In Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey, players take the role of Abraham Gray, a morally-sketchy ship captain in this pirate/civil war mash-up. As conflicted in name as his game's premise, Gray tools around the Caribbean (in hat-and-full-chap cowboy gear, no less), captaining both sail- and steam-driven ships, engaging in ship-to-ship and man-to-man combat -- as well as some legitimate trading for profit. He also hears voices in his head -- "voices" which, oddly, are not actually voiced, but take the role of in-game tutorial.
At first blush, Swashbucklers would seem nothing more nor less than a re-packaged, pirate-flavored wannabe knockoff a la Sid Meier: Gameplay occurs in port towns (picking up missions, various tradable goods, or odds on fistfights), at sea (on a simple yet eye-pleasingly colourful map of the Caribbean, featuring ships and ports-of-call under various national flags including the Union and the Confederacy) and aboard ships (melee- and weapon-based boarding actions, as well as man-to-man duels against ship captains). As it turns out, it's both more and less. Go figure.
At sea, you can engage other sailing vessels, plus the spate of "new" steam-driven ships plying the Caribbean. If you don't like your current ship's stats in terms of firepower, speed or cargo capacity, you can always try to board and capture a better one. Available vessels take the form of templates with primary and secondary slots for interchangeable weapons that can be targeted independently of the ship's movement, including traditional deck guns, rockets, "hot shot" cannon ammo and even Gatling guns. Said slots can also be used for steam engine upgrades. In this respect, Swashbucklers offers something in the way of customization that is not found in the Sid Meier games (which, to beat the dead horse to death, are very obviously the inspiration for this title).
Likewise, Swashbucklers offers some depth in terms of character and combat. Abraham Gray is actually something of a real RPG character, with his own stats, skills, equipped weapons and ship/personal item-storage capacity. He can also accrue experience and "level up" -- on a comparatively rapid, generous basis, as far as such games usually go -- continually gaining new combat/evasion moves, special melee attacks, etc.
Ship-boarding combat is a free-brawling, gratuitously bloody affair that has Gray putting waves of enemy deck-hands to the sword (or the pistol, or rifle) -- the combat has arguably more variety than the simple sword fighting found in Sid Meier's Pirates!, but each boarding process runs players through the same three areas, and culminates in a duel with the captain of whichever ship you're attempting to capture. These duels, along with the street-boxing brawls into which you can enter for money, are simple 2D fighters.
Even with its evident emulation of the Pirates! model and arguable forays into variety, Swashbucklers doesn't hang together quite as well as a cohesive game in the end. The town streets are actual, free-roaming locations, which is a nice step in the right direction... but since you always perform the same functions in each town (buy, sell, acquire missions, etc.), the extra time spent actually moving from screen to screen seems like needless, empty gameplay time -- better (and less insulting) to stick with an unassuming menu system.
Another occasional irritant is that you can't pick up a new mission until you've fulfilled a previous one, which takes some of the seafaring, go-where-thou-wilt wind out of the game's sails. A little more freedom (and some meaningful visual/environmental distinction between the different port-towns) would have gone a long way toward giving this game some sea-legs.
The novel genre-mashing setting and the admittedly-visceral combat may be of passing interest to those with a general jonesing for all things swashbucklish -- just don't expect more than a sour-mash-and-pretzels level of distraction. The more passionate pirate-wannabe should still set course for the PC/Xbox/PSP versions of Sid Meier's Pirates!, or keep a weather eye for the forthcoming Pirates of the Burning Sea.
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