Pirates VR: Jolly Roger REVIEW

Embark on a thrilling virtual expedition in Pirates VR: Jolly Roger, where legends of cursed islands and lost treasures become reality! Trapped on a remote Caribbean island, you’ll uncover dark secrets, face undead pirates, and navigate your way through treacherous obstacles, all while following your loyal but snarky parrot companion.
It’s hard to overstate the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel on modern pirate culture. Legendary tales of sea robbers like Treasure Island have inspired many games, including Sail, Furious Seas, and Battlewake. Pirates VR: Jolly Roger follows a familiar path, offering a linear adventure of pirate treasure hunting, but with a short playtime.
The entire campaign will only take about four hours to complete, including several repetitive episodes. The plot is secondary: it’s a typical treasure hunt story, in this case, the treasure of Davy Jones.
Even minor characters, like the companion parrot, are added more for atmosphere than for a full-fledged narrative. The parrot, however, pleases with his resourcefulness and sometimes snarky comments.

The gameplay in Pirates VR: Jolly Roger has three main elements: exploration, puzzle solving, and combat.
The exploration is very decent, with you traveling through colorful tropical islands, exploring dark caves, and finding key items. However, interaction with the environment can feel limited in places. For example, destroying objects with a pickaxe feels static due to the lack of tactile feedback.
The manual reloading of weapons is also underwhelming: instead of an engaging mechanic, you simply move the weapon to your belt to reload, and repeat this action after each shot.
The combat boils down to the same old slaughter of pirate skeletons. However, the flashlight’s light blast looks impressive, especially when it hits multiple enemies at once. Most enemies are easy to defeat with a headshot, and bosses require a lot of repetitive attacks.

The game’s puzzles range from logical and fun to complex and confusing. For example, using a flashlight to find hidden symbols or clues seems intuitive. However, some tasks, such as arranging vases in a certain order, take too much time due to the lack of clear clues, leading to a banal enumeration of options.

One of the main advantages of Pirates VR: Jolly Roger is the visual component. The colorful beaches and sunny islands are impressive, especially thanks to the high-quality lighting on the PC. The caves and prison cells create a tense atmosphere, increasing the sense of danger. However, the environments could be even more lively. For example, the water looks beautiful, but there is almost no interaction with it: the swimming physics feel weak, and the sounds accompanying the dive are almost inaudible.

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger offers standard controls: moving with a joystick, crouching with a button, and choosing the direction of movement depending on the position of the head or hands. These settings are really convenient.
During testing, the game encountered many small bugs. For example, once the character got stuck between a tree branch and the ground, which forced a complete restart of the level. In another situation, when jumping, the character found himself trapped on the edge of a cliff, which also led to the loss of progress.

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger is a colorful and fun adventure that suffers from some technical shortcomings and shallow gameplay. The game pleases with great graphics and atmosphere, but disappoints with rather monotonous combat and a short campaign.
If you are ready to put up with these small shortcomings for the sake of a colorful pirate adventure, the game may interest you.