Rogue Waters is a turn-based rouge light RPG. I’ve been looking for a decent pirate ship game for a while now and this one ended up checking off quite a few boxes for me that I'm struggling to put it down. You can choose from going further down the storyline or just grinding things out for resources.
This is one of those kinds of games I was not sure about at first, but I'd like it. The first time playing it I was up till 4 AM. This game is turn-based in a way I just enjoy it. When it’s your crew's turn you can move units in any order. There are a decent number of ways to get around. There are also lots of little tricks you end up learning along the way to leverage the battlefield to your favor.
While the game starts you off with a couple of different challenge tiers. The further along you get in the storyline the more tiers you end up unlocking. I found myself wanting to enjoy the main storyline in normal mode. In other activities, however, where I already know I'm going to kill things with ease I'll bump it up the challenge tier for better rewards.
You have a Pirates Cove as your main base of operations. From there you can spend the two types of currencies in the game blueprints and glass. You can make ship upgrades, hire new crew, or even have crew sit things out for a bit and recover some health.
I ended up grinding out a bunch of raids outside of the main story just so I could max command points quite early on. Command points are spent in every fight where you are firing your command each round at another ship. You can even win the fight without having to board. So, I felt it was worth rushing for these as they give me quite a massive early-start advantage in raiding.
You also have a crew. Some of them are just standard cannon fodder you get so many every time you head out. Then you have your more specialized crew members that gain levels just like you do that have skill trees you can spend points in.
Once you have done any upgrades to a ship it’s time to head out. You have an option to work on the storyline or do two other raids. One tends to be a bit easier and shorter than the other non-storyline option.
The biggest takeaway from these raids is while you do end up looting quite a few upgrades from cannons, ship modules, and items your crew can wear. You are only taking it back with your glass and blueprints.
That adds a bit of an interesting twist to things. As quite early on the choices you are making tend to be on what you want to upgrade first. As you travel through the raid you get to see what each of the next challenges will reward you for winning them.
You can also see on the map which choices you end up getting locked into for sites you have to run. Choices end up having some kind of impact from what you choose to fight to even dialogue options you select in certain sites that are more about lore than combat.
In a non-lore site, you have the ship phase. When I at least end up trying to limit the amount of damage I take by eliminating the other side's cannons first. While there are some towns along the raid to repair at. They are not that common and I'd rather not end up losing my cannons.
A lot of the time the NPC is trying to destroy critical ship modules I have. A big one I like heals my units during the boarding combat of the fight. Meanwhile, I tend to focus on ship modules that give the NPCs health, healing, and armor. With armor being quite a critical one to take out early on when I had many low-level damage crew mates.
Each side gets three turns each. With you starting first. I’ve lucked out a couple of times and had instances where I killed their entire crew at this phase of combat. Winning the battle for me allowing me to move forward on the map.
More times than not I'm just happy if I can soften them up a bit. Between taking out important ship modules that end up buffing the NPCs in combat. Along with just reducing their total crew or lowering how much health lift some of the tougher pirates, I'll be fighting have.
In the next phase of combat, you get to swing over to the other pirate's ship. Here I've learned to take my time and plan out where I want my crew to land. While you do have a staging area keeping them from landing anywhere. I’ve found having the right units at the right locations makes things easy.
My crews attack all do different things. Some of them have knockback, others bleed, and some even reduce armor. There is nothing better than setting my units up and then attacking and knocking the other pirates into each other where they are taking a bunch of damage.
The environment is also quite important to pay attention to on the ship itself. There can be things like fires or spikes that you can knock units into. There can also be things like healing potions.
Even better when you have pushed a pirate so far back, they are up on the ledge of the ship. Then you knock them back one final time and it sends them overboard taking them out of the fight.
If that is not enough you even have limited control over different kinds of monste4rs in the game that you end up unlocking. Nothing like sending the Kraken to swinging one of its legs and killing a bunch of pirates for you. Such things have also caused such fear on the other side that I ended up just winning the fight outright as well.
If you end up winning the fight you get some kind of reward and keep advancing in the raid. If you fail the raid ends. You can even fail the storyline and it will advance down a certain route for doing so. I’ve even had some choices come back to haunt me that I ended up making as well.
Win or fail each raid you end up walking away with something. From experience, glass, and blueprints. Just not any of the items you looted during the raid which makes you miss some powerful legendary stuff you sometimes get.
So far I've had quite a lot of fun. The first few raids I did I got my backside kicked that was for sure. Then I made some ship upgrades and my success rates for doing a raid went up quite a lot. I also learned quite a few combat tricks along the way that have ended up saving me from total failure more than once.
I can’t wait to go out again and plunder for some more glass and blueprints. The lore in the storyline is quite insane as well. I won’t spoil that. I however was not expecting the kinds of events that end up taking place in this game.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Rogue Waters.
Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.
