NOTE: The devs have been taking feedback and are continuing to make patches to address issues, so hopefully this soon-after-launch review will be outdated before too long, and the score will improve
Curse of the Sea Rats is a fairly underwhelming metroidvania with some questionable design decisions that is carried by its visuals. Clearly a lot of care went into the character animations, and they look wonderful. However, the cost of these animations is that the combat feels incredibly stiff and uncomfortable. I only ever played as the first character (there are 4 playable characters & supports multiplayer, which is cool), but swinging my sword brought be to a dead stop I was locked into for like a full second. Though at some point I stopped caring about taking damage because I had unlocked an ability to heal significantly when dealing damage, so it made it hard to die. That being said, there are a lot of cool bosses, but the control issues & this ability made the best approach just to face tank & damage race, which was very disappointing.
There are multiple NPCs scattered across the map with sidequests, primarily just fetch quests you forget about until you randomly stumble across an item & then don't remember where the NPC is because they aren't marked on the map, nor can you place your own markers. (This is something that can be fixed in a patch, but who knows if that will happen). All the NPCs & characters are fully voice acted, so that's fun, though I did notice at times the voice lines differed slightly from the textboxes. As a matter of fact, I noticed a few typos in textboxes throughout, though again, this is fixable.
Perhaps the most annoying decision the devs made is near the end of the game, you fight a boss & then have to travel across the entire map to get to the final area, but all your fast-travel points have been deactivated. Now, on its own, this is annoying, but not too bad, but for whatever reason they decided to randomly stick insurmountable walls throughout the map. If you were going through rooms & come across one, then tough beans, you have to turn around and find another way. This was probably more annoying to me than it otherwise would have been, because once this happens, it is permanent (with no warning before the boss fight that triggers it), & I had not yet gone for completion. Would not recommend trying to finish scouring the map when it's in this state.
Now, I've complained a lot, & I can complain some more about other dev decisions, like underwhelming metroidvania abilities, the item menu, some minor bugs around status ailments, but I don't really like to be very negative. The art as well as the variety of environments bumps this up a little for me & saves the game from a lower score. It took me about 9 hours to more or less complete (I left some sidequests unfinished), but you're better off watching a playthrough just to appreciate the visuals than actually playing the game. If you want a good looking furry combat/exploration focused metroidvania, play Dust: An Elysian Tail instead.
Curse of the Sea Rats is a fairly underwhelming metroidvania with some questionable design decisions that is carried by its visuals. Clearly a lot of care went into the character animations, and they look wonderful. However, the cost of these animations is that the combat feels incredibly stiff and uncomfortable. I only ever played as the first character (there are 4 playable characters & supports multiplayer, which is cool), but swinging my sword brought be to a dead stop I was locked into for like a full second. Though at some point I stopped caring about taking damage because I had unlocked an ability to heal significantly when dealing damage, so it made it hard to die. That being said, there are a lot of cool bosses, but the control issues & this ability made the best approach just to face tank & damage race, which was very disappointing.
There are multiple NPCs scattered across the map with sidequests, primarily just fetch quests you forget about until you randomly stumble across an item & then don't remember where the NPC is because they aren't marked on the map, nor can you place your own markers. (This is something that can be fixed in a patch, but who knows if that will happen). All the NPCs & characters are fully voice acted, so that's fun, though I did notice at times the voice lines differed slightly from the textboxes. As a matter of fact, I noticed a few typos in textboxes throughout, though again, this is fixable.
Perhaps the most annoying decision the devs made is near the end of the game, you fight a boss & then have to travel across the entire map to get to the final area, but all your fast-travel points have been deactivated. Now, on its own, this is annoying, but not too bad, but for whatever reason they decided to randomly stick insurmountable walls throughout the map. If you were going through rooms & come across one, then tough beans, you have to turn around and find another way. This was probably more annoying to me than it otherwise would have been, because once this happens, it is permanent (with no warning before the boss fight that triggers it), & I had not yet gone for completion. Would not recommend trying to finish scouring the map when it's in this state.
Now, I've complained a lot, & I can complain some more about other dev decisions, like underwhelming metroidvania abilities, the item menu, some minor bugs around status ailments, but I don't really like to be very negative. The art as well as the variety of environments bumps this up a little for me & saves the game from a lower score. It took me about 9 hours to more or less complete (I left some sidequests unfinished), but you're better off watching a playthrough just to appreciate the visuals than actually playing the game. If you want a good looking furry combat/exploration focused metroidvania, play Dust: An Elysian Tail instead.