Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is almost something. It has the bones of a really great video game. Unfortunately those bones are coated with thinly sliced mortadella. But at least that mortadella has green olives… and I have forgotten what I was trying to say. Probably something about how not enough people are talking about mortadella, and that more meats should have big chunks of pepper in them.

Anyway, Black Kat is a pirate game where you play as Black Kat (a pirate). The story isn’t interesting. Your father, the Governor, is murdered by the villainous Captain Hawke. While bleeding out he reveals that your mother was also a pirate. So you decide to follow in her footsteps and go on a journey across the five seas to find her grave, while hopefully getting revenge on the way.

The plot is doled out in shiny cg cutscenes that are too rare to have any impact. Sadly, the game suffers from a lack of character and characters. There is an old seadog who knew your mother, a charming rogue who knew your mother, and the aforementioned Captain Hawke who also knew your mother. The writing isn’t funny or clever, and you won’t see any of these characters outside of cutscenes.

There are a couple of NPCs in the game world that give you fetch quests. There’s a mermaid, a ghost pirate, a voodoo priest, Jack Frost and Neptune himself. There is also a merchant who will speak to you once, but afterwards is only a menu. Overall, it is a barren game.

This is something that really bothers me. The joy of an adventure is the feeling of starting from somewhere safe and familiar, going out into the great unknown and facing ever-increasing dangers, with the occasional place of refuge in between. This needs a Shire, or a Kakariko Village. Let me walk around my boat and talk to my crew.

It shouldn’t be all villages and ports, but this game lacks contrast. The first time you dock your boat at a quiet beach to battle giant crabs and skeletons it feels awesome. The next 30 times, less so. Even though the five seas have different biomes and assortments of enemies, they start to feel like empty blocks of land.

However, I really enjoyed the travel system. The world is broken up into the “five seas” which are in turn broken up into smaller maps. Each map features multiple islands with specific piers to dock your boat. To move between maps you need to sail away from the islands, before the game allows you to open your map and fast travel to a different area. It does a great job of making you feel like you are travelling between these places without having a huge open world. It also helps to avoid the boredom of having to sail large expanses of empty ocean.

The sailing is fun. There are other ships you can battle. The best technique is to ram them head on, and then slowly circle around them while firing your cannons. There are also enemy forts you can take by bombarding them with cannon fire until they surrender. You are then able to use these to buy supplies, and fix or upgrade your ship.

On foot, you’ll spend your time crossing swords with enemies and hunting for treasure. Finding treasure is immensely satisfying, with each chest opened resulting in a shower of coins along the edge of the screen. It is loud and jangly like a slot machine. Some of these chests are buried, but can be found when Kat announces “I smell treasure!”

Combat is simple. A basic 3-hit combo. Blocking makes you almost invulnerable from all angles. There are a lot of consumables. Your basics include throwing knives, poison darts, dynamite, and vampire flasks that will suck health out of your enemy to restore yours. These can all be purchased from the merchant. There are also magical tikis with elemental effects like raining down fire or ice, as well as one that turns you invisible. These are rarer and need to be found in game. I recommend saving them for boss fights, because the tikis are very powerful. I froze several bosses in place and just wailed on them with my sword until they died.

Despite a lot of enemy and weapon variety, the combat quickly grows dull. I found myself running past most combat encounters. I was more interested in treasure than battling ghost pirates and teleporting voodoo kids. The combat would be fine if it was broken up by puzzles or platforming. It isn’t. Instead, the enemies get increasingly annoying. The worst is some kind of spinning voodoo statue that can’t be damaged by non-explosive projectiles and is faster than you. Also fuck snowball-slinging yetis and fire-spitting demon dogs. They can fuck right off.

You probably can’t tell, but I actually liked this game. It was developed by Westwood Studios who is best known for Command & Conquer, a series of RTS games. Legend of Black Kat has the teething problems of a studio toying with a genre they were unfamiliar with. They had made a number of RPGs and adventure games, but this was their first action-adventure on a home console.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat began life as a PC multiplayer game that was meant to take place in a living world. According to game designer Mike Legg, “[they] were very inspired by Sid Meier’s Pirates and had sailing, trading, ship combat, docking at towns, and more. It was all about growing your ship and crew, and becoming a legendary Pirate.”

This changed when development shifted to the PS2, tossing aside simulation in favour of action-adventure. At first, it remained ship-based until “Later, it was decided to add on a second “Land” mode to include exploration, sword fighting, and treasure hunting. Along with this, the PS2 was very challenging to develop for, as we were writing all-new code from scratch. The scope just got too big for the game.”

In an alternate universe there is a sequel that expands on this game to make something truly special. Unfortunately, we don’t live there, and I find myself unable to recommend you go back and play it. It’s not bad. It is perfectly playable. Truthfully, I was digging for buried treasure, but all I found was a mortadella skeleton.