I am not an avid fan of pirate games. That does not mean I do not like them—that is certainly not true either!—merely that “pirate” is not an immediate selling point. Nevertheless, I gave Pirates Outlaws ($0.99) a shot. At worst, it’s a very mediocre disappointment, right? After all, it certainly looked appealing with its pleasing art, card-based gameplay, and rogue-like tendencies.
Fortunately, “disappointment" can hardly be used to describe any immediate aspect of gameplay: The strategy behind selecting and removing cards to best improve the odds of success, weighing one relic’s value against another, and planning out a general path from start to boss are all impactful mechanics and feel well designed. The fundamental mechanics and immediate feedback are all positive and range from well done to acceptable… so where, then, does it fall flat?
Its flaws are quickly noticed, although understanding why they are bad is a little more complex. After completing the tutorial, players are sent to the main screen and tacitly encouraged to look around. Following this advice, players are introduced to the other characters, the majority of which are unlockable by simply playing. Character unlocks start at one thousand gold and increase (ignoring the Admiral, who must be unlocked for $5 of real money). Moreover, all characters after the Sword Master require a minimum reputation of five hundred. Not a big deal, right? Gold can’t be terribly difficult to acquire—repute is probably the real bottleneck. That’s a fair assumption… but, unfortunately, wrong. A quick look at the shop reveals gold for purchase, various boosts (some of which are permanent upgrades) available for a few thousand gold or more, and card booster packs. Okay, maybe the gold rewards are inflated to compensate. It wouldn’t be the first game to do so! But, moving to the play screen reveals three chapters: The first (which is aesthetically similar to the tutorial), and two additions which cost five thousand gold each. In addition to the gold cost, the second chapter requires a minimum of five hundred repute; the third, two thousand. Large numbers are not the exception, they are the norm.
Really, such high numbers wouldn’t even be that bad if completing a voyage offered a few hundred gold as reward. Unfortunately, they simply are not. After finishing two consecutive stages, the gold reward tends to be between one hundred and one hundred fifty gold at most. While the content for a good fifteen or more hours of play is there, it is locked behind painfully high walls. As such, long-term play in Pirates Outlaws is not one great achievement after another, it is a slog. For a game that feels like it wants to be pirate Faster Than Light mixed with single-player Hearthstone, it simply doesn’t deliver enough satisfying progression to incentivise an extensive amount of replayability.
In contrast to the progression, the actual gameplay—killing pirates, optimising the card deck, and plotting a path to the boss—is solid. Each battle is a puzzle requiring strategy and a dash of luck to not only beat the opponents, but beat them with enough health to continue on. While the initial stage can be difficult at times, the real challenge comes from the boss fight at the end. While the fight changes each voyage, the opponent is always a hulking beast of a man sporting far more health, damage, and sometimes armour, than the player. Passing this battle requires careful thought for a skilled player, and no small amount of luck for a poor deck. Should players surmount this obstacle, they are presented with the choice of continuing their voyage—retaining their current action points, deck, relics, and character—or calling it quits and returning to port. Continuing offers the chance of even greater rewards, although the odds are certainly stacked against the player. Returning to port offers the safety of immediately banking gold and repute, which is no doubt a boon for the risk-adverse.
Stage one can only provide so much entertainment and practice, however. Pressing on is a necessity for any kind of substantial progress. For those brave enough to enter stage two, there are new enemies, bosses, and relics available. For those who are able to beat them, and enter stage three… the greatest challenge yet available awaits. While the difficulty in enemies cannot be understated, there is more to it than that: Each successive stage magnifies poor decisions in the prior levels. Continuing on with insufficient action points may result in an inopportune demise with no tavern in sight; taking too many risks in previous battles or events may tax not only the easily replenishable health points but the health maximum as well. Taking every card and discarding none will quickly result in a bloated deck with no easy way to access the necessary cards in a difficult fight. In short, caution and a certain amount of planning is required to travel far with any measure of success.
The basic gameplay fundamentals, while enjoyable, do not entirely make up for the poor progression. As such, Pirates Outlaws is merely a decent game instead of a great game. Turning it into a great game—that is, unlocking the characters and/or chapters based on difficult achievements instead of gold—would require no small amount of effort from the developers, however, and so is certainly not likely to happen.
As such, while it is a fun little game to fill five minutes here or ten minutes there, it isn’t something that is likely to last long-term. While the basic gameplay is fun, the visuals are beautiful, and the broader gameplay loop is enjoyable, the reward system simply isn’t there and it really shows. Perhaps this will change in the future but, more likely, it will not, and the grind for gold will drag Pirates Outlaws down, down to the dark abyss below.
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true its not good as FTL, but its pretty fun. good review, in pointing out the gameplay and each battle is solid. 4 stars i think. i've been pretty hooked
on second thought considering how good FTL is. well if FTL is the standard 5/5, then this review is accurate, but compared to the overall standard of games and other 5/5 games it's probably better
after beating the game... i don't like the feeling you're left with. this game has a lot of potential to be more fun. to be more FTL like or just better in lots of ways..and that's b/c there are points where the game IS really fun, but the more you play it...one of the "rewards" is unlocking more cards, which makes it harder to randomly draw the ones you like, so you basically get punished the more you play it...and by the time i beat this game it didn't feel right, it just felt like i got tricked into playing too many games and wasting too much time, where as w/FTL or hoplite or "out there" u feel like u did something amazing. so basically what i'm saying in the end you're left w/a feeling of, i wish i hadn't played this inconsequential game that has taken advantage of me (well at least for me)...so i'm lowering my rating to about 2.5 or 3 out of 5
The game is surprisingly deep - and once the dev sorts out the progression issue, I suspect it will get a fresh look. I'm enjoying it, actually beat stage three with the Sword Master character for the very first time.
after the boss battle, you can choose "return" or "next map", if you want to challenge yourself, choose continue. if you want to get more gold, choose"return". you will get 80, 200, 500 from each boss battle. so i think it's no so hard to unlock other things.
All of the gated stuff wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to pay the .99 entry fee to even play the game. Then to make any noticeable progress you almost need to buy the doubler. This is just an example of a freemium game trying to have it’s cake and eat it too. Very disappointing.
Half of the review speaks about the in game currency without telling almost nothing about the huge amount of cards unlockable, the different characters, the art, the music... It basically starts with "This game is really cool, but you know why it sucks anyway?". Perhaps this will change in the future but, more likely, it will not??? The devs specifically said that they will rethink the progress and the rewards.
Edit: The devs just released an update that offers a Double Gold reward with the Booster! I hope people will go to the forum instead of blindly listening to this shallow and unfair review...
Edit: The devs just released an update that offers a Double Gold rewards with the Booster! I hope people will go to the forum instead of blindly listening to this shallow review.
How is it that my comment was deleted? Maybe it has something to do with Disquss bugging?
I said that the review was unfair and really biased.
I was quite pissed at this last sentence "Perhaps this will change in the future but, more likely, it will not, and the grind for gold will drag Pirates Outlaws down, down to the dark abyss below" because the reviewer didn't have any clue about what he spoke here. The devs not only said that they will rework this currency issue but they have done it just today (go check the forum, you'll see). Now we have the possibility to double the Gold earned from the Booster!
Please either update the review or ignore it and go to the forum to see how devs are responsible to players demands.
Adding gold to the doubler isn’t “reworking the currency system”. It’s reworking the IAP! This review doesn’t even mention the IAPs. If you play this game without buying the doubler, nothing changed. Hence no change required for the review, which is spot on.
Maybe he could change it to say, if you buy the doubler it helps but otherwise, the review is fine.
I usually never write comments but I personally love this game, yes there is bit grinding to do but you get to unlock many cards on the way and you can feel that it gets easier and easier to win three maps. With amount of gold you will eventually get you will get amount you need to pay for all the content. I like it more because its grindy and game developers put so much content for 99 cent game. Only thing you have to pay for is the one character for 4.99 but it also says it on the description that it is almost like a donation if you like the game. I believe that it is so unfair to give 3.5 stars because it is slow at first. It is deep and full of contents. I hope more people play and supports the developers.
I've played the game non-stop for about a week, it's learning curve is spot on, it's deep and once you start choosing the right combination for your deck, it's rewarding. It's got a lot going for it, but in terms of the IAP, well, that's all relative. I spent quite a bit on premium games that I don't play that often, but I see myself playing this game for a long time to come.
Nobody even mention that it's just like Slay the Spire?