Do you remember FTL: Faster Than Light? ‘’A spaceship simulation roguelike-like’’ game in which you control a ship and its units in galaxy. FTL and its like had lots of concepts such as science fiction and tactical strategy gameplay.

We have all loved these types of space adventures over time and here we are with another example of this genre: Pirate Patrol. Let’s talk about how Pirate Patrol is enjoyable and suitable for a live stream.

Lots of Ideas, Bad Implementation

Pirate Patrol is a strategy-based action roguelike game. In Pirate Patrol, you will be controlling your main ship while supervising your crew and much more. You will be the general throughout your journey. We’ve played and loved these type of games and while this concept sounds familiar yet exciting enough as it is, Pirate Patrol still has a lot of problems.

The concept and the ideas that Pirate Patrol has are really worth checking out but one of the biggest issues with it is that Pirate Patrol is still in early access and in this stage, it’s really hard to recommend it to any sci-fi-loving gamers or streamers.

While the main gameplay features in Pirate Patrol—setting a course for adventure, fighting, gathering supplies, or controlling your crew—work, the game’s fundamentals and presentation fails to retain players. Pirate Patrol’s HUD and gameplay basics are very complicated and hard to understand even with the tutorial.

Early access needs improvement

More on the technical issues later but since it’s hard to understand and enjoy the game, I don’t think any streamer would create good moments from Pirate Patrol. Even the strategy gamers watching would stop and try to understand what’s happening on the screen.

If you’re not a big fan of these types of strategy titles, it’s almost impossible to have fun in your live stream with your audience. There’s a lot of content missing at the moment, and more updates will probably make the game better. If you love this concept, you can possibly wait for the full release but in the end, I don’t think it will create fun live stream chains.

Pirate Patrol: Space is waiting for you

Since it’s a strategy game, I’m not going to talk about the story of Pirate Patrol. You should already know you can’t show breathtaking stories in strategy games with your audience. While there is story and lore, the aim of the game is not to tell a story. It just tells you that you’re leading anti-piracy operations and that will be enough for a strategy game. You can still immerse yourself in your role.

I need to talk about how the game looks. While the look of strategy games usually doesn’t matter, Pirate Patrol unfortunately makes it worse. I’ve already talked about the HUD itself but in addition to it, the game’s menus particularly look like they consist of .jpeg files. The un-game graphics works much better at the very least but it’s still hard to understand what’s happening in the screen even with the smart pause.

Replayability and Game Save Issues

As for replayability, if you enjoyed the game you can spend lots of time with it even in this early stage of the game with a lot of content missing. However, players still have a problem in this early stage where you can’t save or load your game. This means every time you quit the game your progress will be deleted. Of course this will probably be fixed in the future but for now, replayability in Pirate Patrol literally means re-play the game again and it’s another disappointing detail.

I’ve tested Pirate Patrol’s PC version on STEAM and its performance is underwhelming. Game menus work slow, fps drops happen a lot and there are no video settings. Pirate Patrol still needs a lot of updates to work fine.

STREAMER SCORE

Pirate Patrol (PC) -2024

Overall

1.5

Performance
Streamability
Audience Engagement
Replayability

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User Review

0 (0 votes)

Summary

Pirate Patrol have a lot of interesting ideas for sci-fi fans and have similarities to games such as FTL but both technical and the design choices almost makes it impossible to have fun. At this early stage of the game, I can’t recommend Pirate Patrol to any gamer or streamer.