Game Review – Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion (Xbox One)

Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is an RPG based on the popular Cartoon Network, animated series, Adventure Time. Originally released in 2018, it has recently been made available for free as part of Xbox’s Games with Gold initiative.

The story is nice and simple. The land of Ooo has been flooded after the Ice King’s domain sees their ice melted. Ooo is mostly underwater and it’s up to us to save the day. We have control of Jake and Finn, with more characters joining the party as we progress. We set sail from island to island across Ooo looking to undo the issue and find out what or who caused the mess in the first place. Across each island you are going to run into many different types of enemies to battle, friends to save and there are also a handful of side quests to complete too.

The game is a basic RPG style. It has an open world design though it is a small enough world and exploration is actually quite linear within it. Battling is turn based, working through each member of your party and the enemies one at a time. It is a familiar and fun way to battle even if the turns don’t seem quite right or clear in how they are figured out. Sometimes you will expect it to be your go but an enemy team get a few extra hits in. I never really clocked how turns were calculated though it isn’t too much of a problem overall.

You will eventually end up with 4 people in your party. Joining Jake and Finn is BMO and Marceline. They have different strengths and different special abilities. You have items to use that add different status effects, heal or revive characters. You can block, you can run away from the battle. Each area has a store, run by the character Choose Goose where you can replenish your items. This is literally basic RPG by numbers. As well as this, each character has an energy bar that certain actions add to. Once full you can unleash a powerful attack on your enemies.

As you would expect, each character has different skills. Finn has the ability to freeze and shock his enemies. Jake can morph into different things like a bulldozer and a tornado whereas BMO has a lot of abilities focused on healing, regeneration and analysis of enemy types. Generally the story sees you travelling around Ooo to different regions like Candy Kingdom or the Evil Forest where you will face a plethora of enemies, main story quests and side quests. A lot of the collectable side quests will be spread out over the whole world so you do have to repeat visit locations many times.

You level up by taking part in battles. You then increase you strength within a level by collecting treasure and purchasing upgrades. Each level has a maximum upgrade amount before you need to battle, increase your level and then start on the upgrade purchases again. As expected, the higher the level, the higher the upgrade cost.

Travelling between worlds is done through sailing. You all hop on a boat and you have to navigate across the seas following a map to your next location. This is kind of cool the first 5 times you do it but as you find yourself having to constantly go from one end of the map, to the other only to be sent all the way back again, it becomes old fast. There is no quick travel at any point in the game so thankfully the map isn’t too big.

Graphically it is fine. Adventure Time looks nice with a big and bright cartoon style though frame rates aren’t great with the background occasionally popping into view right as you hit it. It sounds fine and from what I can tell is a decent take on the show, though I am not overly familiar with it. It is also actually quite funny. Some of the comments made while sailing the boat, and some of the conversations held are down right hilarious. The writers have done well.

Adventure Time has loads of issues. It is basic. A lite version of all RPG’s in existence. Poor frame rates. Annoying travel and a linear game set in the disguise of open world. Despite all that though, it is fun to play. It is amusing, easy to pick up and go with, easy enough to master and just very enjoyable overall. That is why we game right? For fun? That is where Adventure Time succeeds. Are you looking for depth and 100 hours of gameplay – well this isn’t that. Are you looking for a decent adventure to blast through, or maybe a way into RPG’s – well this is the game for you. Good job.