I’m going to try and fill this Trident’s Tale review with as many pirate jokes as I can, so you have been warned.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spend the first two hours with a preview build of 3D Clouds’ new pirate-themed action-adventure, Trident’s Tale. Now that Trident’s Tale is set for its full release, let’s take a look and see if it’s worth sailing the seven seas with Ocean and her crew.
What do you call a pirate with two eyes and two hands? An apprentice.
The art style was the first thing that caught my attention with Trident’s Tale. It reminds me of Sea of Thieves with lots of bright colors and unusual characters that fill this tale of treasure, betrayal, and friendship.
You take control of Ocean, a young woman with dreams of becoming a pirate, sailing the seas, and finding treasure. When quick-witted skeletons attack her home, she picks up piracy pretty quickly and escapes with her life.
The tone of Trident’s Tale is very happy and lighthearted. With themes like friendship conquers all and don’t let ultimate power fall into the wrong hands, it fits into its E for everyone rating.
What is a pirate’s favorite exercise? The Plank.
As you set sail for the first time, 3D Clouds has nailed the pirate ship. It feels easy to control, with speed being determined by your sails up some, up more, and up lots. With your sails at full, your speed is increased, but your steering is nonexistent, and vice versa, no sails, no speed.
Your ship is fully customizable with different sails, cannons, figureheads, and other decorations. Each customization is paired with different stats like increased handling or damage. The downside is if you don’t like the look of said piece, tough. With my ship, I ended up focusing on speed over handling.
The ship combat controls are also very simple; depending on the direction of your camera, you will fire cannons in said direction. However, the time it took to defeat ships in combat was not worth it. You don’t earn many rewards from taking down enemy ships, and the chance of other ships joining the fight is very high.
The boss fights are even worse. You just circle each other, chipping away at their health for what seems like way too long. The longer I spent with Trident’s Tale, the more frustrated I got with the ship. Thankfully, the fast travel has been fixed, so I started skipping all the sailing I could. At one point, I decided to take down a loan ship. All of a sudden, there were 5 ships absolutely destroying me, so I had to flee.
Did you hear about the adult pirate movie? It was rated ARRRR.
Now I can hear you saying, oh boo, why run from a fight? Well, Trident’s Tale has a very weird autosave, which I couldn’t figure out. There were times when I would die and lose 20 minutes of progression. While other times, I would die and be transported right back to where I was. I got used to manually saving every 15 minutes in case the autosave didn’t happen.
With the story and dialogue seemingly aimed at children, it inserts a weirdly unforgiving combat system. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, and a dodge. Enemies don’t wait around to attack one at a time either, it’s a free-for-all. They just start wailing on you, and with the addition of ranged enemies, I’d be fighting 2 or 3 skeletons, dodging their attacks and dodging into projectiles coming from off-screen.
As you progress through the story, you will meet new friends who lend a hand in combat through abilities. These range from playing a fiddle and making your enemies dance, or skeleton hands erupting from the ground, causing enemies to be frozen in place, to flames that erupt from your hands. These abilities transfer over to ship combat, too, and can be upgraded with grog.
Is a pirate’s life for me?
With Trident’s Tale being a weird mix of kid-friendly writing that at times made me feel like I was watching an episode of Blue’s Clues and a difficult combat loop, this could be the perfect family game. Trident’s Tale could be a great introduction for kids looking to try their hand at an action game without the grim tones that usually come with piracy. Unfortunately, for this reviewer, the charm of the cute art style and awkward dialogue wore off.
Gamer Social Club was supplied a copy of Trident’s Tale for this review.
Reviewed on PC via Steam.
Trident’s Tale will launch for PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG on the 22nd May 2025.
There is a demo for Trident’s Tale available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2541780/Tridents_Tale
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