Developed by a very small studio that I have never heard of before called Quadro Delta, I was initially excited about this game because I quite like throwback games that remind me of "the good ol' days" of gaming when graphics were limited.
This elation was quickly squashed though when I found out that this very simple looking game is actually quite complicated in what the hell it is that you are supposed to do and by the end of the required 1-hour of gameplay I was relieved and quite delighted to delete it from the hard drive. It was one of the most miserable 1-hours spent playing a game that I have experienced in quite some time.
The game annoyed me right out of the gate. You character creation consists of a bunch of reading and answering questions that determine what sort of character you are going to be right out of the gate. Then they put you through a tutorial of sorts and indicate what it is that you need to do in terms of hiring a crew on your boat and how to keep them happy. Then they send you out to sea.
The animation is remarkably bad and a lot of this might be intentional. I mean if we are going to have pre 8-bit graphics why bother with animation at all. Well, they barely did. I will always take good gameplay over amazing graphics and this is a big reason why I have recently had a falling out with Square-Enix since I think they have completely given up on having good gameplay in lieu of making hyper-realistic looking graphics. Give me pixelated graphics and good gameplay over realism and stupid gameplay any day. Unfortunately this game becomes incredibly boring very fast and after your 3rd or 4th invasion (which you easily win) you hope that the game is going to evolve a bit. Well, after an hour, it remained the same all the way through and that was enough for me to not ever want to investigate the game further.
you go from island to island and roaming rival boat to rival boat and your crew and yourself crawl over a line, attack the enemy, and then scuttle their boat. This results in you getting more and more materials so that you can upgrade your own boat, presumably for more exciting encounters in the future. For those that can endure this immediate grind, I suppose it could become mildly interesting once you have the option of building cannons and firing on other ships. However, after an hour of gameplay I hadn't encountered any of this and to me the repetition of just doing the same shit over and over again was enough for me to head to the hills.
In the stuff that i have seen from people that drudged on through and upgraded the hell out of their ships, it looks like it could have been fun but remember, I base my opinions of games based SOLELY on how well the game engages you in the first hour of play and this game simply doesn't have any of that. Perhaps it was because of the fact that I was part of the MMORPG generation that grinding for anything just became commonplace and did hundreds of hours of it, but I am NOT going to grind in games anymore and feel as though it is a lazy and stupid addition for any game to have.
Pixel Piracy had a decent concept in its design, but ultimately the game is both complicated and too simple at the same time. The scenery doesn't change unless you make it change by altering your boat. This is another downside of the game that may have something to do with the fact that I was playing it using a controller. The build menu for your boat is really difficult and time consuming to interact with using a controller, and perhaps this would be better and faster if I had been using a mouse and keyboard.
There are shops where you can buy stuff on certain islands but my inventory quickly became packed with crap that I had no idea how to use. I don't want to be confused about "what the hell am I supposed to do?" in the first hour of playing a game - that is supposed to come later after the game has already sucked you in and gotten you accustomed to how the game is going to work. In my mind, this game doesn't work and it also has a few bugs I discovered early on such as menus that simply don't want to appear. I also had some of my shipmates just get stuck in the scenery on god knows what, and no matter what I did they couldn't move.
Another gripe would be that you have to deal with the attitude of your crew and unhappy crew members will simply refuse to do what you ask them to do.
I don't even know what to call this sort of game: Is it an RPG? Is it sandbox adventure? I never died so I don't know if it is rogue-like - god I hope it isn't. I can imagine finally getting to an interesting part of the game only to lose and have to start back from nothing.
I did not enjoy anything about this game other than the music. The rest of it, is quite stupid and boring in my mind. Sorry small dev companies! I do try to be extra nice to the little guys, but this game simply sucks.
Overall, I was dead bored after an hour of grindy gameplay and I cannot recommend this game to anyone
Games I have already tried in my journey to play at least 1-hour of every PS-Plus Extra game
- Gravity Rush 2 (action adventure game with fast movement in every direction. It has RPG elements and a pretty decent story. Make it past the first hour and the game really opens up. Recommended)
- Oddworld: Soulstorm (2D+ platformer with great graphics, sound, and voice-acting. Unfortunately it is plagued with a lot of repetition. Recommended for a few hours)
- Bee Simulator (sort of like a flying FPS game but with no combat. It's graphically impressive and filled with tidbits of knowledge about bees... unfortunately it is repetitive as hell and gets boring fast. Not recommended)
- Prison Architect (a prison management simulator game similar to SimCity. It's a great game but just like most simulation games, it just isn't very playable using a controller. Not recommended on PS4)
- Hotline Miami 2 (a top-down shooter with gruesome violence and terrible AI. Would be great for speedrunners and hardcore gamers. Casuals like me are going to quickly tire with it)
- Battle Chasers: Nightwar (turn based RPG of medium-length that does a good job of teaching you how to play in the first hour. It's pretty old-school and I happen to like that... recommended)
- Chorus (3rd person open-world space fighting game. It's graphically impressive but combat is too repetitive to really hold your interest for the entire story. Still recommended though.)
- Portal Knights (a very well made survival action builder game similar to Minecraft. I really enjoyed this and look forward to playing it more. Recommended)
- Saints Row: The Third (clever and funny FPS game that intentionally puts you in impossible and absurd situations. It's innovative and humorous but ultimately quite dated and got repetitive and boring pretty quick. Not recommended)
- Balan Wonderworld (A rather beautiful 3D(ish) platformer that is extremely easy but still engaging enough to hold your attention for a few hours. Recommended for casual gamers)
- The Artful Escape (an adventure game of sorts with awesome visuals and music, but repetitive areas and controls combined with IMO far too much dialogue makes this game get boring, fast... Worth a look but not recommended to play)
- Until Dawn (interactive horror game that you don't really control a great deal of. It's reasonably entertaining, you can't lose, and the graphics and sound a pretty great. It's not really a game but I enjoyed it and played it to its finish. Recommended)
- 11-11: Memories Retold (a WW1 story that doesn't actually involve much input on the player's part. The game is very boring despite having a wonderful graphical style: Not recommended)
- Desperados 3 (a real time tactics / stealth game that I personally do not feel belongs on consoles at all. If you have never played these sorts of games on PC your opinion might be different. This one gets a "maybe.")
- Maneater (Action RPG where you play the role of a deadly shark. The idea is decent but ultimately the extremely repetitive gameplay makes this one easy to miss. Not recommended)
- TorqueL (physics puzzle platformer that is simplistic at first but quickly becomes maddeningly difficult. Gets boring pretty quickly on consoles and would be better suited as a time-waster on mobile devices. Not recommended on PS4)
- Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon: Turn-based cutesy RPG that is extremely story-driven just like anything Square is involved in. If you are huge fan of Final Fantasy you might like it, for me it was one hour then done forever.
- XCOM 2 : (Turn-based Sci-Fi game set in a dystopian future where you are part of the rebellion. Despite a very slow start IMO the game really gets involved later on... recommended)
- Darksiders Genesis (Top-down hack and slash that reminds me a lot of Diablo 3 but with a more restricted environment. It's very fast paced and as easy or difficult as you want it to be. It's a lot of fun and therefore comes highly recommended.)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (a copy/paste of so many other RPG's out there with too many cutscenes as is so typical of Square-Enix. Recommended for superfans of the movies, but not for really anyone else.)
- Injustice 2 (a DC comics oriented fighting game with tons of characters and IMO extremely complicated gameplay. It could be great for someone who is willing to devote enough time to memorizing all of this, but I am not that guy.)
- Life is Strange: Before the Storm episode 1 (A graphic adventure that isn't really a game so much as it is a movie that you have some control over. Recommended for people looking for something extremely casual but with a very well-written story)
- Evil Dead: The Game (a team based multiplayer game that has the humor and gore that you would expect from anything done by Evil Dead. Unfortunately, it doesn't really stand out from the pack well enough for me to give it high props. Recommended for a short while - see if you disagree with me)
- Immortals: Fenyx Rising (A Zelda-esque open-world game based on Greek mythology that is one of the best games I have played in a while. Highly recommended)
- Pixel Piracy (an 8-bit adventure game of sorts that puts you in the role of a pirate ship commander. I'd love to tell you what the objective in this game is, but I don't know what it is. I was extremely bored after the required 1-hour of play and immediately deleted the game from my hard drive. Not recommended)
All other games I have already reviewed (there are a lot of them)