Don’t let the witch and her pirate crew offend you. get it?
There is no shortage of 2D Metroidvanias in the current indie space. I’m sure he’s typed this sentence at least three times so far. For this reason, if you want to add to your pile, you have to make sure there are some aspects of the game that set it apart from the rest. – Art drawn in recent years has been trendy enough to at least catch my attention: Curse of the Sea Rats was the first game I saw at his Steam Festival last year. The demo showed a lot of promise: four playable characters, hand-drawn art reminiscent of 2D animated movies, a fun pirate aesthetic, and more. Unfortunately, it contains issues that prevent it from realizing its true potential.
Curse of the Sea Rats begins on a British ship with several prisoners, including the four main characters. When the ship crashes somewhere off the coast of Ireland, pirate witch Flora Byrne takes the opportunity to turn everyone on board into rats. kidnapped the Admiral’s son. The Admiral, desperate to retrieve his son and break Flora’s curse, offers these prisoners a deal. If they defeat the witch and bring their son back to safety, they will be freed and the charges against them will be dropped. We’ve learned a medallion. But this medallion is incomplete and our team of four prisoners has the missing piece. In order to reach Floraburn, the quartet must explore the island in their new rat form, working with Flora’s crew to break the curse and steal the medallions along the way.
Play as one of four characters, each with their own fighting style. David Douglas is an American revolutionary soldier armed with a cutlass, Buffalo Calf is a Cheyenne huntress who wields daggers in both close and ranged combat, and Bussa fights with a giant fist on the run from Barbados. Slave, Akane Yamakawa is a Japanese warrior. Wield a naginata. What sets this cast apart is in the overall moveset, as regular combos, parry abilities, aerial attacks, and magic are unique to each character. Unfortunately, this is really the only difference between them, none of them have some form of traversal ability themselves. , jumps at the same height, and shares the same overall upgrades. Each character has its own skill tree, but filling one character’s skill tree completely is so easy and quick that it becomes so powerful that there is little incentive to switch to another character. is often The entire game can be played in local co-op with up to four players, but that’s probably the only way you’ll be able to see characters other than those you’re immediately attracted to and make it through the entire game.
Combat in Sea Rats is generally pleasant. Hits feel like they have a positive impact, and blocking enemy attacks is usually pretty satisfying. I personally gravitated toward Akane because it best suited the style. The voice acting for most of the characters is a bit questionable overall, but I personally found the cheesiness of the lines to be what ultimately added to the appeal. Sadly, what took away this charm were the numerous bugs I experienced while playing. Switching between characters right before a cutscene would sometimes cause misreading issues. For example, I once spoke to a drunken pirate crew as Akane, and since I had recently switched from Douglas, it was his voice that read the lines. Also, if in that situation he’s wondering if the four characters have their own dialogue, unfortunately they don’t. All characters seem to read from the same script for the majority of the game.
Another bug I experienced was that the game forgot to get an inventory upgrade that should have allowed me to buy more health potions. This was eventually fixed, but was annoying when it happened. According to the developers, many of the issues I ran into have already been patched or will be patched soon, but unfortunately it was too late to paint at least a little bit of my experience Overall, I think Curse of the Sea Rats is a game that has a lot of potential, but the same characters and bugs hold it back from real potential. If you really want a new Metroidvania experience, or if for some reason you really like rats, you can definitely do much worse than this, but sadly it’s on the eShop ASAP. It’s recommended to dash…for it.
