Tortuga – A Pirate’s Tale – Review

Another pirate adventure game is released to attempt and fill the hole while gamers wait for Skull & Bones. Tortuga — A Pirate’s Story is the next installment in the award-winning Port Royale series. Will the pirates be kept at bay long enough for Skull & Bones to arrive with the help of this simulation game?

With the selection of a pirate portrait, name, ship name, and flag, you are immediately thrown into the high seas. Your aspirations as a pirate are grand: to lead an entire fleet and control the oceans. Yet, everyone needs to begin their journey, and there’s no better place to do so than at the bottom. Your pirate empire doesn’t seem to amount to much with just one ship and a handful of deckhands. Yet.

Then, once you’re out at sea, you’ll be given a crash course in pirate combat. There is more going on here than meets the eye in this turn-based game. Your velocity and the direction of the wind are considered. One cannot simply sail in and expect to be able to pivot on a dime to position one’s ship for a bombardment. These ships take a while to manoeuvre and get into position, but your cannons have a long range and provide you some breathing room.

Close in on your enemy’s ship and you might be able to board it. If you succeed, you’ll get your hands on even more riches, although that relies on the relative velocities of the two ships.

The best method to acquire riches and plunder will be through naval combat, so you can expect a lot of them. Yet, they gradually lose their appeal and become annoying. Additional ships can increase the intensity, but they don’t alter the game’s tactics. Every battle will take place on the same ground, but for the random rock that appears in the water.

After the ship’s coffers are full, it’s time to return to port and distribute the booty. This is critical conduct, and you must be fair because they can easily abandon you if you aren’t. Tortuga – A Pirate’s Story features both the main story missions and optional side quests, referred to as Articles of Capture. Completing them can raise morale on board, but returning to port without them finished will result in penalties.

These two mechanics of Tortuga – A Pirate’s Story are introduced to you in a brief lesson. There is a lot more to explore after that, but you’ll be on your own. No part of this is explained satisfactorily, unfortunately. Visiting ports allows you to do more than just resupply and repair your ship; you can also scout out possible crew members and captains at the tavern, purchase and sell items at the market, upgrade your vessel, and even accept bounties. All of this is information that you’ll have to find out on your own.

Although you are welcome to visit certain ports, you are not free to act the part of a pirate while there. As an alternative, everything is accomplished via a menu system that is both complex and cluttered.

It can be challenging enough to bring attention to these alternatives. Tortuga – A Pirate’s Story was developed solely for the Computer without any controller optimization. It’s difficult to use because practically all of the settings are buried in a radial menu unlocked by holding the right trigger down. The left thumbstick is used only for navigating menus, as the d-pad conceals a plethora of additional controls. Inputs can be previewed by holding down the left thumbstick, however this doesn’t always work, and occasionally the options simply vanish.

And we must discuss the user interface. The personal computer is king once again, with game consoles playing second fiddle. They are, to put it mildly, crowded: the first time you open a new menu, you’ll probably see the menu, a tutorial box in the bottom right corner, your first mate talking over everything while trying to add exposition, and the tiniest font possible. Accessibility features are not available. Even though I don’t have to wear corrective lenses, I had a hard time reading the text and navigating this interface. In addition, the recent release of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition for Xbox platforms has shown that porting PC-exclusive games to consoles is feasible with a little bit of work on the part of the developers to adapt the user interface and control scheme.

Sailing the seven seas may be a solitary experience away from the ports and the simulation side of things. The turquoise seas are beautiful to look at, but there isn’t much to do while you’re travelling between quest marks. There are occasional sightings of other ships, but not enough to maintain attention.

I won’t even go into how the numbers 2, 4, and 8 appear in every single Xbox achievement in Tortuga: A Pirate’s Story.

Tortuga – A Pirate’s Story may look like a tough simulation game below deck, but the actual issue is figuring out what to do; the game is currently relatively inaccessible on consoles. In addition, the only option to relieve the monotony of sailing between waypoints is engaging in turn-based naval fights, which offer very little in the way of gaming depth. The wisest plan of action, now that Skull & Bones is on the horizon, is to avoid Tortuga – A Pirate’s Story completely and just wait for it to end.