The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend review

I’m all for immersive storytelling in VR, and The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend does it rather well. While there are few gamey moments that rarely challenge you, it’s Lucy Liu’s performance that make it worth playing. It’s only a few hours long, but the stunning world on 19th-century China on the high seas makes for a nice slice of history, following legendary female pirate Cheng Shih. Although there’s no swashbuckling or ship battles, Singer Studios has crafted an intriguing title for those interested in story over substance.

Lucy Liu is Cheng Shih, and she does a wonderful job of warming you to the character. For most of the game, you’ll only witness a small slice of her story, yet for someone who led such a fascinating life, there isn’t much in the way of her incredible escapades many are familiar of. It is a very small part of her life, but I would have loved to have seen more from the illustrious career. What we do get is some pretty visuals across a small selection of locations across a fleet on the South China Sea.

There are some light gameplay elements where you might have to climb up some rigging sneak past someone. There’s some rowing you might need to do, but it’s all very linear and there’s no freedom as such I understand why, as the focus is on its story, but a bit more variation in movement might have been good. I always prefer to play VR titles with smooth movement as opposed to snap turning, and while The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend does have this, smooth turns and free movement is anything but smooth. I kept getting caught on the floor, unable to turn, having to resort to teleporting and snapping to the position I wanted to look. [Note: this has since been updated to make for a smoother experience].

The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend does have some puzzles to solve throughout its thirteen chapters. They’re never particularly challenging, but some are pretty layered in how they need to be solved. Find an item, use it to unlock something, find another item, locate the code for a lock – that kind of thing. There are other activities that again, don’t tax the brain too much, but they do help to break up the story somewhat. I did suffer with some items getting ‘locked’ into the scenery, but after dropping or putting them down, it did respawn them back to their original position.

While it isn’t particularly long, The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend still has a decent story. Some of the puzzles aren’t too challenging, and even if you’re stuck there’s help at every turn, meaning you’re paying more attention to the narrative of the Cheng Shih. My main issue was the lack of gameplay and technical issues when it came to moving about with the smooth turning. If you’re after a chance to see what being a pirate life in VR is like, it’s not a bad game by any means. It’s just not the exciting experience you may be hoping for.