dark

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (Xbox Series) Review

Is this Roger Jolly?

An exotic Caribbean setting? Mysterious islands? Cursed treasure? Yes, the Golden Age of Piracy is calling again. Dare you hoist the mainsail? Swab the poop deck? Are you prepared for swashbuckling adventure where one mistake can send you to Davy Jones locker in a heartbeat? If so, then us your best “Aaargh! Me mateys!” and prepare to jump into Savage Levels’ Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, a hybrid pirate RPG and turn-based strategy adventure. Is it one worthy of legend though, or just another victim to walk the plank?

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion throws you into the boots of pirate captain Flint. Only you no longer have a ship and are currently enjoying a luxury stay in jail thanks to her majesty’s expenses. But you can’t keep an ambitious and greedy pirate down, so when Flint hears tell of a magnificent treasure, he breaks his way out of prison and makes for the closest tavern to find a ship and a crew. Thus begins an epic adventure in exotic locales, full of bloodthirst, ruthlessness, backstabbing, betrayal, and a treasure that may just be as cursed as they come.

The game is effectively split into two parts: the RPG-inspired exploration sections with plenty of storytelling, and the turn-based strategy combat mode.

The narrative and cast are easily Flint’s strongest assets, as you explore environments for items to use in combat and new crew members to recruit. The storytelling is admittedly limited and, aside from some infrequent but gorgeous pre-rendered cutscenes, it’s handled through onscreen text or more stylish comic book panels that lay out the major story beats.

Exploration itself is simple, with various items hidden across the environment that only show up when you’re close to them, and discrete areas you move between by automatically climbing ladders or jumping gaps. The environments themselves are lovingly modelled with tons of detail and are generally beautiful to look at – even if they’re not particularly interactive.

The RPG elements come into play when you can make occasional light choices that can define an outcome to a scene. Like all classic RPG’s, you can find no shortage of items and gear to help you out in combat, while there’s is also a levelling system that’s a little vague in both explanation and use. Instead of accruing generic experience points, you level your crew by paying them, which is a neat, pirate-themed twist. However, instead of paying each unit and character individually, you allocate an amount of money to be spent on the crew and, when you level-up, you’re given a skill point that can be put into one of the units two combat-based disciplines.

The problem is there’s no indication of how much money it takes to level a character. The store of gold you spend on both buying new items and levelling up comes from the same pot. Nor is there any clear indication of how to acquire gold outside of combat. For instance, I went from the first level-up tutorial, unsure how much to spend on my two main characters, right up to the first major ship battle, without earning any additional gold. This led me through numerous combat encounters with only two level-one characters and a whole bunch of zeroes. There’s also no clear explanation on how levelling up affects characters, and I was often left with the impression that it didn’t do much altogether during combat seqeunces.

Which brings us to the games meaties element, the turn-based combat system that also happens to be the games weakest and often frustrating aspect. Flint: Treasure of Oblivion bogs itself down in far too many systems. There are crew-specific abilities, combat-only abilities, item effects, environmental hazards, weapon durability to consider, and a whole bunch of other mechanics at the mercy of the biggest offender of all – a dice roll system that governs just almost everything.

There’s a dice roll for every action taken, be that whether status effects are applied, if weapons will break, or your success in combat. While turn-based games are, and rightfully should be, about good planning and decision-making, Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is more about whether or not luck is on your side – irrespective of preparation. All the tactical advantages in the world matter little if you fail an action roll which, in my experience, happened far too often.

While I’m the first to admit that I’m no turn-based tactical genius, I have come to enjoy the genre and have an inkling of how to go about preparing for and winning an encounter. Flint: Treasure of Oblivion‘s dice roll system made much of that preparation immaterial, leaving me with scraps that I’d gotten through by the skin of my teeth, over and over again.

For instance, one memorable encounter gifted me with two turns of consistently failing dice rolls, with the only upside being that the enemy didn’t fare much better. This was followed up by a turn of similar failures on my side, but the enemy was suddenly gifted with multiple successful rolls and wiped out my party in one turn – and event that forced me to repeat an encounter that had already dragged on for over ten minutes. As a result, surviving encounters rarely left me feeling like I had accomplished anything, just the sensation of weary relief that it was over.

It also doesn’t help that the games difficulty is high by default. Every encounter feels stacked against you, from the amount of enemies you face, their consistantly higher health than your crew, their ability to dole out more damage, and near constant buffs. I don’t expect a cakewalk in a tactical turn-based strategy game, but Flint: Treasure of Oblivion often feels unfair and poorly thought out.

For those playing on console, another issue is how combat feels clearly designed around a keyboard and mouse. These sequences take place on a hexagonal tile system that, with a controller, felt very imprecise to navigate. There are also far too many buttons to switch between actions, with one to switch between movement and action, another for switching weapons, and another for switching to the character abilities tab, and yet another for switching between combat groups. Switching between individual units is cumbersome as well, as you have to cycle through each unit to get to the one you want to use. I felt like I spent more time fighting the controls than fighting the overpowered enemies.

There’s clearly still the need for more balancing and streamlining in future patches.

All of which leaves me with a game I’m in two minds about. As a story-driven pirate adventure with light role-playing elements, I think Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is fun enough, with some great writing, stylish comic panels, and gorgeous environments to navigate. But as a turn-based strategy game, it’s a clunky with a controller, too difficult by default, overly complicated, and too reliant on frustrating dice rolls that had me walking away to take stress relief breaks. Flint: Treasure of Oblivion might be an acquired taste for those who want a merciless piratical challenge.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (Xbox Series) Review

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (Xbox Series) Review
6 10 0 1
6/10
Total Score

The Good

  • Good writing and stylish comic panels
  • Great looking exotic environments
  • Simple but fun exploration and light role-playing

The Bad

  • Poorly explained systems
  • Very high difficulty
  • Combat is overly complicated and clunky on a controller
  • Basing every mechanic on unforgiving dice rolls is just terrible
Total
0
Shares
Previous Post

STALKER: Call of Prypiat (Xbox Series) Retrospective

Next Post

Soul Reaver 2 Remastered Retrospective

Related Posts