One of my favorite games of all time is Sid Meier’s Pirates, the version released in the mid-2000s more specifically. The entire freedom to explore, loot, trade, and become a king of the Caribbean made me love that game almost immediately, to the point of owning like four different copies of it. Not a single game ever since has managed to capture the same feeling of becoming a buccaneer and explorer of uncharted lands at the same time. Black Flag didn’t do that. Sea of Thieves didn’t do that. Skull & Bones definitely didn’t do that. This is why I was looking forward to playing Sagres on the Switch.

Man, do I feel like a conquistador right now…

Sagres takes the gameplay loop from Pirates (exploring large seas, docking on new areas, trading, handling supplies, doing the occasional battle), but transports it to an even more interesting setting. Instead of the Caribbean, we are set in the Age of Discovery. You play as Fernando, a recent graduate from the Naval School of Sagres, a real-life Portuguese naval academy which was responsible for training people like Pedro Álvares Cabral and Vasco da Gama. After graduating, you meet up with a childhood friend of noble origin, whose family life is in turmoils due to a recent passing. You decide to join forces to become a prestigious explorer duo not only around Europe, but the whole world, all thanks to the previous efforts achieved by Vasco da Gama.

You start off slowly, with a crappy ship and not a lot of resources. Your first quests don’t take that much time to be completed. You will probably sail from Portugal to another nearby country which also speaks a Romance language (as this impacts on the acquisition of information and dialogue comprehension), exploring a monolith in France, or trading with Spain. It takes time (and resources) to upgrade your ship to a state that allows you to explore the oceans. Once you do, Sagres basically becomes a bigger Pirates in terms of map size, but not exactly in terms of scope.

Land on a town in order to get new quests, buy supplies, and also explore the inland with your horse. Somehow, you have a horse.

Exploring is fun up until a point, but the quests themselves aren’t very interesting. Be it due to the very simplistic, 80’s-era PC graphics, or the shallow gameplay, Sagres never managed to convey a sensation of being in an epic adventure exploring the unknown. It also doesn’t help that, unlike the addictive combat mechanics seen in Pirates, the combat system in Sagres just plain sucks.

Instead of real-time naval combat, or precision-based fencing, Sagres features a luck-based, rock-paper-scissors mechanic. I don’t know how to properly explain it in words, but think of it being a guessing game where you don’t have a lot of room to plan on a strategy. At times, you can see what your opponent will use against you, and plan accordingly. Other times, you will just have to pray your guess is better than your opponents’. Almost as if you were playing a boss battle in an old-school Alex Kidd game. It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Well, it’s because it is. Counterintuitive as all hell, demotivating, and frustrating if you end up losing resources because of a bad guess.

If this combat system doesn’t look riveting, well, it’s because it isn’t.

I don’t think Sagres is a bad game, but maybe I expected too much from it? It is full of neat ideas, and I was really hoping it would end up being something similar to old-school Sid Meier’s Pirates or Uncharted Waters, but it was marred by its small scope and what clearly looks like to be a small budget. The gameplay loop became repetitive after a while, as there is just so much you can do in terms of trading, loot, and exploring. The combat was an utter joke. I appreciate the effort, but this just didn’t land with me at all… though I guess I’m never going to see Pirates being ported over to the Switch, so I guess this will still have its niche appeal, as flawed as it is.

Sagres is available now on PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Sagres was provided by the publisher.