I hate to give a negative review to any game, but I cannot recommend this, despite how appealing the game looks. The art for the game as well as the maps are beautiful. The game is very linear - all you really do is go from point A to B with some dialogue to keep the story moving forward. You loot items on the way and pick up 'quests.' Which means that the meat of the game is the combat. Unfortunately, the combat is a case of 'great ideas, poor execution.' For one thing, the controls are sluggish and the maps and UI are hard to read. There are a lot of new systems with minimal explanation of what does what. Many of the ideas are interesting but the difficulty is cranked so high that one mistake makes you restart the combat. The long, sluggish combat. Perhaps things get easier once you have your whole crew and more items and buffs are available, but the beginning of the game was such a core, I'm done. I have too many better designed games on my backlog. Which is a shame because I love tactics games and there is a lot to love here. Perhaps after some patches...

I like the idea but the game is very janky, the controls are extremely clumsy and frustrating, you can never tell what terrain is walkable and what is unpassable, the visual representation of each level has little to nothing to do with whether you can walk through a place or not. To make it worse, the UI is opaque and cluttered, it always has you second guessing whether you've pressed a button or any action you've done has actually registered, and in general, feels like a struggle to play it. Combat has a card/dice system that feels convoluted and unclear, but to be fair, I didn't put any effort in understanding it, because it seemed very apparent to me that this is not a game I would enjoy.

It's a shame because beneath all of that, there is an interesting concept with an appealing graphic style, but in the end, the game needs to be playable to be enjoyable.

Can't recommend in its current state.

Before I bought the game, I saw the negative reviews, but didn't take them seriously for 2 reasons: first, almost all of them were written by people who played around 1 hour or so, and secondly, they were mostly in regards to UI, controls, etc. I thought that 1 hour is not enough time to condemn a game and that I can probably get over any technical difficulties if the game is good in its core.
Boy, was I wrong. Everything the other reviews said was spot on, navigating is super difficult. Sometimes you see an enemy right in front of you but you can't walk towards him. Why? Dev decided that piece of ground should be unwalkable. Why? Don't know, shut up and go around. The UI is weird, it took me 3 minutes to figure out how to attack an enemy (you don't just click the enemy or the attack button, you have to do that and then click a picture of a die that appears on top of the screen). There are no tutorials at all -- only a rule book you have to read before you start playing with no examples. You don't learn as you play, you have to sit and memorize all the unconventional concepts (attack dice, profession dice, challenge dice, attack damage vs. attack effect (which is usually more damage), etc. etc. etc.). The mission objective are very weird -- I had an objective to find allies to fight someone. Then after a while, the objective disappeared without me finding anyone. Did I fail? Why? I wasn't done looking. Then I had an objective to ``thrash" an enemy. I entered combat and after a couple of turns the fight just stopped (I didn't defeat him quickly enough) and the objective disappeared. Did I fail? I got the achievement for thrashing him. At other time I had an objective to grapple someone, but I didn't and the fight just ended randomly. Very weird and unhelpful objective system. There are a million other things I could go over (like how you pick up objects but have no idea what they are and the game won't tell you, or how the dialog is wonky and just includes random quotes from The Pirates of the Caribbean with no context, just because the devs thought it was cool to randomly quote it) but I won't. I've said enough.

tl;dr - one hour is *definitely* enough time to realize this game is not even close to being finished (or it just sucks). I'll probably play another 20 minutes and unless something very drastic happens, I'll refund it. It's no fun at all.

Edit: after writing this review, I spent 16 more hours playing the game. Bottom line -- I haven't changed my mind. I mostly finished it due to my OCD and my hope that it'll get better, but it doesn't. While there were one or two fights in the game that were fun, the game is generally speaking, completely unfinished. It feels like something that was released into early access, and even that happened too soon. This review is too long already so I won't specify, if you have any questions, write a comment and I'll try to answer. But it's clunky, poorly written, repetitive and not worth your time.

I'll give a negative but constructive review.

The game has cool ideas, but it has implementation issues. The combat is a mix of deck builder and dice rolling, which, despite being interesting, has little to no explanation. On several occasions I didn't understand what an icon did or how to equip something I had found. I had to start the game more than once to understand the mechanics and avoid mistakes. The game is not difficult and I like that idea, but if you make a small mistake, it can cost you the entire combat, having to start all over again. I suggest adding more explanations and improving the game's UI, which is confusing at times.

The story is linear and you control a specific character, which isn't a problem, but be warned if anyone thinks they'll be able to create their own character like in other RPGs, then this will not happen.

I found some bugs in the game, especially in the character improvement process. To level up a character you spend gold, but depending on when you decide to level up your characters, you may be wasting gold, because the game simply doesn't add the experience correctly or it simply reverses what you did, without giving you back the gold you used. This bug needs to be fixed soon, because it completely ruins the game experience.

Regarding this character leveling process, it would be more interesting to be able to level up each member of the crew individually, because it would be possible to better manage the gold spent.

Despite all these criticisms, I'm enjoying the game and would like to thank the developer for subtitled the game in Portuguese. Not all companies do this, and it brings me great joy to be able to play the game in my own language.

I suggest that those who want to play the game wait for some patches to fix and improve the game before playing, to avoid frustration.

I'll change my review if I see that the game has improved.

Is this game a masterpiece? Well, maybe not. An exciting pirate story, presented in a comic book style, where the various locations are explored in isometric view and in real time, combined with turn-based battles, sounds good. The graphics were created using Unreal Engine 5 and we get fairly large levels (from France to Latin America) in a historical environment that is as true to the original as possible (buildings, language, costumes, weapons).

The game begins exactly as I would expect a well-made pirate story to - with a raid on a peaceful Caribbean town. A bit of pillaging and plundering, just my taste. The plan was perfect, but in reality things always turn out differently. After a short battle, my pirates are all dead or captured, my pirate ship is a wreck and the remains are drifting rudderless through the Atlantic. Apart from me, Captain Flint, there is only Billy left, lying on the planks, while the sun burns down mercilessly on the wreck floating in the sea and I am almost going mad with hunger. Suddenly, the foot of Billy Bones lying on the ground looks incredibly appetizing. He's probably already dead anyway, so what the hell...

Some time later, I find myself in a French dungeon in Saint-Malo. I don't know why they didn't hang me, but I can't expect to live long in this hole. Lepers, prisoners driven mad by eternal imprisonment and brutal fellow prisoners are not really the ideal company. After a successful escape from the prison and a walk on the beach, always on the lookout for patrolling guards, we sneak into the town to find the old treasure map that a prison inmate (who has been in prison for a while and is therefore no longer quite so mentally and physically fit...) told us about. This is also where the battles start to become quite challenging.

Battles are turn-based and each of our characters can move/attack/perform other actions. However, the game has no mercy - if one of our main characters dies, we go back to the last automatic save point. And this can happen extremely quickly at the beginning. Our hero wants to strike, slips and lands on his back - two enemies have an easy time and slash him open. We hide behind a crate to avoid being a target for the enemy musket shooter - another enemy climbs onto the crate, jumps down on us and kills us with this jump. We want to roll a barrel onto an enemy, I click on the wrong ground tile, not behind but next to the barrel, so I can't roll the barrel in the correct direction... and I'm shot by the enemy next round. In short - every click counts, you can't take back a move, you are often numerically outnumbered, and the results are regularly diced - bad luck when rolling the dice also quickly leads to death. Playing cards that allow you to roll the dice again may help here.

Over the course of the game, you will find a whole host of crew members, all of whom have unique skills. In Saint-Malo you can recruit a cook, a swordsman, a blacksmith, a weapons master, a priest, a smuggler, a surgeon and possibly a few more optional crew members. Playing cards can be found in the environments and consumable tools can be bought in the store (available at any time). These tools can also be used to create quite effective combos to get the most out of the available weapons. Back then, battles were still largely man-to-man, and you will only have enough time to reload a musket during a fight in a few situations. It's a good idea to have a grenade ready alongside your musket and sabre. The management of your team is an essential aspect of the game - equipment, skills to be used, and that with a not so small crew, of which you can only take up to six people on a shore excursion. It's best to take people on your team whose skills can be combined well. Drink rum to increase your strength, drink coffee to improve your dexterity, heal comrades in battle with bandages or outside of battle with healing ointments. Inventory and crew management is an important part of the game. Increase your team's experience by distributing the captured gold pieces, but keep a little back to buy some equipment.

There are plenty of man-to-man battles in the game - but what there aren't are sea battles. I think that's a shame for a pirate game. There is also no voice output. However, many of the numerous dialogs (or relevant events) are illustrated by elaborately drawn comic panels, which is much better than just the text popping up over the heads or appearing somewhere in a text field. The story is not very long.

Conclusion:
Turn-based role-playing strategy game in a pirate setting. Assemble a crew of bloodthirsty pirates and set off in search of a hidden treasure. Defeat Englishmen, Spaniards, Frenchmen or natives in challenging tactical turn-based battles, in which your strategic skills and a little luck with the dice are important. A historical setting (spiced up with a little fantasy), detailed graphics and a comic-style story will make you feel like Blackbeard while you decimate your opponents.

Good concept, poor execution. Super disappointed because I've been waiting for a good Pirate RPG for ages. UI is unclear, camera can be janky, a few freezes where there really shouldn't be. Very combat based, but the combat isn't great and sometimes feels outright unfair. There's not much room for opening tactics since you're forced into a starting position which often means the entire encounter has you at the mercy of the dice rolls. There's potential to the game for sure, but potential alone doesn't make for a good game.

(After playing a few hours - scroll below to find additional notes)
I've read a few other reviews and I'm not sure I understand the issues people are having. The combat and game mechanics are pretty well explained. It IS a little clunky if you just jump in and face roll it - but if you READ THE INSTRUCTIONS it tells you how to do most everything. Also paying attention helps with that. It plainly tells you to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. It does not walk you through everything and hold your hand.

I don't really feel it deserves as much of the negativity I've seen so far, so far I'm enjoying it and will keep rolling along. There ARE some things that could be polished a bit in both dialogue and explanations.

The story so far is interesting and the comic strip style story board is pretty nice, I do like the comic strip bits and think they could have incorporated a bit more, its a nice touch. Though some of the dialogue is a bit corny and feels like something taken from too many pirate movies. Can be good, can be bad, however you look at it. Overall, enjoyable so far.

Combat can be a little clunky on occasion but it feels like one of those things you pick up as you get further into it and it starts making more sense. My guess is this is what most people are having so many issues with, they just jump in and expect it to work by rolling their faces on the keyboard.

Some of it can be trial and error and there are some things that could be better explained, but if you've played any number of turn based RPGs / strategy games etc.. you can kind of get a feel for it well enough. Combat is hit or miss at the moment and if your character gets into a string of misses it can get a little annoying and you have to start the fight over again (again only an hour or so into it so I'm guessing once you build out your "crew" a bit more combat gets smoother later on).

Learning how to chain attacks and combo moves helps with making the combat a bit smoother and once you figure some of it out, it gets easier as you go. (Do no dismiss pushing enemies and things especially if they are up against a wall, curb stomping can help to finish off enemies quickly and easily)

Overall, in my first hour of playing, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

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Continuing on as I've played almost 8 hours now...
The combat is janky and can be very clunky and takes a bit of getting used to and could do with some better explanations (as stated previously) I think I've got the grasp of it. When things are working, they work well and can be fun, when things don't work well it can get frustrating if you find yourself aggravated at having to constantly redo a mission 3 or 4 times due to a string of poor dice rolls. (I find myself getting frustrated when in having to redo and redo again and redo once more even when I have prepared ahead of time).

This becomes especially noticeable when you get into a fight against enemies that can down your units in one turn and the mission condition is unit(s) "must survive". (You can remedy most of this with items)

Very linear so far (unsurprising) and seems to be very short. If they ironed out some of the combat issues and did a better job at explaning things more directly and gave it a bit more depth overall, I think it could be a good story.

A lot of the criticism on the reviews is from people that didn't do what the game asks us to do at every loading screen: READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. I did read and have no problem with the combat mechanics. On the contrary.

Flint is a great game. It's like the devs had read my mind: it's a RPG with no magic, no fantasy, with only humans in a pirate setting, very well crafted. In addition it has a beautiful comic-book design within an interesting and well-writing storytelling and an innovative turn-based combat. 10 out of 10!

Other than begin to short, its rather good. I wish the company a huge budget to work with. The negative comments are not being fair, the UI isnt super great, but the game is playable, seemingly bug free. I just would like to see it fully fleshed out, the current state is mostly a teaser of what this could have been. (The value for length is ok.)

Very short (about 10 hours), yet very poorly introduced combat mechanics and broken difficulty curve (very difficult in the start, laughably steamrolly near the end) make this game a slog. Somehow even the movement in the overworld feels clunky and buggy. The graphics, the story and the presentation are good but don't fix that this game needed a lot more work.