Rogue Waters: 70 hours logged, and the review still says no

Tactical combat that rewards perfect math — and cannot always tell a player's mistake from its own.

One captain, and a crew that carries its own scars

70 hours played, and a review still ends with the line that it would not recommend the game to a friend. That sounds like a contradiction, but it comes from the same place that pulls people in: a turn-based tactical system where every move shoves, corners or exposes an enemy, with no room for luck.

Ice Code Games released it on 30 September 2024, and it puts you in command of Captain Cutter, a pirate caught in a lethal scramble for power, chasing a legendary treasure and revenge on the immortal Captain Blackbone. Along the way there is the prophecy of the Shepherd of the Sea, sea creatures to set loose and enemies to outwit, across a story-driven campaign in 3 acts. Between missions you head into the Pirate Cave to fit out the ship, sign on fresh hands and pick who sails with you next.

There are 6 classes to recruit, each with its own combat style, and the damage the crew takes does not vanish when a mission ends: wounds carry across runs, and keeping someone in the field too long risks losing them for good — the answer is rotating who rests. Fights mix naval battle, with cannons aimed at specific modules on the enemy ship, and hand-to-hand fighting ashore, and the world around you takes a different shape on every attempt, reshuffling locations, factions and treasure.

A repair list in writing, and a new campaign in the middle of it

On 12 June 2026 the studio set down in writing what it admits is broken: a deck module that does not work as intended, workshop upgrades that only show up after you leave the menu and come back, achievements that stalled on max-level characters, and a hull upgrade tree that never had a function at all, just artwork where one should be. Anyone who bought one of those workshop upgrades ahead of the fix may well have paid for it twice without noticing — the post itself owns up to the problem. A follow-up post on 25 June clears part of it: achievements unlock during play, workshop purchases appear straight away, and the hull tree that did nothing is gone from the game, pulled rather than patched.

Also in June, another post announced Dead In The Water, a new campaign that runs alongside the original story: a storm named Toxic Glass sweeps across the map carrying the voices of the dead, and waiting at the end of it is Captain Circe, a new boss with the powers of the undead.

A board with no dice, and what mastering it costs

People who come for the combat praise the absence of luck. Damage shifts with position, movement shoves an enemy into a wall or a trap, and no hidden die decides the outcome — one player past 36 hours calls the board half tactical RPG, half puzzle: the work is finding the right fit between a unit and a terrain bonus to wipe out an enemy with no turn to spare. The same person sums up the mood of the world as a strange, fantastic mix of pirate adventure, with theft and curses hanging in the air.

A player past 38 hours agrees the system earns its credit — damage that ignores armour when the attack comes in at the right angle is, for them, what keeps the fighting interesting instead of repetitive — and is also the one who describes the cost best: you undo a move just to unlock your own attack command, and sometimes the undo takes with it a move you did not want to lose; at some point the game locks up badly enough to wipe the saved progress, which led them to suggest keeping a separate copy. Another person, at just 7 hours, also recommends the game and also lost the save file after closing the session properly.

Some arrive thinking it is hard and leave praising the curve: 20 hours were enough for one of them to say the game forgives the opening and rewards anyone who sticks with it long enough to read the logic of the board. And some warn that following only the main story to the final boss makes the whole thing short — 26 hours, and the feeling of having seen very little.

70 hours in, and still not recommending it

On Steam, where the game is sold, the person past 70 hours — and it is that same person who writes the harshest piece — says the tactical system is good and the story interesting; the trouble starts when the game turns into punishment. The cannons and the starting deck do not change from one attempt to the next, enemies level up as you would expect, but they turn up aboard ships with legendary-tier parts that can sink the boat in a handful of turns; and although there are around 15 crew members available in total, only 4 fit in the field at a time, and even with every module on the enemy ship destroyed, what is left still drops the captain with an ordinary soldier — overkill, in the writer's judgement. A Chinese-language review at 23 hours describes the same imbalance right at the start of the adventure, even on the easiest route, and adds the wound that lowers the health cap from one run to the next: the crew reaches the final boss weaker than it began. Having finished once, a person with 10 hours went back in for full completion and gave up halfway — what is left after the story, for them, is dull repetition.

Another row of complaints is not about balance, it is about the game not answering the command. In September, a person with 13 hours reports stunned enemies that cannot be picked as a target, immune for a whole turn. A Russian-language review at 4 hours describes characters that disappear from the screen fight after fight and an attack command that freezes. A third person finished the prologue and stopped there: a bug blocks any further progress without a controller in hand, and the scene is easy to picture — you clear the opening, you celebrate, and you run into a screen that only moves on if a controller is plugged in. It rings ironic next to the game's own store page, which promises full controller support: a 1-hour review insists that this support does not work, and that only keyboard and mouse respond.

The person who sums up that frustration best is the one who got the game from a friend and had it on their wishlist for a long time: the anger is not aimed at the difficulty — that is part of the deal — but at the bugs that take control out of your hands, like aiming into thin air and hoping to connect, or losing a whole turn without having done a thing. Even so, it is that same person who says they will keep playing.

Keyboard and mouse, with patience for the engine — not just for the enemy

Rogue Waters suits people who enjoy solving a board with no dice, who accept losing a fight just to work out an enemy's pattern, and who do not mind repeating the same approach on sheer trial and error — and it suits them with one practical condition: play with keyboard and mouse, because that is what really responds, according to those who tried a controller.

It does not suit anyone who wants to finish without technical trouble: between commands that freeze, characters that vanish off the screen and controller support the store page promises and practice denies, the game asks for patience with its own engine well ahead of patience with the enemy. Nor does it suit anyone playing only for the story: those who followed just the main line to Blackbone call the campaign short, and what carries the hours after that is replaying freshly generated runs — for anyone who has reached the end once and found nothing more to hold them, the second lap does not convince.