The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend Review – Skull And Bare Bones

Pirates have been a prime concept for action and adventure since Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but they’ve never held a mainstream focus in video games outside of the once-a-generation outlier. While I’m not expecting every new pirate game to be the next Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag or Sea of Thieves, I’m always on the lookout for more. So imagine my excitement to hear about a VR game based on none other than the legendary pirate queen.

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The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend highlights one of the most notorious women to sail the high seas, Cheng Shih (also known as Cheung Po Tsai). With a focus on her ascension to the informal status of “pirate queen,” it takes a more cinematic approach to this rise to power, at least in theory.

In actuality, there is little redeeming about The Pirate Queen. It’s a surprisingly short experience, taking around an hour to complete. A good two-thirds of that is spent traversing between boat on the open sea. Sometimes you’ll be grabbing grids of rope to climb across, something we’ve been seeing in VR games since motion controllers were established.

Others are spent pantomiming a paddling motion to move your kayak across dark waters. The paths are linear, so the paddling motion purely serves as a means to an end instead of ever inviting mechanical experimentation. Most of your time was spent hearing random nearby voices providing further exposition. There are some stealth elements thrown into the mix too, but with only one path to follow, it ultimately feels pointless.

The best sections are escape-room-style puzzles. These rooms contain a series of ‘this unlocks that, which unlocks that’ style conundrums, providing some variety to the otherwise repetitive kayaking or rope climbing. Unfortunately, they also prove underwhelming. Every puzzle was very straightforward and required little to no constructive problem-solving, so much so that I often found myself overthinking the value of random props found throughout the rooms because surely there was no way they could be that easy? Turns out they were.

The greatest disservice is the overall plot. I played as Cheng Shih, a real-world pirate who sailed one of the most impressive fleets in the South China Sea throughout the early 19th century. She married pirate leader Zhang Bao, more or less inheriting his confederation when he died falling overboard. She would then go on to grow his empire and control nearly the entire South China Sea.

We don’t get any of that in this game, though.

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The game takes place over a single night. Zhang Bao has already died, and Cheng Shih is now leader of the Red Fleet. It begins with her sneaking onto the ship of Guo Podai, leader of the second-largest fleet in the confederation, in an effort to poison his tea.

On her way back, the British Navy launches a surprise attack on both her and Guo’s fleet. With both ships ruined, whoever does so first will be considered the new leader for some reason. Gao raises his flag first, so Cheng Shih decides to consult her local temple boat to Mazou, the goddess of the sea. The game ends with a cutscene of the near future, where each fleet votes on a new leader, voting for the red fleet.

The poisoning attempt didn’t matter, raising the flag first didn’t matter, and consulting Mazou (seemingly) didn’t actually make a difference. Every effort up to the credits meant nothing to the outcome.

What about the rest of Cheng Shih’s life? About the infamous blockade of the Tung Chung bay? Or how she convinced the Guangdong government to free them of all charges if they agreed to retire? Even in retirement, she led an interesting life, pressing legal charges against a government official for embezzlement and establishing her own gambling house. None of this is presented in this game; it’s all brushed aside for a single moment in time that may not have ever happened.

This less-than-enthralling experience is flattened further by Lucy Liu’s performance as Cheng Shih. Whether it was firing off cannons at a naval assault that we never actually see, sneaking into a rival fleet leader’s ship, or conferring with the goddess of the sea herself, every line is given with low volume, low energy monotony.

There’s also a degree of inconsistency to the narrative. In the game’s efforts to highlight a “forgotten legend,” it tells a story littered with speculative or inaccurate details. It highlights a conflict that, as far as I can tell, never happened. The British Navy didn’t get involved in fighting the Zheng pirate confederation until long after Cheng Shih had established herself as the leader. She was never at odds with Guo Podai, with most historians claiming that it was her familiarity with the Black Fleet leader that helped her establish control of the federation at large.

The greatest commendation goes to Singer Studios’ art department. They manage to make a very stylish and visually appealing environment that hits the perfect mark for the cultural style and influence of the junks and sampan ships used by pirates in the South China Sea. Everything ties together quite nicely. It’s too bad most of the time spent in the game will be out in the open waters, with only a smattering of sampans to admire until you find the next puzzle room.

The Pirate Queen – A Forgotten Legend is an underwhelming game not worth your time. Its barebones gameplay and unmotivating storytelling failed to entertain or excite, and its disappointingly short runtime only disappointed me further. The story of Cheng Shih is a fascinating one that more people should become aware of, but this game does her legacy little justice.

Score: 1/5. A Meta Quest 3 code was provided by the publisher.

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