Heroic Pirates

Genre: Strategy

Players: 1

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Review:

Heroic Pirates, released as an asset on the SellMyApp Asset Store in 2018 as Pirate Defense, and brought to the Nintendo Switch as a low-effort asset flip in 2022, is a Strategy game that plays much like a lane-based Tower Defense game (such as Plants Vs. Zombies), except rather than placing and maintaining towers, players are placing pirates, who walk to the right and fight any enemies they encounter along the way.

While this is fairly unique within the genre, I would argue it’s unique for a reason- having your pirates constantly either getting killed or walking off the edge of the screen means that there’s never really a defense force you can build on, you’re constantly losing everything you place one way or the other, and given that your options here are already pretty limited, this makes for an unsatisfying and simplistic take on the Tower Defense genre.

Even more disappointing is this game’s insistence on having players play the game in handheld mode… despite that the game makes absolutely zero use of the Nintendo Switch touchscreen (even more frustrating because the game would benefit from touchscreen controls). This is growing to be one of my bigger pet peeves on the Nintendo Switch – don’t tell me I have to play your game a specific way if you’re not going to do anything to make use of the game being played that way.

This gameplay is presented using simple 2D visuals accompanied by a whimsical but forgettable soundtrack. Nothing especially interesting.

In the end, players purchasing Heroic Pirates may gloss over this game’s flaws because of its super-cheap $1 price tag. However, your time is important too, and this game is far too bland, repetitive, boring, and tedious to be worth the time to play it. There are plenty of better Tower Defense games on Nintendo Switch, play one of those instead.

tl;dr – Heroic Pirates is a Strategy Game that plays a lot like a lane-based Tower Defense game, minus the towers, with players instead placing pirates who march off toward the enemy and then either die or go off-screen. This disposability of everything you place makes it so the gameplay doesn’t feel especially nuanced or interesting because there’s nothing here to build on. Do yourself a favor and get another Tower Defense game instead of this.

Grade: C-

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