is that it seems with a little polishing the game could have been so much better. It had a lot of appeal and could have potentially been a very good game, but the things it had working against it just turned it into a mediocre game.

Squid.