Tortuga: Two Treasures Review

I'm finding it difficult to not mention Disney's Pirates of The Caribbean whilst trying to review Tortuga: Two Treasures, there are so many similarities. To name but a few; the main protagonist is a pirate captain who has a nickname related to birds Captain "Jack" Sparrow or Thomas "Hawk" Blythe to be specific. Then we have an English governor's daughter, zombie ghost ships and voodoo to name but a few. Although there's unfortunately no un-dead monkey that I've seen, shame.

The story might be derivative in nature but I'm sure I could place the story elements in a dozen other pirate movies too, so it's not all Pirates of the Caribbean. The story does drift around a fair bit - though more out of a need to add a host of action missions to your adventure than any great plot device. And there are a great many missions too, Tortuga: Two Treasures is definitely not short . The story telling cut-scenes themselves can be quite long and aren't animated that badly; voice acting is a definite plus, way above the expected norm for a game of this type.

Although Tortuga: Two Treasures is very story driven, it is basically a mish-mash collection of missions tacked into a rambling swashbuckling tale, the missions take two generalised forms, firstly a fun but somewhat simplistic sea battles game type; here you take control of various sized seafaring vessels and try to outwit of destroy the enemy. Raising or lowering your sails will of course affect your speed and turning circle and cannons are your main weapons in most scenarios. There are however a number of special weapons which can be bought at missions end using gold accrued previously, these range from Kraken bait, which of course summons a giant Octopus like sea monster to attack enemy vessels to kits to be used to repair damage to your ship.

Damage can also be taken by not being careful where you sail, reefs will make a right royal mess of your hull if you're not careful or your foes should you manage to lure them over the rocks. Of course, over time you'll command bigger and better ships and take on larger and larger enemy fleets, sometimes numbering over a dozen, you'll have to be tactically aware to survive such seemingly one-sided encounters.

Generally after each seaborne mission comes a third person hack 'n' slash mission, these are reasonably well animated and made but are somewhat more boring than watching paint dry to be perfectly honest. There are certain button sequences will produce a special move or two once your character has learned them from one of the NPC's in a story section that is, but you pretty much never need to use them to defeat even the toughest of bad guys, nope, good old button mashing will suffice. Gaining gold bonuses for killing baddies in close proximity to each other does help you purchase yet more special weapons and potions, this time there's no Kraken bait (unfortunately) but we do get the use of a pistol and healing potions etc. Some of the later third person missions do see you accompanied by some of your ship mates and as an added burden you mustn't let them die.

Summary

In essence Tortuga: Two Treasures is an adventure game with a variety of action-mission styles chucked in. As an adventure, the games' story obviously needs to be a major asset, but it's not quite strong enough and somewhat too derivative. The third person action sequences are too simple and boring to make up for it, and indeed are somewhat more of a problem. The redeeming feature is the sea battles; although they can get very repetitive they are great fun at times. There's plenty of game here though and it's hardly expensive at most on-line retailers, so I can't condemn this to totally walk the plank. If you can stand the third person action sequences, it might just be worth a look in for pirate-loving fans.