Pirates of Black Cove

An enormous world filled with missions to tackle, secrets to uncover, and ships to sink. Add that to the fact that sea battles are incredibly addictive and you have quite a package.

For all its faults though, Pirates of Black Cove is a very endearing game.

If you are a big enough pirate fan and willing to overlook Pirates of Black Cove's faults in favor of its charm, there is enough fun to be had to make its budget price a barrrrgain. Should such pirate puns lead to haemorrhaging in your brain's language centers, however, then this might not be the game for you.

It's certainly never short of ideas, but inept execution sends Pirates of Black Cove toppling off the gangplank. [Nov 2011, p.134]

Overall, Pirates of Black Cove is a difficult game to recommend. It looks nice enough, and the voice acting is better -- and more prevalent -- than you might expect from a budget title, but everything else is second rate.

Let down by the poor combat and the long, tedious segments on land, Pirates of the Black Cove struggles to stand out from the crowd.

If the developers had stuck to just sailing and ship-combat, Pirates would be a charming game. Unfortunately, it's only half of one.

Thumbs up for Pirates of Black Cove being a pirate themed strategy game, thumbs down for oversimplified gameplay, boring missions and way too slow tempo. [Oct 2011]

Pirates of Black Cove brazenly copied Sid Meier's Pirates! but can not put the individual gameplay-elements together into a successful whole. The game lacks depth and repetitive gameplay bored after a few hours. Rather play the great 1987 original, because it's much more fun than this uninspired infusion.

Aside from its uninspired combat and limited scope, Pirates of Black Cove is an endearing game at times. I wanted to love it, and kept diving back in hoping that something would click. It didn't.

The charming style and the fun battles at sea will keep you entertained for a while but the fun reaches a low during fights on land and the random crashes that you'll encounter in this game. Pirates of Black Cove had a lot of potential but unfortunately doesn't do much with it.

Action pirate strategy offers arcade playability and easy-to-learn concepts but suffers with technical issues and poor A.I. of your ship's crew. [Issue#208]

Although it's a pirate-game with a glimpse of freedom, it's choking on its bad story. You will be entertained for couple of hours by upgrading of your own ship, sea battles or by island-raiding. However, after that the entertainment disappears under a surface like a holey sailboat. Pirates of Black Cove cast anchor more to younger players than to the old ones.

Enjoyable during the first hours of playing, Pirates of Black Cove shows very early its casual gameplay, badly developed.

It just never offers more than a middling gameplay experience for its price. That on its own might satisfy the casual freebooters, but when you couple that mediocrity with abysmal NPC pathing, inexplicable bouts of lag, and the game's tendency to crash at key moments, even they may find themselves tossing this one down in Davy Jones' locker for good.

There's just one basic problem with Pirates of Black Cove: the developers forgiot to deliver a game. What's the point of all the items and upgrades if nothing really makes a difference?

This is not Sid Meiers Pirates. It's a quest based single player game which happens to have its setting in the Caribbean. And the first hour just keeps on repeating itself.

I'm sorry to say that Pirates of the Black Cove is one of the simpliest pirate games I have ever played. Gameplay is shallow, the game is buggy, short and most importantly - ugly. That overwhelming rotten scent can't be scattered by a light, funny, cartoonish atmosphere and diversified missions. It's a sad example of wasted potential and lack of attention to finishing up the all of the game's elements.

It's better to walk the plank than to sail the seas of the boring and buggy Pirates of Black Cove.