I do like a good turn-based, X-Com type game – but I’m not reviewing this one, Dave Corn is. From developer Ice Code Games and publisher Tripwire Interactive comes Rogue Waters, a piratical-themed turn-based, X-Com type game.

“Rogue Waters is a Pirate Tactical Turn-Based Rogue-lite. Play as Captain Cutter, commanding your ship and crew through procedurally generated encounters to seek revenge. Recruit, train, and upgrade crew, use powerful sea creatures, and engage in dynamic naval and melee combat to gain the upper hand.”

Rogue Waters from Ice Code Games is ticking all modern trend boxes at the moment, it’s a pirate, turn-based, rogue-lite. So what is Rogue Waters? Pirate games seem to be flying out thick and fast over the last few years, from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag to Sea Of Thieves. My personal favourite goes back a bit further but is probably closer to this game than the others mentioned, and that’s Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Anyway, back to this one and RW is a tale of revenge, swashbuckling and treasure hunting. You are Cuttler (a young sea dog) severing aboard a ship, when you are betrayed and left for dead at the bottom of the ocean. Years later, you are revived and set off with a ghostly crew to exact your revenge on your former captain. You get a basic ship and set sail. Everything in this game is point-to-point and actions interrupt (think the battle starts in FF7), this engages my favourite part of the game, ship-to-ship battles. Nothing in this game is easy, you have to learn a lot of aspects, be it hit points of certain bows, the damage certain types of weapons like cannons do in combat.

Once you have fought this, you can board the enemy ship, as your captain and four crew members go aboard. This is the meat and bones of the game, and you can tell it’s the part the developers are most proud of. These wave of turn-based games seem to be trying to outdo each other in the complexity of their games mechanic, this makes X-Com look like it was made for toddlers. Each character has their own moves and attacks, they can be levelled up and new crew recruited too. While the combat looks fantastic, the animations can get a little repetitive. There are some nice touches like being able to swing across the ship on ropes, or walking the plank, and summoning a Kraken can be quite a sight.

Along with upgrading the crew and yourself, you can upgrade your ship and between sails, you can stock up at your lair – but whatever you take is all you have for that particular run. Writing a review for a game like this is tough, an older gamer, for example, would understand “Pirate X-Com rogue-lite” and get a feel for the game from that description alone. However, RW needs a lot of time and dedication to understand it fully. The love for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Sid Meier’s Pirates! can’t be denied, but this is lovingly done.

In Conclusion:
Rogue Waters is a great-looking game and has tons of detail and engaging gameplay that needs time to get the most out of. The over-complication of the combat will probably put most people off, If you’re not too familiar with the genre, I’d definitely wait to try it for free (there’s a demo on Steam) if turn-based game are not something you are already into. Sorry landlubbers,
steer clear.

Graphics 9/10: Looks great but with some repetitive animations.
Gameplay 4/10: They have tried to fit so much in that you don’t get to enjoy the game for quite a while until you learn it.
Value: 5/5: There’s a lot to it for the right person but it’s very niche.