The story behind Captain Blood’s development is an incredible and bizarre story with multiple delays, cancellations, and bankruptcies. It’s a thin-air miracle that the game has been released at all. Multiple developers passed it around, and it began life on the original Xbox.

Through its almost 20-year turbulent development, Captain Blood went from the original Xbox to almost being an Xbox 360 release. It was done, and even a few copies got pressed as a disc, yet it stayed locked away in Davy Jones’ locker. Like a buried treasure, filled with vibrating pleasure, it has finally been uncovered and is being released on the eighth and ninth consoles.

Is Captain Blood long-lost booty, or was it just a pirated bootleg of God of War all along? Well, pick me up and blow me down, with the help of a team of pirates, analyze and review Captain Blood (finally).

This is a review coupled with a supplemental video review. You can watch the video review or read the full review of the below:

Captain Blood
Developer: SeaWolf Studio, General Arcade
Publisher: SNEG
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (reviewed)
Release Date: May 6, 2025
Price: $24.99

As cliched as it sounds, the story behind Captain Blood‘s development is far more interesting than the game’s. Captain Blood himself doesn’t get the most compelling introduction, and the cutscene dialogue is drowned out, making the story very hard to follow. There’s a guy whose ship got boarded and his big-breasted girlfriend got kidnapped, and the only thing he could think to do was hire an equally vicious privateer to get her back… I think.

The plot unravels as the Royal Navy assaults the Spanish Main with an armada of galleons. Every stage is an explosive battle with cannons firing, ships smashing, and swords clashing. The problem is that most of the time, you’ll have no idea why any of this chaos is happening in the first place. 

The story becomes vague white noise as stuff happens. The cutscenes are well-shot, and the few lines of dialogue I did catch were alright sounding 17th century piratey banter. The emotional hook fails to grab the player’s attention, and the gags are dry. Captain Blood should have leaned harder into comedy and absurdism like something out of Devil May Cry 3. This needed over-the-top choreography and more comic mischief.  

With a botched execution of the story, all Captain Blood has left to lean on is its gameplay, which also fails to impress. Even after cutting the game some slack for being a canceled game for almost two decades, it’s little more than an underwhelming God of War clone on PlayStation 2. 

The original God of War was a fairly streamlined action game compared to the likes of Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, but it made up for it in other ways. The cinematic action looked cool for its day, and the game threw in some platforming and light puzzles once in a while to mix things up. You could always count on impressive, scripted set-pieces to keep players on their toes. 

Captain Blood truly feels like a budget version of what God of War was. Right down to the design of the protagonist, who sports a similar goatee and pointy jawline as Kratos. Yet it also has less in it. Captain Blood has no platforming or puzzles. It barely has any exploration, with only a few treasure boxes with gold, which is used to buy moves or upgrades.

One of the few features that the captain lifts from Kratos are the quick-time events, which always use the same inputs. The other ripped feature is the finisher moves used to defeat bosses. Like Kratos, the captain initiates a scripted animation depending on one of the face buttons for a gruesome fatality. It wore out its welcome in God of War, and it’s just as tiresome and tedious in Captain Blood. 

Sometimes the narrative has players briefly play as another character, but it sucks because they get no upgrades. These sequences are mercifully brief, but they’re also suspiciously so short that they come off as padding, as they also recycle areas players have already played or will about to. 

For most of the game, expect to be fighting platoons of the Spanish royal navy. There is no shortage of enemy types, but some in particular are extra obnoxious. Rifleman loves to run away from Captain Blood’s reach, and his attack animation is always a little too slow to land hits on these guys consistently. Worse yet, they are excellent shots and can stun/interrupt attacks from a distance while fighting other foes.

Some of the heavier enemies had absurd amounts of HP and took forever to weaken for a finisher. They rarely get stunned by the captain’s heavy attacks and can shrug off shots from the blunderbuss. Enemies can easily overwhelm, and Blood’s attacks feel too slow and weak for a game that can have almost 10 enemies on screen.

Contending with unfair odds is one thing, but battling an entire ship’s worth of seadogs while the deck is being hailed by cannon fire is just annoying. The deck battles are meant to be Captain Blood‘s showstopper, but really, they are the point where you just want to stop. The idea is that enemies will keep boarding, and players must run from cannon to cannon to get a clear shot at the enemy ships to aim and shoot. 

While frantically dashing to cannons, expect to be accosted by a growing number of goons or to be blasted by random fire. The hit detection is inconsistent, and there aren’t enough I-frames to reliably dodge every time. These sequences are long and annoying, and while it’s a huge sigh of relief to get passed them, the creeping dread of having to play a normal stage crawls up your spine like a tarantula. 

The Lords of Shadow wasn’t the greatest God of War-like, but at least it packed its stages with variety. Captain Blood is utterly barren. Stages are marathons of repetitive, sloppy combat that feels weightless and floaty. The poor sound design and feedback make the swordplay lack any grit or viscera. Blood may as well be slapping guys with a paper sword: at least the papercuts would look more painful. 

At times, the gameplay feels more like a 3D beat-em up like Dynamite Cop. The arcade-like sensibilities are evident in the weapon pick-ups, which are vastly more powerful than anything that the captain has, but also expire after several uses. The thing is that those kinds of games are packed with variety in a condensed play time. Captain Blood goes on for hours and becomes mind-numbing to the point you feel your body dying. 

Having a fixed camera angle at least solves any camera control issue, and you always have a clear view of the battle scene. The graphics are appealing, and the art style holds up nicely. Characters are well-animated and expressive with distinct color schemes and silhouettes. The visuals are one of the few things that hold up. It’s too bad about everything else.

After playing Captain Blood, it’s clear why this game was in development hell for so long. It doesn’t even seem to be finished. It’s rough and boring. Maybe it should have stayed lost at sea. At least then it would have maintained a mythical allure and not some dull God of War imitation. 

Captain Blood was reviewed on Xbox Series X using a code provided by SNEG. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Captain Blood is now available for PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.