Review

Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey

The seven Southern states seceded in 1960, marking the beginning of the American Civil War. In response, the Union began blockading Southern ports, hoping to choke the Confederacy into submission. Realizing that the blockade would bring an early defeat, the Confederacy began hiring privateers to run supplies in and out of Southern ports, shipping out cotton and tobacco and bringing in much-needed arms and medical supplies. These blockade runners became as the title Swashbucklers of the Blue and Grey.

Swashbucklers is an unusual game, which makes it hard to review. It feels as though it draws very heavily from other titles in its genre, most notably Sid Meiers Pirates!, to set up the mood and intermediary gameplay, and then combines it with fast, button-mashing action, bringing to mind Namcos Tales of series and Kingdom Hearts. The combination makes for an enjoyable experience, blending resource micro-management with adrenaline-pumping action, but there are a number of flaws that drag it down from being the perfect mix I want it to be.

The game starts with a short cutscene establishing the protagonist, Abraham Gray, as a self-absorbed, apathetic antihero with loyalty only to the highest bidder, and jumps immediately into a fight outside of a tavern. Gray is counseled by his inner voice, which explains the controls and prevents him from doing anything ridiculously stupid. The action is lightning quick; its easy to start stringing together combos on the three thugs to make short work of them. After a few short cutscenes to set up more exposition, the actual gameplay begins. All of the play in between fights focuses on trading resources between ports. The only way to make money is by buying supplies at one port and selling them for a higher price at another. All of this money is then spent on upgrades, which can be anything from better cannons, better handguns or swords, more inventory spaces, or better ships. Unfortunately, most of the money I made went to repairing my ship after running blockades. All of the open ports want food and luxuries, while the blockaded ports want guns and ammunition, and the only way to make a profit is by running the blockades.

This brings me to my first real complaint. Ship battles tend to be boring. In Pirates!, the battles were a nice mix of action and strategy. Each shot did something different. Deciding between what shot I wanted to take and consequently, whether I wanted to target the masts and immobilize the ship, target the crew and make boarding easier, or simply sink the ship, provided a layer of depth that made each battle interesting and unpredictable. In Swashbucklers, all of the shots target all three (masts, crew, and hull), taking the decision away entirely and removing much of the potential distinction between the different cannons. The ships in Swashbucklers are also too slow. Whereas in Pirates! ships could move quickly enough to outmaneuver incoming fire, the ships of Swashbuckler are so slow and heavy that getting hit is almost a certainty. The battles change from a fast-paced game of cat-and-mouse to an arm wrestling contest.

Once enough damage is done to an enemy ship, it becomes possible to board the ship and fight the crew and the captain to take control of the vessel. Deck battles are where Swashbucklers gets to shine, as they are the best part of the game. Abraham stands in the middle of the deck of his ship (and after the first wave, the deck of the enemy ship) and uses his sword, his gun, and his fists to bathe the floorboards in blood. As with the tutorial fight, it’s easy to string together a combo that flings enemy troops around the ship, leaving Gray and his blade dancing. Gunplay works very well too. You can’t move while shooting, making swordplay the mobile option, but picking off soldiers with a hail of lead as they March out of their cabins is as much fun as carving them up. After making your way through three waves, you reach the captain of the enemy ship, who you must defeat in a duel. The swordfighting in the duels is more intricate than the standard deck fighting, but its simple enough to learn and just as fast.

Much to my dismay, the deck fighting, duels, ship battles, and other side games all suffer from the same problem: the difficulty curve is inconsistent. The fighting aboard the ships and the duels are mind-numbingly easy, making the health-restoring items a waste of inventory space. On the other side, ship battles and boxing matches are nigh impossible. I never walked away from a blockade with anything more than scratches because the only other option was not to walk away at all. Every duel boiled down to waiting for the enemy captain to wear himself out on my defense before ripping him apart. There never seemed to be a happy medium of challenging but not frustrating.

Integrated into the game is a simple leveling system, granting some experience points for defeating enemies and sinking ships, and unlocking new abilities with each level up. The abilities ranged from doing more damage with swords or rifles to improving ship speed to special moves like barehanded punches and throws. Every new level also brings with it a boost to one of three stats: Fencing, affecting how much damage swords do, Shooting, affecting how much damage guns do, and Defense, affecting how much damage enemy attacks do. The system is extremely simple; with only three stats and a handful of special moves, it feels unnecessary at times (though the stat improvement did make some of the ship battles more bearable).

I haven’t mentioned the storyline thus far because I still can’t figure out what it is. The story missions the important characters sent me weren’t much different from the standard delivery missions the shopkeepers gave me. Either way, I was taking supplies from one port to another and getting paid. When the story missions did differ, such as sending me to a fort to punish some merchants who reneged on a deal, they never seemed to connect to form a cohesive story. I felt as though I was being lead around, running errands, until the game ended.
But, despite all of my complaints, I still enjoyed Swashbucklers. When it wasn’t beating me over the head with the peaks of its difficulty curve or dragging its feet, it was a fun ride. Hacking and slashing through what had to amount to the entire Union and Confederate armies never dulled, and the short distances between ports made trading simple enough that it wasn’t annoying. In short, when Swashbucklers was being a blend of other games in its genre, it was fun. When it tried to insert things to stand out, it fell flat.