I will be honest and admit that, at first, I knew very little about Captain Blood, and that I was initially drawn towards it due to the fact it was basically being portrayed as a pirate-themed, God of War-inspired hack ‘n’ slash, with somewhat old-school visuals. And by old-school, I mean Xbox 360-era visuals. Face it, the damn thing is turning 20 this year, that’s already retro. Upon finding out more about the game’s shockingly troublesome developmental history, I realized I had to play it. More than just an interesting mixture of ideas, Captain Blood is one of those games that, for all intents and purposes, should have never been released. And for the longest time, it hadn’t.

You can execute enemies after depleting a good chunk of their energy.

The reason why Captain Blood looks like an Xbox 360 game is because… it is an Xbox 360 game. Development on the game started in gosh darn 2003, when Russian company Akella announced a pirate action game based on the 1922 novel by Italian author Rafael Sabatini, aptly named Captain Blood. It was originally intended to be released on PC and the original Xbox in 2006, before the idea was scrapped in favor of a then next-gen version, with the Xbox 360 in mind. When the game’s publisher went bankrupt in 2010, Captain Blood was scrapped indefinitely, and remained forgotten for the next fourteen years or so.

Fast forward to 2025, and Captain Blood got revived by small boutique published SNEG, a company specialized in just that: reviving titles either forgotten in time, or stuck in quasi-perpetual developmental limbos. What we have here is basically a very creative action title that would have been considered a breath of fresh air back in 2008, which took so long to come out that it still manages to feel like something somewhat fresh due to the state of modern gaming nowadays. Go figure.

Hop onto a cannon and defend your ship from enemy vessels.

But with that, I also need to take into account that Captain Blood is being released without being revamped for a modern audience. This is, by and large, an Xbox 360 game. It looks brown and dated because that’s exactly how games from that era used to look like. Oddly enough, the game took so damn long to come out that we kinda feel nostalgic for these graphics nowadays. There’s also the fact that, considering how non-taxing it is for any pseudo-modern GPU, the game runs quite well on a portable like a base model ROG Ally. Sure, there were some framerate dips when there were literal dozens of enemies and cannonball shots onscreen at once, but nothing too egregious.

Bear in mind that Captain Blood was never developed with a big budget, even back in the day. It is not Gears of War, it is not Bioshock. You can notice limitations in its animations, and especially in its voice acting. Every single quality of life feature that has become commonplace in the 2020s is completely absent in here. The lack of a lock-on feature, the janky camera controls, the really poor dodging mechanics… and so on.

One thing I don’t miss from the Xbox 360 era of gaming: freaking QTEs everywhere.

That’s not to say the game isn’t fun. It surely is. You gotta play it with a specific mindset. It’s incredibly over-the-top, bloody, gory, and often challenging. The best part about Captain Blood is, without a doubt, its combat. Clearly inspired by old-school God of War, it is cathartic. Pulling off combos against hordes of enemies, obtaining gold coins, and then spending said coins on even cooler means to kill enemies with extreme prejudice rarely gets old. There are various weapons you can pick up from the floor, and you can also play as a faster, nimbler character named Walt, who wields wrist blades as if he was from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.

If you can put up with some admittedly obnoxious quick-time events (again, this game was from the Xbox 360 era, and that crap was all over the place) and the occasional unfair difficulty spike, the combat sections can be really fun. You can even wield some ranged weapons, or even hop into a massive machine gun or cannon to actually destroy enemy ships. It certainly isn’t Pirate Yakuza in terms of spectacle, but then again, nothing else is.

I wish Walt was the protagonist. His wristblade was ridiculous but a lot cooler than Captain Blood’s blades.

I had a fun time with Captain Blood even if it’s clearly dated. For a forgotten game that should have been released back during the end of the Bush administration, the idea still feels fresh to this day. A pirate-themed God of War clone was appealing back then, and still is now. Just bear in mind the quality of life enhancements you’d expect from the 2020s aren’t featured in this game, and that it wouldn’t have even been a masterpiece for its intended generation of consoles. If that’s okay to you, then go for it. Hacking and slashing in pirate times will never get old.

Captain Blood is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB and Asus ROG Ally.

A copy of Captain Blood was provided by the publisher.