Pirates VR: Jolly Roger Review – Colorful Adventure With Shallow Combat

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger presents an enjoyable lighthearted VR adventure, though shallow combat ultimately hampers it. Read on for our full review.

The cultural impact of Robert Louis Stevenson’s landmark 19th century novel cannot be overstated. Historical tales like The Pirate Queen show there’s room for more serious stories, yet Treasure Island’s depiction of swashbuckling pirates searching for treasure remains more prevalent with VR games like Sail, Furious Seas, and Battlewake. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pirates VR: Jolly Roger takes the latter approach.

As an unnamed pirate captain, what follows is a linear campaign that’s over a little too soon. Pirates VR only needs four hours to complete, and that’s split between replayable chapters. You won’t find a particularly narrative heavy tale and searching for Davy Jones’ treasure delivers the most stereotypical pirate adventure you can imagine across this cursed island.

That includes your parrot companion, who occasionally provides useful hints but isn’t shy to express his feelings with some hilarious insults. “I might be a bird, but you sir are a chicken,” he jests, as I accidentally back out of a cave while dodging an attack.

Your objectives usually involve exploring to find key items, fend off some enemies while doing so and move onto the next challenge. What’s here works, though it’s nothing exemplary. Pirates VR: Jolly Roger is an enjoyable VR adventure, though several design choices detract from the immersion.

While key inventory items are stored across your body, pulling up a menu by holding down a face button for the rest isn’t especially immersive. Destroying rocks with a pickaxe can be done by waggling the controls, and there’s no haptic feedback for this action either. Manual reloading is disappointingly absent too. You instead move your weapon toward the ammo pouch at waist level to reload, then repeat after firing a single shot.

You’ll also need to solve a handful of puzzles that can be hit or miss. Some have clearer solutions like shining your lantern to find a hidden answer or memorizing a pattern, which feels great when you find the answer. Others required considerable trial and error. One endgame puzzle requires you to place vases down in a specific place in a specific order. Where each vase goes is clear, but the order to put them down is not despite scanning the environment for clues.

Shallow combat doesn’t help, either. Destroying skeletal pirates with your lantern’s light blast can be fun when you hit multiple foes at once, adding a welcome strategic element since this also uses up your oil supply. However, you’re almost exclusively fighting skeletons armed with cutlasses or guns, most of whom are easily dispatched with a headshot. Even the boss doesn’t need more than being repeatedly shot, though its long-range attacks add some variety.

It’s a shame because exploration is easily one of Pirates VR’s biggest strengths. The bright beaches are a highlight that offer a pleasingly colorful Caribbean island that invites mystery, coupling these rich environments with strong lighting that looks great on PC. The dark caverns and prison cells keep me on my toes as I explore with little more than lantern light, gradually fending off those cursed skeletons. You don’t have unlimited stamina while climbing up cliffs, so you’ll need to be quick.

Still, I would love more from these environments. Considering swimming is only in a handful of sections, I’m not expecting physics like Subside or Kayak VR: Mirage provide; there’s some pleasant underwater environments yet there’s barely a splash as you enter the water or reach the surface. Motion controls don’t feel too responsive while swimming, making analog stick input to swim more reliable.

Small moments like these could make all the difference with building immersion. The audio design sounds great comparatively when you’re exploring the darker caverns, keeping you keenly aware of your surroundings. I appreciate how the game uses more subtle environmental design to signal where you can climb, like green moss across ropes and trees.

That said, Pirates VR: Jolly Roger’s presentation can be rather uneven. Frequent instances of visual pop-in on ‘High’ visual settings get rather distracting, while flat textures are clearly noticeable in several sections, like seeing rocks built into the sand underwater.

There’s also a fair amount of jank. Chapter 1’s end involves heading toward a cave, but accidentally misjudging my walk left me stuck in a gap underneath a tree branch. With no reset option, I became softlocked and had to restart. Another moment saw me walk toward a ledge but because I was moving slightly too fast, I jumped a little too far and got stuck on a cliff side. No jump button means my only reset was falling to my death, frustratingly making me lose about 5-10 mins of progress again.

Outside of the campaign, that’s pretty much it beyond two challenges for climbing and axe throwing. It’s a nice little extra, there’s simply not much to it. Unlocking said challenges requires finding gold and valuable items across the campaign, which are abundant across this island either in hiding spots or various treasure chests. Thorough exploration is well rewarded and I finished this campaign with a decent haul.

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger Review – Final Verdict

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger delivers a colorful VR adventure, yet Split Light’s latest game feels like a missed opportunity. Noticeable jank, design issues and shallow combat have left me wanting more, though it’s balanced out by rewarding exploration and great visuals. If you don’t mind a brief visit to the Caribbean, this lighthearted four-hour campaign has its charms.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.