Tempest: Pirate Action RPG Review Summary

Last updated: 2026-02-18
  • Enjoyable naval combat with pirate theme
  • Detailed ship customization and exploration
  • Variety of quests and fantasy elements
  • UI design flaws and poor tutorial
  • Repetitive gameplay and clunky controls
  • Poor boarding mechanics and overpowered enemies
Tempest: Pirate Action RPG header

Emotions

What players like:

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Gameplay feedback:

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Review evidence

Why players say this

What players like

Enjoyable naval combat: Players find the naval battles to be decent and enjoyable, with some even describing the combat as excellent. The game offers a satisfying experience in terms of ship combat.

Highly praised pirate theme: The game is widely appreciated for its pirate theme, offering a fun and straightforward experience for pirate game enthusiasts. It features everything expected in a pirate game and is recommended for fans of the genre.

Detailed ship customization: The game offers a heavy emphasis on ship customization, with hundreds of different combinations for customizing and upgrading ships. This feature is well-received by players.

Extensive open-world exploration: The game provides an open-world environment with a large map, allowing players the freedom to explore. This feature is highlighted as a significant aspect of the gameplay.

Variety of ammunition: The game features different types of ammunition, providing players with a variety of options for combat. This adds depth to the gameplay experience.

Common complaints

UI design flaws and issues: The game's user interface is widely criticized for being non-intuitive, clunky, and frustrating. Players find the UI aesthetics unappealing and the overall design messy, leading to a poor user experience.

Poor and confusing tutorial: The tutorial is often described as incomplete, confusing, and frustrating. Players feel that it lacks relevance and does not provide clear guidance, making it difficult to understand the game mechanics.

Repetitive and frustrating gameplay: The gameplay is often described as repetitive, boring, and tedious. Players find the quests monotonous and frustrating, leading to a lack of engagement.

Clunky and unresponsive controls: Controls are frequently criticized for being clunky, unbalanced, and unresponsive. Players also report issues with camera control and overall poor control settings.

Poor boarding mechanics: The boarding mechanics are criticized for being unintuitive, poorly designed, and clunky. Players find the rewards and overall experience of boarding uninteresting.

Gameplay and performance

Naval and ship combat focus: The game heavily emphasizes naval combat, including ship-to-ship battles and boarding mechanics. Players are engaged in various aspects of ship combat and navigation.

Extensive ship customization: Players can customize their ships in numerous ways, including flags, sail colors, hull designs, and various upgrades. This allows for a high degree of personalization and progression.

Faction and trading systems: The game includes a faction system with interactions and relationships, as well as a trading and commerce system. Players can engage in trading and manage their reputation with different factions.

Quest and mission system: The game features a variety of quests and missions for players to complete. These quests are often handwritten and provide specific tasks for players to accomplish.

Fantasy and mythical elements: The game incorporates fantasy elements, including magical sea battles and mythical creatures like the Kraken. These elements add a unique twist to the gameplay.

Various bugs and glitches: Players report a range of bugs and glitches, including game crashes, scene lock-ups, and occasional technical hiccups. Some bugs are specific, like water clipping through ships and issues with ship descriptions.

Good performance and optimization: The game is well-optimized and performs smoothly, even on low-end computers. Players appreciate the stable FPS and fluid gameplay.

Mixed graphics reviews: While many players praise the graphics, some reviews mention poor graphics and world design, as well as simple or outdated visuals.

Convenient features: The game includes convenient features like auto-save, being alt-tab friendly, and having low storage requirements.

Save file issues: There are reports of extreme bugs affecting save files, including enchanted items disappearing after closing and reopening the game.

Recommendations

Game highly recommended for pirate fans: The game is frequently recommended for its pirate-themed content, appealing to fans of pirate adventures, sailing, and naval combat. Many players highlight its value and engaging gameplay.

Game recommended despite rough edges: Players recommend the game despite its rough edges, citing its value, gameplay, and features. The game is seen as a good purchase for its content and developer engagement.

Game praised for combat and customization: The game is praised for its combat mechanics and customization features, including vessel upgrades and adventure elements. These aspects are frequently mentioned as key strengths.

Positive sentiment in non-English languages: The game receives positive recommendations in various languages, indicating a broad appeal and satisfaction among international players.

Game compared to other titles: The game is compared to other titles like Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Pillars of Eternity 2, and Risen 2, indicating that players are drawing parallels with other popular games in the genre.

Platform notes

Steam Deck: The analysis of user feedback reveals significant issues with controller support and the user interface. Many users find the controller adaptation to be poor, making some operations nearly impossible to perform. Additionally, the user interface is frequently described as non-intuitive and difficult to navigate, leading to a frustrating user experience.

Extra review signals

Monetization: The game's monetization strategy, particularly regarding its DLC, is a significant point of contention among users. While some find the game and its additional content to be reasonably priced, others feel that the DLC is overpriced and not worth the investment. This divide in perceived value, along with the focus on creating new DLC instead of fixing the game, indicates potential issues with the game's monetization approach.