Although they’re rarely very polished, budget titles can be very interesting. Since there isn’t huge money riding on their success or failure, developers can try some riskier, more inventive ideas. Sometimes those ideas make for an innovative, imaginative sleeper hit — look no further than Katamari Damacy. Other times, the risks don’t pan out, and you’ve got a title that’s no more worth 20 dollars than it would be worth 50. The developers of Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey have definitely made an interesting title, and while it might not be the greatest game you ever put in your PS2, it’s not terrible.

Swashbucklers puts you in control of Captain Abraham Gray, a combination pirate/cowboy who hears voices in his head. As he hasn’t really got much to do, Captain Gray begins taking missions from either side of the ongoing American Civil War, and from plenty of random people in between. While the back of the game’s box claims it to be historically accurate, it does so right next to a picture of one of the game’s characters, who has a robot arm. In short, the game’s storyline is about as historically accurate as a box of Captain Crunch. But that’s not a bad thing; a realistic pirate game wouldn’t be nearly as ridiculous and entertaining as this.

 
Realism? Bah! I’ll take blood sprays and dismemberments any day.

The actual gameplay, like Sid Meier’s Pirates, switches back and forth from various styles. There’s ship-to-ship combat, hack-and-slash sequences when you board an enemy ship, one-on-one fencing duels, boxing matches, even a stock market-style trading game. Each of the various gameplay modes is reasonably fun, although none of them are particularly deep; by about the half-hour mark, you’ve probably seen every type of gameplay and pretty much mastered each. Most of the game’s missions are of the “take this item to this location” variety, although between missions, you can pretty much do as you please. This gives the game a bit of the freedom that the Elder Scrolls games are so good at: with 19 different towns and plenty of water and islands in between, there’s a decent sized world to explore, and plenty of opportunities to attack random ships, trade supplies, and level up your character. Like many open-world games, there’s often more fun to be had in between quests, just goofing off, than there is following the storyline. This would be made a lot more tolerable were it not for the abysmal load times that pop up between each different gameplay segment. While they’re not a deal breaker, it’s still pretty annoying.

 
The graphics are pretty good for a budget title.

Swashbucklers looks fairly good for a PS2 game, especially a budget release. Highly detailed characters populate the game world, but the environments look a little too similar to each other. Ship-to-ship combat is also pretty impressive; good water effects, detailed ship models, and explosive effects make every battle feel like an action set-piece from a big-budget movie. Less impressive is the game’s audio elements. The music is appropriately pirate-y, but not all that much fun to listen to, especially when the same song plays over and over again, which is pretty much all the time. Even stranger is the dialogue: instead of voice acting, the game’s dialogue is presented via text accompanied by Simlish-style gibberish. It got annoying pretty quickly, but sadly there’s no option to turn the “voices” off.

Swashbucklers is the very definition of a mediocre game. On the one hand, it’s got an interesting style, there’s plenty to see and do, and most of the gameplay segments are pretty fun. On the other hand, it’s repetitive, far too easy to be challenging, and quirky to the point of irritation. At the end of the day, it’s pretty much a wash. If you like pirates, RPGs, or a combination thereof, you might give the game a try. Anybody who passes over it, though, won’t be missing out on a whole lot.

Gameplay: 6.3
Each of the different gameplay styles is relatively fun, although they fail to combine to make a cohesive whole. Some strong hack-and-slash sequences kind of make up for the weaker dueling/boxing elements.

Graphics: 7.2
Pretty good for a PS2 game. The characters are highly detailed and animate well, but the environments kind of blend together after a while. The ship sequences look great. Overall, the game suffers from questionable art direction.

Sound: 5.6
The music rips off the score to every pirate-related film of all time, but not very well. The nonsense dialogue got really annoying really quick, and can’t be disabled.

Difficulty: Easy
Sure, the game throws tons of enemies your way, but your character starts off so powerful (and levels up frequently) that they never really pose much of a threat. If you attack a vastly more powerful ship, it can get pretty tough, but the game indicates how strong enemy ships are before you confront them, so you can easily avoid the real tough guys.

Concept: 6.1
While there are some good ideas here, everything’s thrown together in a mish-mash that never really comes together to feel like you’re playing one continuous game.

Overall: 6.4
Swashbucklers: Blue vs. Grey is a strange little game that isn’t terrible by any means, but it’s not really very good, either. While I could definitely see the game developing a (tiny) cult following, every interesting element in the game is balanced out by something bad. Definitely a case of rent-before-you-buy.