You play Assassin's Creed Black Flag, or maybe Sea of Thieves or Skull and Bones, and you realize that being a pirate actually takes an enormous amount of skill. Yes there are big brawls and rambunctious parties, but you've also got to be shrewd, imaginative, and, surprisingly, an effective organizer and people manager. The best pirates use strategy and cunning - like the perfect party composition in Baldur's Gate 3, the right combos in Diablo 4, and the visionary flanking maneuvers necessary in XCOM 2, if you want to rule the Seven Seas, you need vision as well as violence. Enter Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, a smart, tactical CRPG with dice rolls, deckbuilding, and a distinctive visual style. Coming very soon to Steam, PCGamesN just got an exclusive look at its new fact-and-fight-filled trailer.
As the eponymous Captain Flint, you play Flint: Treasure of Oblivion from the same classic isometric perspective as BG3 or Diablo 4. Set during the golden age of piracy, the RPG begins in France, but soon expands to the azure oceans of the Caribbean as you and your crew hunt for a gigantic, mythical heap of plunder. Combat is turn-based. As you play, you unlock new cards which you can assign to different members of your crew to bestow them with fresh abilities. During encounters themselves, you choose which attacks or actions you want to use from your deck and dice rolls - à la DnD - decide whether they succeed or fail.
Taking enemies head on is an option, but Flint uses a hex-based movement system that will be familiar to XCOM veterans. If you can get around your opponents and ambush them from the back, your attacks will do more damage. You can also use objects within the environment, like pulleys or gigantic barrels, that can be pushed into crowds of foes, to get an advantage. Take a look at the new trailer for Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, shared exclusively with PCGamesN:
As well as unlocking new cards, as you play you can also meet and recruit fresh crew members. From doctors to sailors, helmsmen to outright fighters, if you effectively combine these different classes, you can execute more-powerful combination attacks in combat. Dice rolls also impact exploration - if you meet a locked door or a seemingly impassable ridge, depending on your luck, you might be able to figure a way past.
Built in Unreal Engine 5, the moment-to-moment gameplay in Flint looks suitably impressive, not only in terms of detail, but the variety of locations. Some places you visit are based in total reality, whereas other environments are purely fantastical.
The interface and combat menus are super crisp and clear, and there's great artwork on each of the action cards. More striking, however, Flint's cutscenes and dialogue are delivered through hand-drawn illustrations - when you get into a major narrative moment, these superbly designed comic-book style panels take over, pushing the story along at a solid clip while also adding more definition to the characters.
Developed by Savage Level, the Flint: Treasure of Oblivion release date is set for Thursday November 14. A combination of classic DnD, deckbuilders, tactical RPGs, and, of course, pirates, if you want to try it for yourself, you can wishlist it on Steam right here.
Otherwise, try some of the other best pirate games, or maybe the best upcoming PC games on their way to you in the near future.
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