Ahoy me hearties! Once again it’s time to set sail for adventure in the hopes of mastering the high seas, finding a plentitude of plunder, and in this case assembling the parts of a powerful ancient relic. To date there have been a few decent pirate games on the Switch, but unfortunately none of them have quite put everything together enough to be the go-to experience on the system. While there’s absolutely no doubt that in principle Trident’s Tale has the right elements to take the crown, unfortunately performance issues, glitchiness, and it running like a swabby with uneven pegs on both legs holds it back.

In terms of what works, conceptually the game has quite a bit going for it, with play that works across multiple styles, and that’s something the competition has tended to struggle with. Played in third-person, you’ll get to explore a 3D world with pretty large environments in search of loot. Combat crops up quite frequently, and while it may not be anything particularly special, it at least has the elements to be engaging. You’ll definitely have to be good at rolling away from enemy hits, and especially when taking on more than one foe at once, you’ll need to be careful with your positioning and keeping an eye on your health. 

When you’re in more dungeon-like settings the environmental puzzles are generally well-crafted and pose a challenge to your smarts and skills. Setting sail can also be satisfying, as you’ll get to explore a pretty large world, picking up crates when you see them, and picking fights with other ships as well. While ship-to-ship combat isn’t necessarily amazing, it is at least challenging enough to be engaging and something you can continually work to improve with.

The problem with all of the above statements is that the level of enjoyment you’ll have with any of them is highly subject to the whims of the game engine at any given point in time. Sure, there can be stretches where the game plays well enough, but there are others where you’ll get stuttering performance and slowdown. Worse, these will often crop up when there’s on-screen action where you can’t afford to be off by a few seconds, so it can be difficult to just brush it off. I have no doubt that the developers are trying to figure out what can continue to be tweaked or tuned further to try to make the experience the best it can be, but this is absolutely a case where despite liking the game on a general level, it isn’t currently in a state where I can recommend it either, at least on the Switch.