Blacksea Odyssesy – Nintendo Switch Review

Review by Tom Tear

Having previously been realised in PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 Black Sea Odyssey has finally made it’s way to the Nintendo Switch.

Blacksea Odyssey is a top-down rogue-lite shooter that can work really well for any Switch player on the handheld mode. That’s once you have mastered the painfull controls. Trying to aim with the right stick while shooting and moving just seems to take away a bit of the fun. Once you finally master this you can start to enjoy the game. The tutorial is little if any help and I found jumping straight into the game was the best way to learn the controls.

You start of as a character I can only describe as if Santa became a pirate.  You play as one of many great warriors in a once in a decade event where select hunters gather to prove who is the best ultimately Hunting the ‘the  titan of the stars ‘ That basically sums up the story behind the game.

Players find them self dropped into one of many arenas with a very useful raider to hunt the monsters with. Once you encounter one of these monsters you will find they are tough but you are equally as tough. The war between you and these monster is long and very repetitive as you slowly whittle each other’s health down. I did find my self turning the sound down after a while as the continuous grunt the character makes everytime he shoots his harpoon gets a little annoying.

You progress through the game by collecting points from killing the monsters. Looking deeper into this I found that some monsters will unlock new characters to play with. As you work through the arena you can come across chests that will have an upgrade and new boosts to use to help you fight the monsters. These come in handy and help you defeat the monsters in a more reasonable time frame, but with the controls been the way they are and how tough the monsters are they wars are never over fast.

The graphics are very dull and players will find that the monsters are just blobs or bright colours on a black starry background. With this in mind it does have a very 80’s classic arcade feel to it and for any of the older generation of gamers, you will find your self lost in time with this
Black Sea Odyssey. It will bring back memories of spending many hours of playing Galaga. The downside to this though is your character does not stand out very well against the background and you do find your self losing your sight a lot, well that is until you level up enough to be shooting streams of rockets then you never seem to lose it.

Players do have to put some time and effort into Black Sea Odyssey to find it enjoyable. Once you have finally levelled up enough the game becomes a mass of rockets and bullets and starts to become a lot more fun but I feel as though not many players will get this far due to the lack of enjoyment you have at the start of the game and the poor controls.

Black Sea Odyssey has the potential to be a lot more fun with some tweaks to the controls and a little bit of work on the graphics. It’s a game you’ll find yourself playing to pass some time but not something you’ll find your self thinking about when you are not playing.

Great game for any original gamer once you have got past the levelling up.

Overall Score 5/10

Badger

Life long gamer and Geek, Considered by most to be of doubtable sanity. never seen without my trusty Stetson

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