I’m not a big fan of pirate games, and I think the only pirate-heavy things I’ve ever played were the original Monkey Island and Tradewinds. It actually took me a while to start up Tortuga: Two Treasures, but when I finally did, I didn’t let go for a long time.
Tortuga: Two Treasures puts you in the shoes of Thomas Blythe, “Hawk” for short. Hawk is a young pirate at the service of the famous (and infamous) Blackbeard, searching for the long lost treasure of Henry Morgan. But pirates are treacherous creatures, and Hawk eventually finds himself betrayed, arrested and waiting to be executed shortly after his adventure begins.
The game takes place in the 18th Century Caribbean, and starts you off right in the middle of a naval combat situation. This is basically your typical tutorial to get acquainted with the controls: arrow keys to move, mouse clicks to fire. “I can do that”, I thought, as I turned my ship around to try and sink those pesky English officers. And right away I was totally taken in by the landscape, the water effects, the crew moving around all over the deck and my efforts to place my ship side by side with the other one.
Your goal is to fire at the enemy ship and weaken its hull by using whatever weapons you have handy and your maneuvering abilities to position your ship properly to do the most damage possible. You hear cannons firing and tons of screaming while this happens.
To control the speed of your ship, you learn to raise and lower your sails in turns: raise a few, raise some more and you’re full speed ahead. Lower a few to slow down, lower them all to come to a stop.
Once you’ve nearly destroyed the hull of the other ship, you can board it and begin the third-person combat action. This is even easier than the naval combat, and again, you use the arrow keys to move and the mouse to attack. Depending on the direction you press as you click to attack, Hawk will do different slashing moves. You can also parry to defend yourself. Once you board a ship, your goal is to kill its Captain, but there are always crew members remaining trying to hinder you, so kill those first. Besides, they drop gold, and we’re pirates, so we want gold!
Your ship is initially equipped with cannons, but at the end of each mission you get to use your hard-earned gold to purchase upgrades. Some of these include chain shots (I remember those from Tradewinds, they rip sails apart pretty quick), more powerful cannons, repair kits to restore your hull, explosive barrels that you throw overboard and a very handy – and extremely cool – Kraken bait. Toss that overboard and watch as your enemies fall into a Kraken tentacle trap!
In some missions, you have to board the ship and only then sink it, while in others you’re allowed to fully destroy the hull of your opponent’s ship, sinking it right away. Watch for your crew members as well, since they might be thrown overboard in the heat of battle. If you don’t pick them up soon enough, they will become shark appetizers. Just run them over with your ship to pick them up.
Although you don’t get to control an entire fleet (that would involve more of an RTS type of game instead of action-based), different ships will control differently. It’s nice to see that smaller ships can be maneuvered much better, and that big ships have a lot more firepower.
And this wouldn’t be a pirate game without ghost ships, so watch out for them. They are quite the sight, and you will know one is near when the music changes to this sinister tune and fog starts coming out of nowhere. Ghost ships will kill your crew by taking their souls, so you really don’t want to be around them.
As for Hawk, combat on foot doesn’t necessarily have to rely on swashbuckling alone. He can use pistols and a sort of Molotov cocktail (bottles to light on fire), and he learns new moves as he “levels up”. There are also health-restoring potions you can use.
A nice added touch to picking up gold dropped from enemies is the “cemetery” bonus. Kill a ton of people in the same spot and watch as their tombstones appear on the ground. Attract a few more to that same spot and get a gold bonus for your killing spree. I personally don’t mind button-mashers, especially when there’s a lot of action involved with tons of enemies at once, so you can imagine how pleased I was with the simplicity of the controls.
Tortuga balances both naval and on-foot combat well, but for those expecting something more complicated and immersive in terms of controls, you will grow tired of the easy clicking soon enough.
The gameplay missions are separated by animated scenes that fill in the rest of the story. While the story isn’t bad and includes everything from treasure to romance, to voodoo references, and the dialogs are very well written, the voice acting didn’t seem to fit the characters most of the time. I don’t know, for some reason I expected Sangua to have an obvious accent and Hawk to be saying “Arr, mateys!” and other “piratese” lines a lot more, as well as sound a little less soft.
As for the rest of the sound, no complaints there. The peaceful ocean sounds while you’re just sailing around are very soothing. The sounds during battle are appropriate, and the music is excellent.
Graphically, I just loved the ocean views with island in the distance. The water and lighting effects are amazing, and I truly love the sunset scenes as much as the real ones I used to watch on the beach in my hometown. There is a great deal of detail in the characters, ships, the towns and buildings, although you can’t really go inside them except for those that are part of the story.
The animations in the FMVs are ok, but those in combat aren’t too outstanding. I was actually a bit creeped out at the way some officers died, with their legs bending in impossible ways… freaky!
Other than that, it is worth noting that there’s no widescreen resolution option, in fact, the entire “Graphcis” button was grayed out for me. So for those of you who have spiffy widescreen LCD monitors, a portion of the game area will be off to the left, making you guess where to click to show the log.
It’s a shame that Tortuga: Two Treasures doesn’t offer a bit more of exploration and side-quests. I would have loved to be able to break the barrels and crates that we find in towns, knock down some doors and ransack some houses, maybe kill some villagers in the process… you know, pirating it up a notch!
Overall, it’s not a bad game, and I had fun with it, especially the naval encounters. All it needed was a bit more of the freedom of play that made DarkStar One so great.
Special thanks to Ted Brockwood and CDV for providing a copy of this title.