Game Information
Developer: | Mercat Games | Date Started: | 13/09/2024 |
Platform: | Steam | Fresh Play / Continuation: | Fresh Play |
Genre: | Tactical Strategy | Time Played: | 4.4 hours |
Theme: | Pirates | Date Finished: | 25/09/2024 |
Difficulty Rating: | No Challenge | Recommendation: | Not Recommended |
I've always been happy to play games of this genre. I find the level of tactical planning and strategizing in these types of games to be a fun challenge. Ever since Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun came out, I have been excited to learn that the genre seemed to have a resurgence with it. I've got quite a few I want to get through now. To name a few: Shadown Gambit: The Cursed Crew; Stargate: Timekeepers and Sumerian Six. And this is not even including some of the older ones which I never got around to completing, or had issues getting them working well (Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood and Korea: Forgotten Conflict).
Even indie developers were taking a crack at the genre. During my previous run, I had a go at Red Glare and while you could not compare it to bigger budget companies, the game still held its own, and I was happy to have played it.
Frigato: Shadows of the Caribbean was intended to be the same. It was in the same genre and by a small development company. So I was interested in what they were delivering. I am not going to lie, I got a little apprehensive when I saw the reviews for the game, but I still wanted to try it.
So let's start with the good things about the game. It is a tactical strategy game (obviously) and the setting is different compared to other games like it. Excluding Shadow Gambit (because I haven't played it yet) I don't know of any other game in a pirate setting.
And that's it. The only redeeming quality of this game is the use of its setting. And even then, it's just skimming the line.
After playing so many tactical strategy games, you start to expect certain features in these games. Now, I did take into consideration that this was a smaller company and that they may have wanted to try their own thing. But there is a limit to how much can be omitted.
For instance, the game grants you the ability to kill enemies with environmental items. I have grown accustomed to these "accidental" deaths where enemies don't raise an alarm if someone happens to get caught in these. However, in Frigato enemies react just the same as if you killed them directly. No problem. Not a big deal. Then there was a beach area where you would think it's a prime location to have your characters leave footprints behind. But nope, no footprints to be seen. It's a shame, but I've played games without them before. Ah, the game has a noise ring - so enemies can hear certain attacks if in range, but... you can run up or past an enemy and you make no sound at all. Well, that's disappointing. Can I save a plan for later and execute it at the press of a button so that my squad can move simultaneously to take out a bothersome patrol? Nope. Feature not implemented. Right... I'll manage.
But two things were missing, and I really could not wrap my head around them. The first is that you cannot select your whole squad at once. There is no button press or the ability to drag a selection box over them. The other thing is that you cannot mark the ground or person to see how many people may be looking that way.
I still however committed to playing the game, but it wasn't easy (and this in no way refers to game difficulty). The hero characters weren't that interesting. They are hardly introduced into the story and you cannot see why they are invested in the overall mission. Speaking of that, your overall objective isn't clear at all. I think I got through four mission maps before it was suddenly revealed that I was looking for pieces of an artifact. When the mission starts, it doesn't even explain what you are supposed to be doing. I just end up scrolling around the map until I find the big X to mark where I have to go (because there is no map in the game).
At least the voice acting is tolerable. I acknowledge this is a small dev team so they might not have a lot of experience in this area. I am grateful it isn't Desperados 2 or Helldorado bad. But what was disappointing is that it was inconsistent. You'd have moments where one character would be speaking normally, then during the same scene, another character would be just as loud as a whisper and then followed by someone who is deafening your ear.
Also, with regards to the characters, I have often found, I don't need the different heroes. More often than not, I have managed to beat the missions using the same one character - the starting lead character - for most situations. And if there happens to be a shadow - or as it looks like, a swirling smoke cloud - you can wipe out an entire section with ease, because the enemies cannot see you in there, even if they walk through it and bump you.
Speaking of the enemies, there is hardly any variety to them. I have encountered British Soldiers, British Officers, and British Captains, and apart from a change in uniform, they all behave in the same way. Ok, there were Mermaids in one level, which enchanted the British Soldiers around them, thus preventing you from killing the soldiers (supposedly because it would alert the mermaids? Unfortunately you cannot find out because you are prevented from even trying.) Instead, you have to sneak your way past the soldiers to get to the mermaid who is stationary in a bathtub, and the only way to kill them is with a knife throw.
To make matters worse, the game is still riddled with bugs. I cannot count the number of times the game just suddenly closed on me - at random times too: sometimes half an hour; sometimes five minutes. On occasion, the frame rate would drop because the behavior of an enemy soldier would for whatever reason drain a lot of memory. Then once he was killed, it all returned to normal. Pathfinding was also an issue. There would be areas where you should be able to pass through, but for whatever reason, your character can't. Maybe they cannot climb up those particular stairs, or that passageway through the swamp has an invisible wall. On top of this, a lot of environmental objects had massive hitboxes which interfered with their surroundings (which I think was the primary cause of the poor pathfinding). Sometimes rotating the screen would give you a better angle to target the location or the enemy you needed to get at. But there were few instances, where for instance an enemy was untouchable because either I could not target him, or I could not reach him even though there was a visible path. Lastly, some features outright did not work. In the picture above, my mission log was often blank (hence why scrolling around for the big X) and the map in the lower right was also non-functioning. I may have seen red dots during ONE mission, but because I had to make do for so long I paid it no attention.
Even something like this is just poor delivery and lazy. Maybe I am nitpicking at this point, but it's all accumulative so seeing something like this is frustrating. It gives me the impression they didn't even bother to check. What makes it even worse is that the implication of the mappings are incorrect also, because the team members aren't assigned to a specific number. Instead, whoever is in that respective slot is assigned to that number. And, at no point do you ever have more than three characters on screen.
I did drop a message on the Steam discussion board to raise awareness of the issues. I had hoped, that like Red Glare, since it was a small dev team, they would see it, acknowledge it, and work on it. At least, that's what happened with Red Glare and that left me very impressed. With Frigato however... now that the game is officially released, the devs are done with it. I doubt the game is going to be patched/fixed.
And then the final nail in the coffin. When I saw this my jaw dropped. I finished the level I was on, collecting the final artifact. Then supposedly the lead character sees his father lurking in the trees and - cut to this splash page. The sheer audacity of it! The devs have basically delivered an unfinished game and tried to justify it by adding a "To Be Continued" page. No way. Had I known about this, I wouldn't have bothered with the game. I feel cheated out of my money from this.
It's a shame because the game had a lot of potential. It had a good theme and an excellent premise if used right, but it simply does not deliver. In its current state, I would not recommend this game to anyone.
Anyway, for now, we move on to G for Ghost of a Tale.
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