Corsairs Legacy Preview

There’s something about being a pirate that really spurs the mind. The idea of casting off this humdrum life and setting off into the sea to search for a life of adventure and mystery. Granted, the reality of piracy was (and still is) not quite as enjoyable as media makes it seem. However, ever since the days of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, there’s been a hankering for more pirate-themed adventures. That is the itch that Mauri’s latest game, Corsairs Legacy, wants to scratch.

Corsairs Legacy sells itself as more of a pirate “simulator” over a more traditional game. This would normally mean that, during your adventure, you’d do everything that pirates would have done, and that means swashbuckling, using cannons, and generally being a nuisance. I had the chance to try out the latest version of this game, which is still in Early Access, to find out if this adventure requires a shanty or if it needs to be keelhauled. 

Corsairs Legacy is a game with a lot of heart, but that sadly hasn’t translated into a great game; there are a fair few issues, but I can see where the passion has gone. First things first: the plot. The story follows your pirate as you make trouble for the Spanish and sail the Caribbean; it's not the deepest story in the world, but it gives enough reason as to why you are where you are and what you need to do. The voice acting is passable, but that’s to be expected with a small team and budget, so I won’t hold that against them. Meanwhile, the graphics are equally fine, nothing to write home about, but I came across no visual bugs, and everything moved pretty fluidly.

The real question for a pirate game is this: is the ship combat fun? And the answer is…kind of. So, the ship combat basically works like Black Flag; in fact, it works entirely like the Assassin Creed series’ ship-to-ship fighting. You aim over by looking left and right and can then board the enemy ship. The issue I had was that aiming was weird and hard to figure out. From what I can gather, the main idea is that if your cursor turns red, you need to shoot. However, that always misses because of the pause between the input and the shot. It makes ship-to-ship battles kind of pointless, as you can just sail up to them and board with no real issue. 

Melee combat is equally strange, not bad, but it needs some serious work. The swordplay has a light attack, a heavy attack, and a spin attack. It’s fine, but I never got the parry to work, so that was annoying, although I never really needed it. There isn’t a huge amount of skill to the combat; you just swing a lot and hope their health goes down before yours. You can also use a gun, and you should because it is suitably piratey but also because it makes it easier to clear out some of the enemies. It can be pretty fun, but on the other side, there is no real enemy variety, and they never seem to fight any differently, so it can get a bit dull.

So, I called this a simulator, and I need to make this clear, this is not an open world. It’s more like a bunch of arenas, usually with an island in the middle, that you sail around in to kill an enemy. They’re big areas, but there’s really nothing in them; there’s no treasure to find and no real reason to look around. Heck, there was one mission where I had to walk to a prison warden, talk to him, pay him, walk to a cell and then let a man out. That was it. This isn’t helped by the truly abysmal speed at which you move. 

Essentially, you move at a snail's pace, both while walking and sailing, but you can speed it up by hitting the R key. The issue is that speeding up only increases your movement to the point where you are moving at the same speed as in a normal game. It all feels painfully slow, so it’s probably a good thing that there really isn’t anything to do. 

Now, when I started this, I said that there was clearly love here, and I stand by that. For all its faults, it is clear that the developer loves Corsairs Legacy, and its issues are not so much that the game is unplayable. It needs a lot of work, but the visuals are fine for a small team, and the ship movement feels right, if far too slow. There are plenty of weapons and other items to find, and the ability to constantly change your ships is entertaining. However, I would wait for a few versions until they fix most of the minor issues and make the experience more entertaining.