I started following Curse of the Sea Rats around the time the developers began to do marketing for its Kickstarter campaign. I try to keep my ear to the ground for interesting projects, and the animation style and premise of Curse of the Sea Rats definitely caught my eye. Now that Curse of the Sea Rats is available on consoles and PC though, I have to say I have mixed feelings on this one.

Curse of the Sea Rats is a Metroidvania with up to 4-player co-op where you take on the role of one of four criminals. These prisoners of the British Empire find themselves transformed into rats by the notorious Pirate Witch known as Flora Burn. To regain your human form, you’ll have to pursue Flora Burn, fighting her lackeys and a myriad of enemies to capture her.

Before I get into some of the gameplay elements and whatnot, I want to take a minute and talk about the visuals. The visuals in Curse of the Sea Rats are gorgeous. The hand-drawn animation and environments are reminiscent of the golden age of animated films, like American Tail, classic Disney animation, and other animated films of the 90s. The characters are expressive, the environments are meticulously made, and it all just looks wonderful.

The combat on the other hand (at least early on) leaves something to be desired. The difficulty threshold is high and I had to start over once because I used all the healing items I collected before the first boss. I kept dying to that boss, and even grinding up gold for potions didn’t really help since they only healed half my health, and I could only carry 3 at a time.

Combat consists of standard Metroidvania fare, a regular attack, a magic attack, jumping, and parrying. I had a hard time with the parrying, and that could be why I had such a hard time with the difficulty. It might also be that the game is better balanced for local co-op, or that the beginning stages are just rougher as you learn. Each character has their own fighting style and skill tree. You can learn skills and abilities by killing enemies, which also gets you gold to spend on items.

The developers boast over 12 hours of content, but I could see things taking closer to 15-20 hours with how difficult the combat can be. I really want to like Curse of the Sea Rats, but it just doesn’t feel enjoyable to play. The controls are decent enough, but timing parrying and figuring out when enemies will attack is an exercise in frustration.

The music is great, the visuals are wonderful, and the characters are fun, but the gameplay is where it really suffers. The character interactions are great, and the quest variety (and exploration) is interesting, but there’s just something that kills the fun when you bang your head on a boss for the 4^th time without any progress.

Overall if you’re a Metroidvania fan, pick up Curse of the Sea Rats on sale or keep an eye on it for a while to see if any updates/overhauls are made. There’s definitely something here, an idea that really could snag fans of things like Pirates of the Caribbean, or even things like American Tail or the Redwall novels. I just wish I could say I enjoyed the combat more, but it feels a little too stiff and difficult for my tastes.

A Nintendo Switch review Copy of Curse of the Sea Rats was provided by PQube for this review.

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Curse of the Sea Rats

$19.99 USD

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Great Art and Animation
• Beautiful Soundtrack
• Fun Characters
• Interesting Story and Side Quests
• 4-Player Local Co-Op

Cons

• Combat is Too Difficult
• Healing Items are Too Limited
• Parrying Mechanic Feels Clunky
• Too Grindy Early On.
• No Online Co-op