Curse of the Sea Rats Reviews
I initially disliked Curse of the Sea Rats, but the more I kept at the game, the more it hooked me, and I ended up enjoying myself. The barrier to entry may be a little high for some players with difficult combat and messy hit detection. But once you level up a few times and play around with the characters, you should be able to settle in a style that suits you. This is made all the more enticing by being able to pay with three other loved ones locally. Something rarely seen in adventure games. The design and animations are excellent and make for a nice cherry on top of the experience. If you’re looking for a solid 2D adventure to play alone or with loved ones, this pirate trip will surely keep you busy for a few game nights. Wearing a pirate outfit for the experience is optional.
Curse of the Sea Rats is a game that fails to justify itself. For all the work that went into the beautiful art and the concept of mouse pirates, the game would very likely have been better off as a visual novel instead of an action-platformer with unambitious gameplay.
Offering a fun piratical adventure, excellent animation and a fun, engaging story with full voice acting, Curse of the Sea Rats is a great single or multiplayer romp despite some stumbling blocks.
While it may have a terrific visual style and appealing characters, the crippling difficulty takes the steam out of the experience quickly
Curse of the Sea Rats benefits a lot from its nice looking cartoon graphics, the well done voice acting and by staying true to the Metroidvania genre at least in most aspects. There are also a lot of optional secrets to find with many references to game classics like Monkey Island, Worms or The Legend of Zelda. The major weak spot is the combat system, that largely fails of being satisfying and well balanced.
Review in German | Read full review
Curse of the Sea Rats is never actually bad. Even with the lack of graphic and mechanical refinement, we can still find fun and adventure in its shores. There are a few interesting things in how it creates a diversified world but nothing impressive and the exploration isn't always rewarding.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Curse of the Sea Rats takes some good ideas for gameplay systems but fumbles them in the execution. As a Metroidvania, it could be a good entry point and if it is, it can only go up from here. However, the animation that is in the game and the music does make a pirate life one for me, just not an overall great one.
Curse of the Sea Rats is a comfortable, unique Metroidvania game with a good story, characters, and stunning aesthetics. It lacks challenge and a difficulty selector, but supports up to four-player couch co-op, so you can save the Admiral's son together.
Despite my many gripes, I think there is still an audience out there for Curse of the Sea Rats. Sure, it’s packed to the rafters with frustrating design choices that should have been made to walk the plank, but it’s also a title that has clearly had a ton of love and passion poured into its development. That I felt compelled to stick with Curse of the Sea Rats despite the uneven gameplay is a testament to the art direction and light-hearted narrative, both of which instantly brought me back to a happy place; sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning, feasting on whatever sugar-laced cereal was trendy at the time, all while enjoying my favorite cartoons. While it’s not an easy sell due to its gameplay fumbles, I do still think Curse of the Sea Rats is worth a playthrough for anyone who can look past its flaws and focus on the product as a whole, which ends up being a serviceable videogame, elevated greatly by a wonderful sense of style and charm.
Curse of the Sea Rats is a game that has that classic 2D animation charm, with its character design and voice acting, but the same cannot be said about the game’s gameplay which seems to not be that fleshed out and is too heavily built around its co-op. If you want to experience the game at its best, play it with a friend or younger sibling, otherwise, you won’t have the most enjoyable experience.
I wish I could rate this higher. I honestly had a fun time playing through Curse of the Sea Rats, but the issues I encountered were significant. On top of balance issues and voice line deliveries, I also stumbled across a few bugs here and there including one that basically broke most of the ending. Again the refrain goes, they’re aware and fixing issues, but I can merely hope the patch irons out every last detail. Should the patch fix every one of these issues admirably, I could easily see this being an 8 or even a 9. But even in its current state, it’s a charming experience. Especially for anyone with fond memories of 90s animated features.
Curse of the Sea Rats is, ultimately, a great game held back from even higher greatness by some of the design decisions that were implemented. It could have had a better start, and some of the mechanics could have been tweaked ever so slightly, but once you get into it, it’s a whole lot of fun. It’s probably better in co-op though.
Unresponsive controls get in the way of an otherwise enjoyable callback to 16-bit platformers in Curse of the Sea Rats.
Curse of the Sea Rats offers us an interesting metroidvania type title touring a mysterious Caribbean island surrounded by mysteries, magic, action and colorful characters. To do this, we will make use of one of four available heroes, each with their own movements and abilities; and we say "one" although in reality they can be up to 4 simultaneously, thanks to its cooperative option locally, one of the strong points of the title, without a doubt. An adventure whose graphic aspect first draws attention for how beautiful it is, thanks to its hand-drawn characters, its detailed settings and its "pirate" soundtrack, but which is nothing more than a claim for what ends up being a very fun and entertaining to play and that will inevitably captivate us during the almost 4 hours that it can take to finish it for its first ending, and that will last up to 6 hours if we want to discover all the mysteries of the island and its other endings.
Review in Spanish | Read full review