Curse of the Sea Rats Overview – Overview

There is no such thing as a scarcity of 2D metroidvanias within the present indie area, a sentence I’m constructive I’ve typed at the least thrice earlier than this. Because of this, in case you’re going so as to add on to the pile, it’s essential ensure you have some side of your sport that makes it stand out from the remainder, and whereas we’ve seen a big uptick in metroidvanias with hand-drawn artwork lately, it nonetheless tends to be sufficient to seize my consideration on the very least. Enter Curse of the Sea Rats, a sport that first got here into my view throughout certainly one of final yr’s Steam Festivals. The demo confirmed a number of promise: 4 playable characters, hand-drawn artwork paying homage to a 2D animated movie, a enjoyable pirate aesthetic, and many others. Nevertheless, the sport sadly doesn’t fairly stay as much as the promise it exhibits, and whereas it’s not a failure, it sadly incorporates issues that maintain it again from reaching its true potential.

Curse of the Sea Rats begins on a British ship carrying a number of prisoners, together with our 4 most important characters. When the ship crashes someplace on the Irish coast, the pirate witch Flora Burn takes the chance to rework all people on board right into a rat. She then escapes along with her crew, kidnapping the Admiral’s son on her manner out. Determined to get his son again and break Flora’s curse, the Admiral provides a deal to those prisoners: he’ll set them free and strike down expenses that they had in opposition to them in the event that they defeat the witch and return his son safely. The 4 agree and set off searching for the witch, studying of her energy supply: a medallion with a connection to historical magic. Nevertheless, this medallion is incomplete, with our four-prisoner crew having the lacking piece in hand. In an effort to attain Flora Burn, the quartet should discover the island of their new rat kinds, participating with Flora’s crew on the best way to interrupt the curse and take her medallion away.

You possibly can play as certainly one of 4 characters, every with their very own fashion of fight. David Douglas is an American revolutionary soldier armed with a cutlass, Buffalo Calf is a Cheyenne huntress making use of daggers for each shut and ranged preventing, Bussa is a fugitive slave from Barbados who fights utilizing his large fists, and Akane Yamakawa is a Japanese warrior wielding a naginata. The place this solid differentiates itself is of their total moveset, with their common combos, parrying talents, air assaults, and magic being distinctive to every character. Sadly, that is actually the one factor completely different between them, as none of them have any type of traversal talents to themselves. Exterior of fight, each character performs the identical, goes the identical velocity, jumps the identical top, and shares the identical total upgrades. Every character does have their very own talent tree, however fully filling only one character’s talent tree is very easy and quick, and infrequently makes them so highly effective that there’s little incentive to ever swap to a different one. The complete sport may be performed in native co-op with as much as 4 gamers, however that is seemingly the one manner you’ll ever see any character aside from the one you instantly gravitate to and take by the entire sport.

Fight total feels high-quality in Sea Rats; hits really feel like they’ve influence, and blocking an enemy’s assault is normally fairly satisfying. I personally gravitated in direction of Akane, because the longer attain of her naginata match finest with my private playstyle, as did her water-based magic. Bosses are effectively animated and distinctive sufficient from one another, with a few of them even referencing different video games (together with one that’s actually simply Dracula from Castlevania however a rat). The voice performing for many characters is a bit questionable total, however I personally discovered the cheesiness of the road reads so as to add to the attraction in the long run. Sadly what took away from the attraction was the multitude of bugs I skilled over the course of my playthrough. If I switched characters proper earlier than a cutscene, there would generally be an issue the place the mistaken voice would learn the strains. For instance at one level I talked to a gaggle of drunk pirates as Akane, however as I had only recently converted from Douglas, it was his voice that learn the road in query. Additionally, in case you’re questioning whether or not or not the 4 characters have their very own dialogue in conditions like that, sadly they don’t, each character seems to be studying from the identical script for many of the sport.

One other bug I skilled was the sport forgetting I had acquired a listing improve that was purported to let me purchase a better variety of well being potions, subsequently holding me on the base quantity for a big portion of the sport. This finally fastened itself, however it was annoying for the time it occurred. Lots of the issues I bumped into have been or will quickly be patched in line with the builders, however sadly it was a tad too late to not paint my expertise at the least a bit bit. General, Curse of the Sea Rats is a sport I believe has a number of potential, however the samey characters and bugs maintain it again from being what it looks as if it actually could possibly be. Should you’re actually itching for a brand new metroidvania expertise, or simply actually like rats for some purpose, you would positively do quite a bit worse than this one, however I sadly can’t say I’d advocate you sprint to the eshop as quick as you possibly can for it.