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DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 13
Date: February 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game thinking that the multiplayer portion would be cool. I also figured that, since its a playstation 2 game, it had to be good. I was horribly wrong. This game is the worst game that I have ever played, on computer or console game system. The multiplayer version is comprised of shooting at each other with boats. Thats it. The screens arent split, so if you are far away from your opponent, you are busy squinting at the screen trying to figure who is who...

Very Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I always research any game before I buy. This one came recommended from numerous sources throughout the web and stores. I pick up the game and from the start it was slow paced and very unimaginative. The game lacks in every aspect. From graphics to storyline. I do not recommend this to anyone. Please save your money or donate it to a worhty cause.

Pirates-legend of a less than average platformer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 8
Date: September 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Stupid. When you start out you realize that you're a GIRL pirate. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but the feminine voice overs are awful. You beat an island and it's like "Find your mother's grave," and when that's done, it says "Liberate your fathers FOrtress." and it does that with no story progression. This game has no storyline, it ... DOnt buy it.

Yar.. This Game Blows!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: February 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Wow. How dumb and repetitive can a playstation 2 game be? This one really really blows. The controls in both ship and land modes are unpercise. The backrounds look good but the animation [stinks]. When your ships blows up, theres this explosion sequence where your character just stands on the ship's deck like nothings happening. Basically that sums up this game, "nothings happening".

can't find the fun

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 11
Date: June 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A very boring game. Nothing to do but run around and become bored. The sea battles are nothing to brag about as they are boring as well except they have more noise when a ship blows up. Got to the end of this game and thought, "wow, I never knew it was so cool to be bored."
Same enemies over and over again, except at sea, as the game progresses, one runs into more and more ships.
But on the upside, the game is like a Disney trip. At Disney land, you can stand in a long line and be bored and when you get to your ride, you are too tired to be excited. Same in this game, spend all day running around and when you get into a battle it is so boring that you might feel like saying, "wow, this is so cool to be bored."
This game wouldn't hold the attention of a 4 year old. In fact this game made me think I had ADD.
Rent this first, and then if you think it is cool to be bored, buy it.

Yo-Ho-Ho This Game is a BIG Mistake!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: August 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

You know, pirates are all about sailing the seven seas, scourging and plundering mercilessly to retrieve your loot and stab your trusted officers in the back when orders are not fufilled. But Pirates: The Legened of Black Kat is anything but what you thought a pirate game should be.
First off, the only real highlight of this game is being the captian of many ships and buying repair and weapon items. But even sailing them and doing sea battles is not that challenging and not that fun.
You can also dock on many islands and many worlds as Katrina de' Leon, but even that is exceptionly bad. She does not have many moves or abilityes and heck, she can't even climb up the smallest hills!
Graphics on this game are very poor, and all of the villians and chest items you retrive look horrible. The only good graphics of the game are the waters of the oceans you sail which look very real.
The music is alright...when it decides to turn itself on. One of this games' many flaws is that it gives you no motivation to keep "adventuring" while you play and you don't feel like you ever want to plug it in after your done playing!
However, there are little aspects of this game that seem interesting but not enough to keep you from being bored, such as Tiki Heads which give you different attacks, and magical figureheads on your ship to give it powers out of the ordinary. Yet even these items do very little to keep you wanting to play.
Mostly, I kept wanting to see more variety of gameplay and challenges, as it quickly got repetitive, and the puzzles on this game are quick to solve.
All in all, if you like horrible, poorly desighned laking gameplay in a video game, I sugest that you don't even glance at this game next time you come across it.
It just plain is'nt worth it.

half great, half boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 11
Date: May 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Running on land, sword fighting, and searching for items gets pretty tiresome, I think. It's standard fair...

But sailing the seas and blowing up other ships with your cannons is a lot of fun. Great, even!

If anyone from EA is reading this, I'd love to play a multiplayer version of this, where you sail the high seas and blow your friends out of the water. That's easily the best part.

I think the storyline is highly improbable, if not dorky. "My mother was a pirate?!?" And having model-esque game leads for the sake of it is getting kind of old. So forget all that and spend as much time on the open ocean as you can!

Not the Pirates of old

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: July 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I purchased Pirates - The Legend of Black Kat thinking that it would be along the lines of the old Nintendo Pirates game. My mistake - just reading a few reviews would have helped. The overall concept is good, blending the land and sea facets of the game well. The graphics for Kat and the sea battles are very good and up to my standards for PS2 games. A lot more tweaking could go into the maps as they are not very clear. The instructions, too, are a little vague.

Very Unique Gaming experience

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: February 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I just picked this game up yesterday and have just partly gotten into the game. So far, this is a very tightly programmed, visually stimulating offering from Westwood Studios and EA Games. You play as a young female pirate (Katerina) whose mother was a pirate long ago. You play in two different modes, one is like tomb raider, exploring islands for treasure and mystical items while running your sword through baddies. The other mode is the very well done ship battles where you pilot your pirate ship, blasting forts and other ships out of the water with your cannons and assortment of other special weapons. In additon to the main game, there is a great two-player option where you and a friend can sail around fighting each other's ships. The more ships you sink, the more powerful ships you can take over use. The voice acting is very professional and music is heroic. The cut scenes are very well done and don't interfere with the playing while giving you the backstory. Overall, this game offers a little bit of everything to the adventure gamer. It's not the best game ever made, but it's very entertaining and addictive (which is important). Like the Legacy of Kain and Final Fantasy titles, I've found it hard to put the game down because I can't wait to see what's around the corner or on the next island.

Nice visuals, okay storyline, fun gameplay.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: May 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

My wife and I actually got fished into buying this one after playing the demo. (It is a one player game, but still fun to play together.) Even in the demo the game's strengths were readily apparent - some minor flaws came to light as we continued with the full version, but no show-stoppers.

First, the good stuff. The game environments are gorgeous. The islands look great, the water is clear and blue, the clouds in the sky look real. As you're sailing along, you can see schools of fish swim around, solitary squid wiggle by, and playful dolphins leap out of the water and leave splashes when they land. The creatures are different in different parts of the map. Near one island there's a great looking whale and you can even hear the whale song in the distance. Very, very cool.

The two different styles of gameplay also keep things interesting. The "exploring the islands on foot" part is pretty standard fare. You collect treasure and quest items while defeating various enemies. (This is not a platformer, so there are only a few quest items rather than hundreds.) The "rule the seas" part of the game is great - you sail around fighting the bad-guy ships and defending yourself from other pirates. (The graphics shine again during the sea battles. Each cannon shot is rendered individually with a puff of smoke at the cannon. You see the cannonball flying through the air and if you miss it splashes into the water. If you hit, you see chunks flying off the target. When you do enough damage to the enemy ships, they explode. Sometimes you'll get an instant replay of the ship's destruction showing the final cannon shot up close in slow motion.) Switching between the two styles of gameplay is a lot of fun.

The (PS2) control scheme is pretty easy to pick up (though because this is an adventure game, X is an attack and sometimes I still hit X to jump like I was in a platformer.) The controls are pretty much the same for exploring or sailing, which makes it easy to switch between the two. The left stick controls movement and the right controls the camera. I don't have many complaints about the camera. It stays where you leave it relative to Kat or the ship unless you move it around. In the ship battles you can pull way back to get a great tactical overview or zoom in close for detail. While exploring, you can pull back enough to see around corners or get right behind Kat's head to see what she sees. The only thing I don't like is this: she can't look up.

There are some other minor flaws that I'd like to see tweaked a little in a sequel. For instance, the inventory system only lets you carry a certain amount of each item, no matter how much other stuff you are carrying. (Both personal items for exploring islands and ship related items for the open sea work the same way.) I don't mind a maximum inventory, in fact I kind of expect it, but I'd like to be able to decide for myself what to stock up on and what to leave home.

Also, as Kat grows in skill and power she gets better swords so she can dish out more damage, but other than gaining more health levels her defense doesn't grow. She gets no shields or armor or anything like that. Get surprised by some of the critters in the game and you can lose half your health instantly. Perhaps that was a conscious decision on the part of the designers to encourage careful play, but a little armor would sure be nice.

The storyline is not going to win any awards for dramatic writing, but it works for the game. The cutscenes are pretty good and the voice acting is well-done. The score is great, with some fine dramatic music (a few more tracks would be even better.) I'm not the first to make the comparison to a B-movie matinee or a formulaic novel: it might be a little cheesy, but you didn't come here for literature, you came to have a good time. "Pirates" certainly delivers that.

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