Yar har fiddle de dee! Grab your cutlass and a bottle of rum as you embark upon a tactical pirate journey in the turn-based roguelike Rogue Waters!
Rogue Waters is a turn-based RPG where the player is put in the shoes of Cutter, a pirate who is accidentally possessed by an ancient relic. The mysterious artifact is known as the eye of the goddess, and it lodges itself into Cutter’s eye by force, granting him mysterious powers.
Cutter’s newfound powers provoke the jealousy of his captain, Blackbone, who betrays our protagonist and leaves him presumably dead at sea. Cutter resurfaces 14 years later and reunites with his crew, now immortal and seeking vengeance against Blackbone.
Rogue Waters
Developer: Ice Code Games
Publisher: Tripwire Presents
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: September 30, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $29.99
Rogue Waters‘ combat encounters are divided between two phases, the first one being a ship battle and the second one being the actual boarding stage. During ship battles, the player aims to destroy the enemy’s cannons, modules, and crew, while the boarding stage is an all-out brawl on the enemy’s ship.
The ship battle system is surprisingly deep and could honestly be its own game if expanded upon. It’s really interesting to be able to get rid of enemies before the fight even starts by aiming towards the crew, and the system forces you to make tough choices thanks to the limited ammunition.
The player has three turns to fire against enemy ships, being able to destroy the structures that will give them buffs during combat or aim directly at the enemies to thin their numbers during the boarding stage. The enemy can do the same to your ship, so it becomes a game of how much you are willing to sacrifice for an advantage on your next fight.
When boarding a ship, the game switches to a grid-based combat system that works similarly to the one seen in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, where your goal is to damage enemies by pushing them into objects, each other, and off the ship.
Most melee attacks push the enemy back and move your character forward, so the player is constantly dealing with this ever-changing combat encounter that shifts into different positions every turn. It’s a very dynamic system that fits really well with the swashbuckling fight style that the game’s characters employ.
The player’s crew is composed of their captain and a group of hired specialists who have their own unique combat skills, like being able to hit multiple enemies at once or backstab enemies that bump into them. Rogue Waters does turn-based combat very well, and there’s a good sense of escalation as the game continuously adds new enemy types with dangerous moves.
The specialist pirates you can hire have three randomized talent trees and level up as you bring them into missions. Building up and expanding your crew as you hunt for pirates with the specific skills you want is quite fun, and the talent trees make a huge difference in gameplay.
Each character also has two item slots, which can grant them either stat boosts or active skills, which play a big role into making the most of your turn. Usually, your turn automatically ends as you attack, but most items can be used freely, letting you perform high damage combos against enemies in a single turn.
Despite being turn-based, the game’s combat system feels really active thanks to its fluid animations and how characters interact with each other. It’s very easy for turn-based titles to feel repetitive, and that goes double for roguelikes, but Rogue Waters manages to keep things fresh by constantly introducing new elements and by having very satisfying visuals and mechanics.
The game features a really weird difficulty spike in its non-story missions early on, as they don’t seem to be beatable. The player can mostly make their way through a raid if they play well and get lucky enough with the cannonball damage during the ship battle phases, but the last encounter will usually wipe your party in one or two turns.
It’s understandable that death is a part of the game and that you are expected to die and come back stronger; it is a roguelike after all, but being locked into the main story as soon as the game supposedly “opens up” is annoying, especially when both the main story and side missions initially available are labeled simple in difficulty.
This stops being an issue after a few failed runs, since you’ll have enough glass to buy upgrades and more crew members, as well as have more game knowledge, but it’s worth knowing that the game features some rough encounters for the first hour or so, which feels unnecessary and delivers a very different first impression from how the rest of the game is.
As far as the game’s characters go, Cutter is a pretty likeable protagonist, and the specialists he hires all have interesting designs and playstyles. The game is almost fully voice-acted, and there’s a good amount of dialogue both during story missions and combat encounters.
The game’s pirates speak like you would expect them to, cursing included, and their dialogue is generally well-written, if a bit quippy at times. Shiv, an entity of unknown alignment who resides inside of Cutter’s new eye, also works well as a chaotic presence throughout the game, playing an opposite role to the level-headed quartermaster Wilkes.
The story slowly leans deeper into more supernatural themes as Cutter starts uncovering Blackbone’s secrets and freeing the massive sea creatures that have been captured, making for a fun escalation of the game’s premise that manages to remain entertaining throughout.
Overall, Rogue Waters manages to deliver a great turn-based roguelike experience. The game suffers a little due to how almost every run follows the same structure, but the core combat mechanics and story help carry the experience.
Rogue Waters is a solid title for those who like the weirdly common overlap that pirates and the supernatural have, and will definitely please those who enjoy a good Firaxis-adjacent turn-based combat system.
Rogue Waters was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Tripwire Presents. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Rogue Waters is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
