First thing I want to get out of the way is that this review is long overdue, but alas it is here and it’s the first edition of Jonah’s Saturday Reviews which is a review I will be doing every Saturday on anything pop culture, new or old.
If you were to tell me and my crew that something at E3 would entice us to go back to Sea of Thieves, we would have said you were either high or should be mentally assessed. When E3 came around and the trailer for A Pirate’s Life was shown, our collective minds were blown. We truly couldn’t believe that Jack Sparrow was coming to Sea of Thieves, and we knew at that point we must get the band back together to go on this grand adventure. It wasn’t hard convincing the others and as the expansion was released our crew set sail on the Sea of Thieves for the third time, after quitting twice before due to rage and frustration. Here are my thoughts on each chapter of Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life.
Chapter 1: A Pirate’s Life
The first chapter is more or less an introduction, as it should be, that introduces all the key players that will help unravel the story. This is where we travel, for the first time, into the sea of the damned, and that’s where the tall tale takes place. The majority of the tall tale takes place on Sailor’s Grave, a quant little island in the sea of the damned. The quest is pretty simple and shouldn’t take to long unless you go for secrets. Now we didn’t go for all the commendations, but when we could, we would try our best to complete some. Once you’re finished on Sailor’s Grave, you board the ferry of the damned and this is where you meet Jack Sparrow. I will say that the person who voiced Jack Sparrow did an incredible job and was definitely one of the highlights of A Pirate’s Life. Every time he spoke I would be quiet because I wanted to hear what he was going to say. The only little squabble I had with the first chapter was towards the end when you are fighting with Davy Jones’ ship, the battle is timed. You could either play along and shoot your cannon balls and fight the crabs that boarded the ship, but you could also just stand in a corner and do nothing, as both will end after the same amount of time. All in all the first chapter was a great intro chapter and did everything it need to do in order to set the stage for the rest of A Pirate’s Life.
Chapter 2: The Sunken Pearl
This Chapter starts by you sailing close to the edge of the map where you have to follow shipwrecked debris and an enchanting voice all the way down to some sort of underwater lair. This is where you first encounter a reoccurring puzzle that at first I enjoyed but as I kept running into it again and again, started to frustrate me with the lack of diversity when it came to puzzles. The puzzle consists of 4 mermaid statue’s situated in a room, 3 holding a staff and one holding a horn. All the statue’s holding a staff looked a little different so you could differentiate statue from statue. Your goal is to look for a mural, in or near the room with the Statue’s, that will depict how each statue’s staff should be positioned. You change the position of the staff by shooting the statue’s. Once each statue matches the mural you shoot the statue with the horn and the puzzle should be solved. Not to difficult but pretty neat the first time you encounter it. This chapter also introduces you to evil sirens as well as mermaid staffs. I do enjoy both of these additions to the Sea of Thieves world, except I do wish the mermaid staffs were easier to obtain in the regular world. The rest of the Tall Tale consist of more of the mermaid puzzle, some fighting and a couple of excellent boss fights. Although Jack Sparrow was not in this Tall Tale, I do believe this to be the best Tall Tale in A Pirate’s Life. It combines beautiful scenery, great storytelling and excellent combat, which makes for a must play adventure. If you don’t play any other Tall Tale I would highly recommend this one.
Chapter 3: Captain of the Damned.
In this chapter you venture back into the Sea of the Damned to find Captain Jack Sparrow and convince him to join your crew to help stop Davy Jones. You basically use Jack’s compass and it will take you from place to place as you complete objectives and follow the ghost of Jack Sparrow until you finally reach Jack Sparrow himself. A warning to not ditch your ship because my crew spent half the time in a row boat going from location to location only to have one of our crewmates go back to fetch the ship whist the rest of us waited. It’s a bit tamer then the previous chapter as it’s not as action packed, however it is more story driven and in most ways it works really well. The main problem I had with this Tall Tale is it was very stop start, you would dock one place spend 10 minutes there and have to board your ship, follow Jack’s compass to the next place, rinse and repeat. It really isn’t to big a problem and maybe it was made worse by the fact we didn’t have our ship for half the Tall Tale. In this tale you also encounter phantoms for the first time, and I do find them to be a little bit of a pushover cause each one only takes a couple swings of your sword to kill. They did a really nice job with the atmosphere in this one, it was cool to explore parts of the sea of the damned. A well done Tall Tale albeit a bit clunky at times.
Chapter 4: Dark Brethren
In this Tall Tale, Captain Jack Sparrow finally joins your crew as you venture into what can only be described as Davy Jones’ Fortress of Solitude. I want to say that this is a good Tall Tale however I did feel some things made this feel not as enjoyable as other chapter’s. For one, the mermaid puzzle was reused on multiple occasions which I thought was a bit lazy. There were some unnecessarily long fights that just seemed to go on forever. I just found it a bit underwhelming, the fact that it was incredibly similar to chapter 2, matter of fact once you get past the exterior you have trouble differentiating the two. It’s unfortunate but I do feel they got lazy or were not that creative. The one redeeming quality is the boss fight was very good, it’s not the boss fight I expected but the mechanics were cool and it felt awesome fighting along side Jack Sparrow. It’s chapter 2 but this time you have Jack Sparrow so I guess that makes up for what’s lacking.
Chapter 5: Lords of the Sea
The final Tall Tale is just a giant battle with Davy Jones and his minions. I can’t say it is that epic a battle because any experienced crew will be able to handle themselves with relative ease. I don’t want to toot my crews horn but when you’re more than a crew and are more like family, there isn’t a lot that can sink you. Most of the minion ships you face consist of ghost ships that usually go down with 3 or 4 cannonballs. Now in the middle of the sea where this battle is taking place is an erected coral tower, and I think this is where Jones is, but they don’t make it incredibly clear. After you survive a couple of waves of ghost ships and siren statue’s, your prompted to go onto the tower. A little parkour, some easy phantom’s, you jump off like an action star, and the coral tower explodes. It’s now time to fight the main man himself Davy Jones. Like I said I don’t want to toot my crew’s horn, but we must be good cause his ship went down in 4 to 5 cannonballs. We had to do a double take, maybe we go fight him in hand to hand combat, but no, that was it, that was the final boss of A Pirate’s life. We thought it had to be a glitch, however, glitch or not it was an extremely underwhelming finish to the story and left a very bad taste in our mouths as we all expected much more. A story that started out so promising ended so poorly. It is sad but hopefully whatever they decide to do in the future is innovative every step of the way.
Conclusion
If you do play Sea of Thieves, you know that most of what happens on the Sea of Thieves is enhanced by those you play with, and I couldn’t be more fortunate to play with the best crew out there, they enhance everything we do to make it that much more fun. So when I say that some of this content may not be as good or as fun as other things, if you’re playing with the right people you will enjoy it as much as I did. Go out there, crack a cold Corona and find your pirate family.
Rating: Got Caught Fighting a Kraken on the Way to Paddington 2 and Never Made It
We rate things on a scale based on how close something is in quality to Paddington 2. To learn more please read this post
Rongo 