Curse of the Sea Rats Overview – Overview

There isn’t a scarcity of 2D metroidvanias within the present indie area, a sentence I’m constructive I’ve typed not less than thrice earlier than this. For that reason, should you’re going so as to add on to the pile, it is advisable to be sure to have some side of your sport that makes it stand out from the remaining, and whereas we’ve seen a big uptick in metroidvanias with hand-drawn artwork in recent times, 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 12 months’s Steam Festivals. The demo confirmed quite a lot of promise: 4 playable characters, hand-drawn artwork harking back to a 2D animated movie, a enjoyable pirate aesthetic, and so on. Nevertheless, the sport sadly doesn’t fairly reside 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 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 together with her crew, kidnapping the Admiral’s son on her means out. Determined to get his son again and break Flora’s curse, the Admiral gives 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 in quest of the witch, studying of her energy supply: a medallion with a connection to historical magic. Nevertheless, this medallion is incomplete, with our four-prisoner workforce having the lacking piece in hand. As a way to attain Flora Burn, the quartet should discover the island of their new rat kinds, partaking 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 model 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 combating, 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 general moveset, with their common combos, parrying skills, air assaults, and magic being distinctive to every character. Sadly, that is actually the one factor totally different between them, as none of them have any type of traversal skills to themselves. Outdoors of fight, each character performs the identical, goes the identical velocity, jumps the identical top, and shares the identical general upgrades. Every character does have their very own ability tree, however utterly filling only one character’s ability tree is really easy and quick, and sometimes makes them so highly effective that there’s little incentive to ever swap to a different one. Your complete sport might be performed in native co-op with as much as 4 gamers, however that is possible the one means you’ll ever see any character apart from the one you instantly gravitate to and take by way of the entire sport.

Fight general feels tremendous in Sea Rats; hits really feel like they’ve affect, 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 greatest with my private playstyle, as did her water-based magic. Bosses are nicely 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 appearing for many characters is a bit questionable general, however I personally discovered the cheesiness of the road reads so as to add to the allure in the long run. Sadly what took away from the allure was the multitude of bugs I skilled over the course of my playthrough. If I switched characters proper earlier than a cutscene, there would typically be an issue the place the mistaken voice would learn the traces. For instance at one level I talked to a bunch of drunk pirates as Akane, however as I had only in the near past converted from Douglas, it was his voice that learn the road in query. Additionally, should 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 a lot of the sport.

One other bug I skilled was the sport forgetting I had acquired a listing improve that was presupposed to let me purchase the next variety of well being potions, subsequently preserving me on the base quantity for a big portion of the sport. This finally fastened itself, nevertheless it was annoying for the time it occurred. Lots of the issues I bumped into have been or will quickly be patched in keeping with the builders, however sadly it was a tad too late to not paint my expertise not less than a little bit bit. Total, Curse of the Sea Rats is a sport I feel has quite a lot of potential, however the samey characters and bugs maintain it again from being what it looks like it actually might be. In case 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 not say I’d suggest you sprint to the eshop as quick as you may for it.