One man's "tantric" is another man's "blue balls."

I don't care much for pirates, I like to steal and murder with my feet planted on solid ground, so it's a testament to this cyoa that I plopped money on the table after the demo. But this thing is like a Twinkie. The first bite is delicious but after that you realise it's simply hollow and sickeningly saccharine and not something you wanted after all.

I was willing to overlook the blandness of the love interests and their baffling contextless attraction to the protagonist. The writing seems to love them but never gives you any reason to. I found your first captain, your first love in Boston, even the man who attempts a coup to be more interesting and worthwhile. Consent is great but it's also fetishised to a hilarious, unpiratelike degree which took me right out of everything and only served to fatigue me. This unending "mother, may I" strangeness is further compounded when you reach scenes where your choices are all out of character and unideal. At one point you collapse and are princess carried away for treatment, which is absolutely fine and normal, but your only choices are being incredibly rude, ungrateful, stubborn or flirty about it. My health is on the line and I have a bunch of people who rely on me, the devil himself could be carrying me, I don't care.

The story chugs toward a final battle and depending on your choices, it feels inevitable. I was preparing myself for most of the story to go out in a blaze of glory, for brotherhood and freedom. I was willing to see my character, her crew, her love interest, and everyone die. So when I finally get to the destination and someone says rather uncharacteristically "this is impossible" then I'm immediately whisked to another page that tells me I just gave up without even trying and lived a comfy life, the end, I'm sorry, no. Perhaps there are a series of choices I could have picked that would unlock that final battle but given the swiftness of the end, I doubt the author invested the time writing up a satisfying siege scenario.

There is a terseness to the writing that I don't personally mind but looking at it as a whole, the entire thing feels like a first draft. Locations and actions will suddenly change, with your brain feeling confused as it expected a few more scenes in between. Everything in the final chapters feels incredibly rushed. The bones are kinda there, there's just no meat.

All of these shortcomings would be tolerable, I guess, if we didn't live in a world where several erotic pirate games exist, ones where you are quite convincingly a pirate who does pirate things, where the romance feels well formed, and where your choices don't suddenly stop mattering. I guess I wanted a raspberry Zinger instead.

Taking on the role of a young, female pirate captain in this text-only interactive novel sees the player leading the way in a multi-threaded adventure set in and around the Caribbean during the latter stages of the Golden Age Of Piracy.

I admit that pirates of the high seas is something of a personal weakness, so when this game appeared in the listings of “Players Like You Love” on the Steam store page, I was immediately intrigued.. and yet, having looked into it and discovered that it was a story in exclusively text; I still wavered and needed some encouragement from the lovely people in the Otome Lovers' discord (you know who you are ladies, thank you) before making a purchase.

The game display defaults to a rather harsh black typeface on a white background, and thankfully has a menu including an option to change it to a much more comfortable white on black. You can also adjust the text size as many times as needs be until you are happy with it. This was a good start. From here on in, the story begins and it is quickly clear that you have a great deal of say in the personality of the lead character, and that the choices you make are going to significantly impact how the adventure develops.

Text blocks are never a full screen, so you are not faced with too much information all at once. Many pages end with a choice to be made, which is usually from 3 or 4 possible options. The base text is written in second character, as in “You returned to the deck”, while choices switch to first person mode, eg. “I knocked back the rum and called for more”. I would have expected the differential between these styles to be distracting, and yet it works remarkably well, giving a feeling of having the activity relayed to you, and then being thrust into it personally to decide what must happen next.

There is a statistics page to view where you discover just how many personality traits your choices affect – will you be adored or feared by your crew? Are you brutal and unforgiving or a soft-hearted scoundrel? Brazen or shy? A loner or party animal? Romantically inclined? And what about your protege? How will you shape her future? Even your name and appearance are optional, but accessed in such a way that they are chosen as part of the natural flow of developments.

And those are just your characteristics. Delving further into the delights in store, you will engage in high seas piracy, competition or co-operation with other pirates, potential mutiny, treasure, betrayal, love, governance.. and more. There are 10 deeply involved and very well written chapters to work through before you reach the end of your tale; and with 44 achievements on offer, replay value is high. I found it impossible to stick with my original intentions for my character, as the actions of others and consequences of my own constantly changed my perspective on what I wanted to do next.

There are three main love interest possibilities, at time of writing I have seen two and they are both adorable in their own very different ways. The narration is certainly romance heavy when you want it to be, although there is an absence of any spiciness in the “alone together” scenes. It is not obligatory to pursue a love interest, you can also play the “not interested” card if you prefer to remain romantically unattached.

The game will require some dedication on your part to read it through, and will reward you accordingly. My first play – which I messed up with a bad decision at the end and denied myself the true love ending I was hoping for – lasted for 14 hours and I loved every minute.

The game autosaves at each page, and can only be closed via the X in the top corner of the screen. When returning, it will reopen where you left off. This is done in lieu of any kind of manual save, which means that any decision you make is final for that play through. There is no making a decision, seeing how it pans out, and then reloading to try something else. This should not be a problem at all during your initial experience, but is quite likely to be a bit of a bane in subsequent reads or especially if you are simply going achievement hunting.

I want to come back to an admission I made near the start of this review. I almost did not buy the game when I discovered that it was text-only. After all, if all one wants is to read a good story, then buy a book, right? Well, that would certainly sate the desire. But would a book also offer you the chance to shape the protagonist in a myriad of different ways, and then allow you to go back and do it again, but differently? Would the story change each time you read through – indeed, would you even bother reading a second time? The interactivity in this offering is what makes a thoroughly enjoyable read shine. So many fans of visual novels insist that it is the story itself which is the most important aspect, and yet as I construct this review, I note that there are only 3 others already published for a game that has been released for 6 months. Something does not add up, and it is not the quality provided. If you truly believe that the story is the most important thing, and you are not averse to 17th century pirate adventures, then I strongly suggest that you put your money where your convictions lie, and show this game some love.

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Disclaimer: This review swings negative for me, but the game is not without elements that really worked. I look forward to this author’s next release.

- There were two elements that really stood out to me as being quite strong. Those are the concept of pirates [/i] and the crew [/i]. I’m so glad there is another game about pirates! Pirates and pirate themes are a great opportunity to explore morality, crime, and freedom. In addition, the crew was great! I enjoyed winning their loyalty. Characters like Darius and Rose really stood out from the background. That being said, I think there are certain issues here that didn’t make this experience what I hoped it would be.

- From early on, this story didn’t really keep my attention. Whatever my play time is should be seen as a significant inflation of what an actual play time for this game should be. This is due to one significant problem, which embodies several fundamental issues for me. While the two members of the crew, Darius and Rose, stood out and seemed to develop/become more complex over the course of the narrative, the romantic options (ROs) did not. To me this is an especially serious issue in a game that is supposed to have a substantial emphasis on character relationships. I think this issue is embodied by a couple of things in the narrative:
- First, the romantic options have interesting backgrounds, but don’t become multifaceted individuals. I really like all of the characters as concepts, but throughout the narrative they mostly just follow their specific type. The Governor is fancy and rigid. He acts in a way that shows off those two things. From the moment you meet him, you know what he’s going to do and how he’s going to react. With a character I’m getting to know, I want to unfurl them—to discover the unexpected aspects of them, which in turn makes them an individual. That’s what elevates a relationship from that of a stranger to a friend, or a significant other. I know the author could do this because the author DID do this with Darius. Darius seems colder and more aloof at the beginning, but as the title goes on we discover his loyalty, his sense of humor, his affection for both us and his partner, his worrywart tendencies, etc. Because of this I was excited to spend time with him, and his opinion of how I was running my crew mattered to me. This was really strong, and I wanted more of this, but for the ROs.
- Second, the plot was geared to be more character-oriented, but there wasn’t enough meaningful time spent with the characters. If the plot isn’t going to have plot-driven-conflict (valid), it must have character-driven-conflict (valid), otherwise it feels like a bunch of things just happen in a vague order and then the story is over. So the plot is…sort of not a thing. It starts to be a thing a couple of times, but it just doesn’t really rise. There are multiple instances where there’s a shift in focus, but it doesn’t seem to matter/doesn’t create meaningful changes in the cause/effect chain to drive us forward. I’m actually okay with this for the most part—plus the moments of plot—specifically the statue were really interesting. It made me question if this is truly a world I know or something that was so much more! Regardless, the lack of plot would be fine if the conflict of the story was happening between the characters. However, this isn’t really the case. There are a couple of moments where you might disagree with your RO if you choose to play that way, but you certainly don’t have to. Further, despite technically being in different factions, the ROs don’t even seem to really disagree with each other.
- Third, the romance felt unearned. Everyone seemed to like my character because of a bunch of things that happened as part of their background—AKA my character is renowned, therefore everyone is flirting with her. This was just kind of a bummer for two main reasons. 1) It felt like they would have liked anyone in this position, which, I mean, I get that if you’re the writer why you might write it this way, but as the reader I was like ‘Why have me create a character then? I’m essentially just playing a character that you’ve created with a name and some aesthetics that I’ve chosen.’ 2) The progression of the relationship felt like it only required opting in, which is really easy, but for that reason feels earned. I would have loved to feel, even if it weren’t true, that these characters seriously regarded my character's actions, and that these actions had consequences to them. Again, this issue really stood out because of the importance of characterization here.

• Pay attention to your crew!
• Hang out with Darius; he’s the best!

• You like pirates, but Black Sails was a little too dark for your taste.

I'm not very far in, but I like what I've read so far.
The writing is gorgeous and the world is fun to play in.
I am playing nice an trustworthy, but there's always the option to be a more ruthless captain and burn ships and hang someone.
I like the idea of the protege and the option to shape her.

Finished a few play throughs and I adore this tale. It seems like whichever combination of pirate you wish to be and who you wish to romance are compatible. As in there are other stories where certain characters will not be in a relationship with you if you're not one way or the other no matter what. This one on the other hand seems to makes it work whichever way you want to (I'm guessing assuming they like you enough) play and frankly I love that.

The story is rather interesting and while I haven't played the other pirate themed choice games, this one finally made me want to read one. Not dissapointed in the slightest and it's well written too, honestly one of the better one's I've read.

I wanted to be a ruthless pirate, but this is more of a dating sim with not many choices other than who your female character romances. The game seems to steer you towards being lawful and bashful, but that is not who I wanted to be.

Game's got an excellent Black Sails vibe going and I love that.

There were four characters in this that I wanted to murder, who I had extremely good reasons to kill, who I had insulted and mocked at every possible opportunity, three of whom still seemed to be in love with me despite my extremely clear antipathy for them, and the game didn't let me kill *any* of them. Booooooooooooooooo

I played this on the Heart's Choice app on my phone instead of Steam so disregard the play time.

It was a real pleasure pleasure playing this. The writing was captivating and had me hooked. The romance was steamy, I had a hard time choosing just one. Snagged Eden (swoon!), but honestly, they were all winners. Now I'm back to my boring love life, feeling like I traded a five-star vacation for stale crackers.

Good