Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat

Written by Adam Woolcott on April 12, 2002

Full Review: Ahoy matey, that there Kat makes my other wooden leg spring to the occasion! ArrgghЕshiver me timbers!

As of late, the PlayStation 2 has had a good share of УPC styleФ games released on the console Ц be it first person shooters like Half-Life, PC RPG's like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and the most evident Ц the PC style adventure game (which is in a lot of ways a PC RPG minus leveling up and such). First this year was the excellent Drakan: The Ancient's Gates, and now EA, along with PC gaming veteran Westwood Studios present their latest addition to the console market with Pirates Ц The Legend of Black Kat. Despite the pedigree of Westwood, however, Pirates fails to impress and ends up being a rather cookie-cutter adventure title that is worth a shot if you enjoyed Drakan, but even then, Pirates doesn't come close to being a must-own PS2 title. There are some cool elements but the execution of them is so poor, the playability level drops significantly.

Pirates tells the tale of a Katarinia de Leon (Kat from now on), the daughter of an infamous pirate and an honest governor. While Kat is young, her mother (the pirate, just so you can figure out who's who) goes out to sea and never returns alive. Her father then hides all evidence of her past and sets out to make sure Kat never becomes a pirate.

Despite that, Kat becomes somewhat of a pirate anyway, questing to help people who are unfairly robbed, murdered, and other nasty things that result in a plank walking. Eventually Kat's father is brutally murdered, and it's then that Kat finds out the truth about her mother and goes out to avenge the death of her father. So she and her ship, Wind Dancer, embark on a tour of the seas to extract revenge.

Pirates has 2 separate gameplay styles Ц the standard adventure portions where Kat goes on foot to explore areas she can dock her boat, and the ship parts where you're sailing around looking for adventure, and fighting hordes of enemy ships. Neither style is exactly brand new, but it does mix up the gameplay a little bit.

On foot, Kat has a handful of objectives; kill off the baddies that you encounter (who happen to respawn Ц what is this, 1990 or something?), unlock treasure boxes (which involves finding keys, then opening up the locked chests, ad nauseam), and complete particular quests that you come across along the way. Kat is of course armed with a sword and some various moves to evade the enemy. Attacking the enemies and killing them builds up a meter Ц when full it lets Kat execute a more vicious attack on the enemies. Besides that, there doesn't seem to be a lot of variances in the hack & slash gameplay that usually gets repetitive unless something else saves it, such as the story. In Pirates' case, nothing can save it from being mundane and repetitive.

The ship battles are neat, but not executed well. Controlling the ship in a battle, while fighting not only your opponent but the poor camera, and trying to line up a shot is extremely annoying and frustrating. Like the hand-to-hand fighting, a small meter is built up letting you fire a more powerful shot, but since the odds of hitting it are basically nil, it's wise to save it until you think you have it lined up. And in this game, your odds of doing that consistently are pretty low.

While on your adventure you'll find shops to sell parts for your ship as well as items for you, like new weapons, armor, and such. Or you can repair particular items that you'd rather not part with. And as you float around, new quests will automatically pop up for you to complete, however most of the time they're so vague that you'll give up hope looking for the means to finish it.

Saving the game is not done well Ц instead of being able to save wherever you'd like, Pirates forces you to save the game at certain points, by talking to a parrot who saves the game for you. Why you're not allowed to save anywhere in a game of this genre is inexplicable and not a wise move on Westwood's part. You'd think that with all the memory card space they expect to save a game, you'd be able to save wherever you'd like. Yet that's not the case here.

At the very least, Pirates controls pretty well Ц the button layout is peculiar (more use of the trigger buttons than I've seen in a game like this), it's easy to get down and responsive when you're in the heat of a battle, at least on foot anyway. The ship controls are bogged down by a bad camera that usually messes up your timing, which is always a death knell for any game.

Like the rest of the game, Pirates' graphics are purely average. While they aren't really bad, they look like 1st generation PS2 graphics, with bland textures and a blurred, grainy look. The water looks nice, but the other areas are seemingly rushed and don't have a lot of detail to them at all. Kat's animations are nice, the scope of the game is pretty large (only a little draw in while crusading in your ship), but when you're on foot exploring, the game will not visually entertain you whatsoever. Come to think of it, I think 1st gen PS2 games look a lot better than Pirates does.

The sounds are decent, but forgettable. Voice acting is done respectably and rarely comes off as cheesy, but the rest of the sounds are pretty non-existent. Kat barks orders to the workers on her ship fairly consistently, but that's about all you hear in-game. The music is similar to Skies of Arcadia (another pirate game), with a swashbuckling feel to it, but it's sparse. The other effects are fairly decent, with a repetitive jingle when you collect gold, and Kat going УahhhФ when recovering some life drinking something (not Pepsi, that's for sure). The rest are just УthereФ to round out the audio, but nothing you'll be remembering anytime soon.