Curse of the Sea Rats Review | Is it Any Good?

At first glance, Curse of the Sea Rats looks like it has all the makings of a great Metroidvania-inspired game. It has an impressive art style, a massive world to explore, and tons of upgrades to uncover.

But upon closer inspection, you’ll start to realize that Curse of the Sea Rats is far from perfect. It does offer a fun and compelling experience, but there are some kinks that might be off-putting for some players.

In this review, we’ll look at Curse of the Sea Rats and decide whether it’s a good game for you to buy or not.

A Pretty Straightforward Story

The premise of the game is simple and something that you’d be able to see in a kids’ animation movie.

In Curse of the Sea Rats, you play as a prisoner who’s on his way to the mainland to get punished for your crimes. However, along the journey, an evil pirate witch turned everyone into rats, you included.

The witch has also kidnapped an important child, and the ship’s captain offered you and other prisoners a deal – save the child and defeat the evil pirate witch.

By doing so, everyone will return to their normal human selves. At the same time, your crimes will be pardoned.

As you can see, the story isn’t really all that complicated. I loved the fact that it’s so straightforward which makes it rather kid-friendly.

You have a situation at hand, and your goal is to solve that situation by taking down an evil boss. It’s as simple as that!

Hand-drawn Aesthetics and Good Sound Design

The game uses hand-drawn aesthetics for its art style. This seamlessly fits with its overall concept and lore.

Personally, I like this art style as it’s reminiscent of the late 80s and early 90s animation which is both visually pleasing and nostalgic.

This gives a breath of fresh air from all those realistic graphics and art styles that most games are going for these days. However, this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s understandable.

When it comes to its sound effects, the game does a good job of using the right sounds at the right moments. However, it’s nothing to write home about.

The game’s music style isn’t all that impressive, but it’s a good one nonetheless.

Somewhat Fun Gameplay

You will be able to choose which character you play at the start of the game. However, the game also features co-op so you can play with your friends.

As expected, each character has its own unique fighting style, though it’s not as in-depth as you might think. Besides, you can just change your character later on as you progress through the game.

Since it’s a Metroidvania-inspired game, you can expect the same gameplay as you play. There are combo attacks, parrying, dashing, power attacks, jumping, ducking, and the standard movement.

All these apply to all characters, though they do have some variations in terms of their power attacks. When it comes to the game’s map, it’s basically just one huge area that you should slowly uncover, unlocking locked areas along the way as you progress.

As you go along, you’ll find in-game currency which you can then use to improve your items. These are also currencies you can use to unlock skills in your skill tree, thus improving your character permanently.

A neat addition is the ability to fast travel across various sections of the map pretty easily. The devs did their best to make this feature as simple as possible, and it’s something that I like.

That said, Curse of the Sea Rats does offer a certain degree of replayability. You have tons of areas you can uncover and various characters you can try.

There is also a bunch of side stuff you can come across to further extend its overall replayability.

The Final Verdict

So, is Curse of the Sea Rats any good? Well, it certainly is a fun experience, though it could definitely use some improvements to make it way better than it currently is.

The map’s style should offer players a much clearer direction, as the lack of color coding makes it a bit tough to use it. Most of the time, looking for pathways that are supposed to be there seems impossible.

Then there’s the combat which could be further polished. While you can unlock things in the skill tree, the variety is simply lacking. It would also be nice if we can get to unlock techniques much more quickly.

Overall, Curse of the Sea Rats is a fun Metroidvania-inspired title. It only costs $17.99, so you might want to give it a try in under two hours and decide if it’s worth keeping or if you should ask for a refund.

Personally, I would recommend buying the game after a few updates and improvements.

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