[Review] King of Seas - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: 3D Clouds
Published By: Team17
Categories: RPG, Pirate
Release Date: 05.25.21

Pirate RPGs? Well, that’s new to me, so lets dig into King of Seas.

The main story revolves around the character of your choice, one of two children of the King (mine was Marylou) going on a virgin voyage, only on her way back home to be accused of a terrible crime. This leads them to live the life of a pirate, a fugitive.

It’s exactly like it sounds. In King of Seas, you take control of your vessel across the grand ocean, which is procedurally generated might I add. It’s huge and depending on your file or game, it’s going to be completely new every time. Shoot down other ships with your cannons, save people you see on broken rafts, fish even. If you find the time, go treasure hunting. Trade anything you find, some places sell low and buy high, sometimes you won’t be so lucky.

You’ll level up the more you do anything, with the easiest experience boosts I found just sailing over those sparkling spots in the ocean, usually getting supplies in the process. The more you level up, the better you can make your ship, but lets hope you have money for that.

You’re going to see a lot of other ships that are just plain a higher level than you. It’s a big world, a big ocean rather. Much like something I really liked in a game like Xenoblade, the world feels more natural just because nothing is gated in beginner areas or the like. If you don’t play smart or just try to attack anything, it’ll end poorly. Level up and properly equip yourself and you can take on anything though, like any good RPG. Thankfully, more often than not, if you don’t engage, there will be no conflict.

An issue with the size of the world is that it can be easy to get lost, especially with how iffy the map can be. It’s either too far in or too far out, which lead me to not exactly knowing where I was supposed to go until I fixed that. Especially in the beginning of the game.

King of Seas starts very, very slow. It’s controls take a good amount of time to get used to as well. A button to open the sails, one by one. Then we get moving with tank like controls. Left goes left, right goes right. No matter the direction you’re facing, so get used to this, or you might accidentally collide with a group of rocks. Your canons are on the side, so combat is tricky at first, as you’re going to have to circle around and cut other ships off. It’ll feel amazing when you start excelling in combat and the more you get better parts for your ship.

I’m not too thrilled about how the game looks in gameplay, but how the characters and art in the game looks really pulls me in. It has an old school PC Adventure game look to it. Characters look goofy and colorful, but not too strange to come off as ugly. Perhaps like a 90’s cartoon.

King of Seas is great if you love pirates and love RPGs. I can see the pirate part not gelling well with some players, as it’s not the standard. If you’ve got an open mind however, give the game a shot.