Pirate Rush

Arrrr!
What? Another review of a cancelled game? Oh yes, sorry to tell you that, but there are some real hidden treasures here, mate! Last time I reviewed a weird western game... and now? A pirate themed game? Oh yeah, these are really rare rpgmaker adventures. Pirate Rush is a (sadly) cancelled RPG Maker VX Ace game by Galv, anyway this amounts to more than two hours of fun and adventures, so there's a lot to say, play and review here!

Pirate Rush starts from a simple premise: 1000 parchments stuffed in 1000 bottles scattered throughout the seven seas tell about four wondrous artifacts and treasures on four hidden islands. Guess what happens? Lots of pirates and cutthroats race to take them, and also the Imperial Navy is interested. Time for adventure!

The game begins with a really nice menu screens that immediately made me think to One Piece, with the custom made anime styled characters' sprites. Anyway we start controlling just one of them, the protagonist of the story, Vex Silver. Vex is an excellent swordsman and adventure, that joined a group of pirates and will be obviously involved in the search for the four artifacts.


This is a pirate game so expect to look for hidden treasures! But first learn how to read map, find the right place to dig and get the booty!

Unfortunately, shortly after the beginning, their galleon crashes on the rocks near an unknown island during a storm, and Vex wakes up all alone on a beach. What's worse? Oh yes, some rival pirates already arrived there!
The game starts with us controlling the protagonist Vex (that will be almost always the party member we will control) doing the usual thing we do in rpgmaker games: explore various locations to find useful items, fight enemies (that are both mandatory like bosses or those that just block our path, while more mundane dangerous fauna may be avoided, there is really no need to grind at all in this game!), collect loot and solve puzzles.

Ok, for exploration there is not much to say, you move around really beautiful maps that usually fill the screen and have exits on the various sides that aren't indicated bu arrows but are pretty easy to recognize. There are sometims points of interests like chests of loot, places where you can fish (fishes are cheap healing consumables, if you can catch them! Anyway the fishing minigame is pretty easy and also needed to complete a particular quest, so grab a fishing pole and some baits asap!). You can also fight boars, wolves, bats for pelts and other items that can be sold, but it's not really important because more gold and useful items may be found searching for treasures, if you have a map.


One down but we're still outnumbered, luckily I brought a gun with me!

Now let's speak about combat, that is a classical side view jrpg atb combat but really well done: Vex can chain various attacks spending stamina, and later he can also learn some special attacks that are usable when the Rage bar is filled. But this won't be a jrpg without a party of four, so expect to add some other characters to the team, and these are all different! Mia (that for some reasons reminds to me of Nami from One Piece!) is a redhead jack of all trades that can steal, heal (be sure to make her learn the base healing spell and the heal party one, they are pretty useful!) and cast spells. Then there is Aryll that can create combos shooting different types of arrows (and she seems to be affine to the frost element), and my favourite, Striek (that instead uses fire attacks), a mercenary that performs better the more money you spend on him! See? All characters are different (no worries it's explained well how to use each of them when they are introduced) and fun to play! Combat is normally not too difficult at all, except for the boss fights (first boss was the hardest combat encounter for me, probably because it's early when you still have to unlock some shops and the consumables available are limited), that possess different "gimmicks", require to learn to use effectively every character exploiting their elemental weaknesses.

Oh and I forgot one of the first party members! The dog! You cannot control Alpha, but it's extremely useful (indispensable in some quests) and you can also equip him with different collars. Other characters can instead equip different primary weapons, armors, accessories, and even off-hand weapons like a hook (that enhances the basic attacks) or guns. Guns are devastating, but require also ammunitions and have a long cooldown.

Characters do level up as usual and improve their characteristics, thanks to the experience points collected from achievements and defeating enemies, but they also get skill points that may be spent to unlock new abilities (and there are also books that let them get even more skill points). Each character has his/her own ability tree, and some particular abilities have prerequisites (basic healing is required to learn the party heal spell, as I wrote before).


Fishing minigame? We have this! And it's pretty useful to collect many healing items! Fishes are good for you!

So this was exploration, combat and... oh yes, puzzles! In this game there many place in which you have to push or pull boulders or other items to open the path to the next are. These are all pretty simple in the beginning, even if later they become increasingly harder (like the one with the water lilies) but never frustrating, I think! There are also minigames, like fishing and surfing, in any case the difficulty is well balanced, really!

Going back to speak about the difficulty of the game, you will notice that there are some red books that can be used to save, and these are usually placed just before a difficult part, so take the hint and save... anyway you can also save whenever you want from the menu. There are also some places with healing water that will completely restore and heal the party members, so use them to spare some healing items for harder times. And if you are defeated the game reloads automatically some scenes before, so do not worry too much!

Graphically the game is beautiful, it includes some ripped sprites (the dog is from Secrets of Evermore), custom made original sprites (the battlers and enemies), edits (like the portraits)... but the final result is awesome, really, and pictures cannot show the beauty of moving water effects, trasparencies, lightning... it's a little colorful world full of minute details, for example even the opponents move and may have different stances! It's really a lot that I did not expect. What about music? Is good, I liked especially the menu theme. And the story? Pretty good, kept me interested, and Striek was my favourite character (I liked him even more than Vex, that's a more classical good hearted rogue protagonist) despite having less screen time than the other party members.


You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf! Ride the waves, Vex! Let's go and read the...

Final Verdict
I found Pirate Rush a long time ago but I never had the chance to play it. Now I did and it was a good idea because it's fun! Characters are likeable, gameplay is very enjoyable and visuals are excellent! Only gripe, besides the fact that this is a demo (you can explore three island and get three artifacts out of four), is the presence of few annoying little bugs, like the impossibility to heal the blind status (the items do not works as promised) but these are just minor problems that I barely noticed. This game is good, very good and if you have a chance to spend a couple of hours playing this game I'm sure you'll enjoy it!