Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion Review (Switch)

INTRODUCTION

Adventure Time is a beloved, critically acclaimed tv series that first started airing in 2010. Since then, the adventures of Finn and Jake have been adapted to a few games of varying quality and on different systems. From side-scrollers to top-down games, Pirates of the Enchiridion is the second Adventure Time game going full 3D and is the series first foray into turn-based RPG territory. With a semi-open world and a seafaring, pirate theme, is this the Adventure Time game that fans have been hoping for? Let's dig into it.

Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is available for purchase on Steam, Nintendo Eshop, and the PlayStation Store.

STORY

The Pirates of the Enchiridion stays faithful to the tv show with a funny premise of the Ice Kingdom of Ooo melting and turning into an ocean. With pirates roaming the land and pestering the innocents, it's up to Finn and Jake to discover the reason for this sudden meltdown, help the people and set things right. It's an episode of the show throughout with the whole thing happening literally overnight and a boat conveniently appearing next to the pair with which they can start the adventure. They proceed to talk to the Simon the Ice King and conclude that they need to find his lost and broken crown which he threw on a passing iceberg to refreeze the kingdom – despite him taking a liking to the new beachfront property.

It's a ridiculous and simple premise that gives rise to all sorts of equally ridiculous situations with many if not all Adventure Time supporting characters making an appearance in one form or another. Approaching Pirates of the Enchiridion is best done as if sitting down to watch just another episode of the show as there aren't any surprising revelations or character development. The ending can feel a bit rushed but I thought it was perfectly in line with the show. Overall, there's plenty of laughs to be had since the game features the trademark humor, clever conversations, and many many show or pop culture references.

GAMEPLAY

Pirates of the Enchiridion features a sort of open world that you can explore at your leisure after the intro sequence. I say sort of because the world is actually broken up into several large areas where the melted sea is the connective tissue of it all. The ship Finn and Jake find is used to travel from area to area. The pure sailing is broken up with enemy ship boarding and numerous collectible items in the crates floating on the sea surface. They will most often contain healing items or money but can contain other items too. It's overall a weak offer of seafaring activities, especially for a game that has pirates in its name.

Finn and Jake are joined by other playable characters and your party can grow to a max number of 4. Each character has a special ability that he can use outside of combat to bypass certain obstacles in the environment. Unfortunately, these abilities don't allow for a lot of freedom and can be used only in specific spots. The exception would be Jake's ability to turn into a moped and drive Finn around on his back.

The main meat of the game, the turn-based combat, while sometimes fun, really lacks any sort of depth to the point of being able to use the same attacks on 90% of the enemies and win. You can use regular attacks that build up a special attack meter, stronger attacks that drain special attack meter, and ultimate attacks that also have a meter that is filled by fulfilling special conditions for each character.

You can also block to reduce the damage of enemies that are charging up for a stronger attack. There's an assortment of healing items as well as items that boost certain stats, effects and resistances. This ain't turn based Pokemon and while you'll often use healing items, you'll rarely use other items as ignoring attack type and status isn't penalized much.

Progression is similarly simplified with leveling up only boosting character's health and damage output. Occasionally, a new special attack will be unlocked that will spice things up a bit by attacking several enemies at once.

Engaging in a conversation with key characters can sometimes trigger interrogation sequences that will have Finn and Jake take turns questioning him. It's also one very simplified system with Finn usually saying if a character better responds to a bad or good cop so you can select the appropriate approach. They are hilarious though and I ultimately looked forward to each one. Overall, the game is fairly short, taking me around 6 hours to complete the main story and a couple of boring side quests.

VISUALS AND AUDIO

Pirates of the Enchiridion features a beautiful cell-shaded style of graphics that make it the most visually authentic Adventure Time game yet. It's almost like stepping into an episode of the show with everything looking cartoony which means clean, sharp graphics with accentuated edges. While the characters generally look good and are expertly animated to convey the show's quirky nature, the minimal, clean look often means that the environments, despite being appealing to the eye and saturated with color are just not that detailed or exciting to explore.

While the game's visuals are what drew me to it in the first place, what made me want to leave was the abysmal performance, even after a patch or two. Since the game is not visually all that impressive this can't be blamed on the inferior power of the Nintendo Switch when compared to the other systems. The technical issues were all over the place in my playthrough. From minor ones such as textures glitching and, long load times (which the game even acknowledges during loading screens) to having the game crash on me a couple of times. While I often find minor visual bugs excusable, Pirates of the Enchiridion truly has some optimization problems that drag down what is otherwise a good game.

Similarly to the visuals, the voices stay faithful to the tv show with all the performers reprising their roles. They do a stellar job in bringing their characters to life with tv show level of enthusiasm. The general sound design and music, on the other hand, are severely lacking. Not only can the game be strangely quiet sometimes, but the technical difficulties extend to it as well. Combat in particular features a quiet music track and minimal sound cues from your attacks which makes the whole thing feel very bland and unexciting. When the sound effects do rear their head, they are often not synced with the actions of your characters or do not play at all.

CONCLUSION

Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is a mixed bag. While the gameplay can be fun, this cartoony adventure with serviceable turn-based combat, faithful to the show visuals and awesome voice acting will ultimately appeal only to the fans of the show due to the oversimplification of the RPG and other gameplay elements. Even then, they are better off experiencing the game on another system that perhaps had the technical difficulties present in the Nintendo Switch version ironed out.