Pirates Outlaws

It's been 5 years. I'm finally getting around to trying those roguelike deckbuilders that came from the heels of Slay the Spire, such as Pirates Outlaws.

Immediately as I started playing, the UI looked... unpleasant. Everything from the cards to the icons to the text was huge, taking up much more space than it needed, and leading to many elements overlapping or requiring scrollbars. This prompted me to check, and, indeed, this was originally a mobile game, later ported to PC, with luckily all the microtransaction removed. While I wouldn't refuse any kind of game on principle, it was very clear this game was designed for the mobile audience, and little-to-no effort was made to make the port more PC-player friendly. Aside from the UI, I felt this in the gameplay, which was quite heavily simplified compared to games of a similar genre that I've played. Most card effects, enemies, status effects, etc. were very simple, as to be explainable in just a few words. This lead to it being quite obvious which cards to play, and in what order, making for very boring moment-to-moment gameplay.

In terms of other gameplay, Pirates Outlaws didn't seem to have many innovations either. You pick a character that has their own abilities and deck, have some customization options, and then set out. Each turn you choose from a few destinations which lead to an encounter or a shop of sorts, culminating in a bossfight at the end, if you managed to make it that far. You get 5 cards, a few action points, and once you can't play any more cards, the enemies take their actions. Between encounters, you get to build your deck and upgrade your cards. It's all very standard stuff, with nothing really remarkable.
The one thing that did seem impressive was the amount of content. Dozens of characters, nearly a thousand different cards, several scenarios, and more. Sadly, I'm very much one for quality over quantity, so I didn't care much for all these different options.

Overall, a rather lazy PC port from a mobile game looking to capitalize on Slay the Spire's popularity. Despite a large amount of content, Pirates Outlaws is more oriented towards a casual audience and lacks novelty and depth in gameplay, making it become boring rather fast. I wouldn't recommend it over one of the many other roguelike deckbuilders out there.