System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £4.99
Comfort Rating: Yellow (Mild Movement)
Genre: Role-Playing Games (RPG)
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: This is about a pirate’s adventure in the 16th century. The player will be the pirate to start a stimulating journey with friends to seek after the legendary Seven Sea Artifact on the mysterious sea. This is an FPS RPG game with a combination of land and naval battles. Through upgrading the ship components, including the ship hull, sail and broadside guns, players can empower their abilities to fight during combats and to defend any attack from the Navy, other pirates or even sea monsters. Players can trade items in the ports or land on an island to explore and gain mystical treasures. This is a real adventure, a marvel experience in the vast sea and unknown sphere of VR.
Review: This game has everything I ever wanted in a game. Pirates, open sea adventures, pirates and of course all in VR. You play the role of a young captain looking for the legendary Seven Seas Artifacts. You will meet friends, enemies and even a few sea monsters. This is a cartoon adventure on a level never seen before in the world of VR. The typical pirate story put aside you have to travel from location to location battling ships, monsters and treacherous seas using your cannons to take care of just about everything. You might think the scenes that you travel in are a little boring, but that is far from the truth, there is always something to find or something to fire the cannons at.
Using a clever combination of controller and head movements this is a game you quickly get used to despite it not being the most basic to control. Starting off in a town you travel around via a warp system, pointing your landing site with your head. While this does sound odd it practically eliminates all VR sickness which is always welcomed. Once out at sea, the action is fast and dare I say deeply immersive, being at the head of the ship, located just behind the steering wheel gives you a real sense of control even if it is a tiny ship in front of you. Once you get the hang of sailing and fighting on the seas you will feel as if the whole world is waiting for you.
It is almost impossible for me to look at this game without thinking of The Curse of Monkey Island and all the good times I had playing that game. But times have changed a lot since that game and Heroes of the Seven Seas is so much more than a replica of that old PC game. While some of the graphics are at times a bit poor I think it all adds up to make a better game. The badly animated sailors and characters, it just seems to work. While on land there are indeed some graphical problems out at sea is where this game shines the most. OK, so it is not as big as the open seas, but you get that feeling of being free to go wherever you want and that is something very special. While certainly not a flawless gem, it is still a gem worth owning.
