Released in 2007, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End let’s you duel, gamble, and battle your way through adventures on land and ship. The third part of the series, At World’s End combines animated scenes with gameplay to provide an exciting and memorable experience.

Chances are that you’ll find the game for ridiculously low prices online. Still, I hope not only to explain this phenomenon but give analysis to help you to decide whether you should buy it.

So without further ado, let’s jump in!

Graphics: 7 / 10
While the graphics of this PS2 game are not astounding, they reveal a legitimate attempt to show 3D detail in characters and surroundings.
Animated clips permeate the game but are not animated clips from the movies. In fact, some show clear, albeit inconsequential, differences. Original graphics and animated scenes show innovation on the part of the designers and let players know that its not merely a copy of the movie.

A strength of the game, complex surroundings with clear areas of movement make the game look realistic without taking away from the mobility of the player.

Visual effects, notably luminescence and fog, appear throughout the game. Luminescence from candles in dark areas, such as the prison where Jack Sparrow starts the game, provides an atmosphere of danger and dreariness. Fog appears in dangerous areas, where it surrounds the legs of enemies and adds to the dangerous, exciting atmosphere of the game.

While characters had the potential for better detail, they do have sophisticated 3D models. Clothes and scarves that one would not expect on basic character models appear in the game. Both the faces and clothes have enough clarity to make characters easily distinguishable.

While the graphics had room for improvement, decent levels of clarity and complexity raise the score. 7 / 10.

Sound / Music: 9 / 10
You’ll easily recognize the music tracks from the movies. Creating an atmosphere of adventure and action, their exciting themes perfectly fit the game, The soundtracks play slightly louder than the sound effects, which makes both easily heard at all times.

While the original cast do not act as the voice actors, it’s not easy to hear the difference in voices. Particularly impressive is the voice of Jack Sparrow, which sounds exactly like Depp in the movies.

When you fight or move you can hear character sound effects. Often characters will speak while fighting, improving gameplay and tying repetitive fighting scenes with the story and current objectives of the level.

The sound effects are not excessive and easily work with the music. While the sound effects during fights should have been more varied, the combination of character voices / noises with the sound of clashing metal adds to the fight scenes.

With very little to criticize, the sound / music nears perfection. 9 / 10.

Addictiveness: 4 / 10
PotC:AWE relies on the storyline to make single-player addictive. You’ll find that repetitive fight scenes quickly get tiring. In order to grab your attention, intermittent animated scenes offer interesting objectives. In order to progress in the story and see familiar scenes, I played on single-player for hours on end.

Multiplayer duels temporary make fight scenes fun but they quickly become repetitive too. The lack of multiplayer in story mode hurts addictiveness, since you’ll be playing by yourself the majority of the time.

Simple actions allow for younger players to not have a great disadvantage, but also lets fights devolve into a competition of who can randomly press the controls the most.

While the game gave instant gratification, the fun of the game was lost within a few weeks. That’s why you’ll see it as a very common sale on sites like eBay. While I played for hours at a time, I never found myself truly addicted. Instead of playing every day, I would only play once in a while until I finished the game. Once in a while, I would duel multiplayer until I eventually bored of the game completely.

While I expect you to enjoy the game, there’s only a slight chance you’ll get addicted.

4 / 10.

Story: 10 / 10
While the title may suggest otherwise, elements of the story come from both the third and second movies. The designers took liberties with the story-line, creating events and sub-plots that never happened in the movie. Furthermore, events were simplified to allow each short scene to cover long events from the movie.

While the animated scenes interesting and amusing, they hold up the gameplay for the game.

With virtually nothing to criticize about the story, it deserves 10 / 10.

Depth: 5 / 10
Within each level you are awarded stats and a rank. With 9 main statistics, levels can be replayed for achieving high scores and higher ranks.

Once you finish story-mode you have dozens of characters to choose to replay story-mode. Alternate modes, such as multiplayer duels, add to the depth.

Within levels you’ll find gambling minigames that are fun distractions from the fighting of the games. While the rules are tedious, I would recommend reading them before joining the game.

With its decent depth, the rating cannot go lower than a 5 / 10.

Difficulty: 2 / 10
The difficulty from AI characters only appears from length of battles, but if you’re persistent all of them are easily beat. Slow motion fight sequences require holding down specific buttons that appear on the screen, a simple task.

While the gambling minigames have difficulty, they are optional. Clearly, the game was designed for younger, inexperienced gamers to quickly play and merely need to keep pressing fighting buttons and occasional defending to defeat characters.

Multiplayer duels are less luck-based and more difficult. They allow older, experienced players to have temporary reprieve from the disappointing difficulty of the game.

Since the difficulty mostly arises from optional activities and from the length of battles, it’s basically non-exist in regular play.

2 / 10.

Overall: 6 / 10
My holistic comparison of important categories leads to a respectable overall score of 6 / 10.

While the strengths in the layout and template for the game were pronounced, the weaknesses appeared from mediocrity in gameplay, depth, and addictiveness.

Having received the game as a gift, I was not annoyed. However, I would not recommend paying the extra money required to buy the game new.

You might buy the game if:
1. you find a really cheap deal and you think that a few hours of enjoyment are worth it.

2. want a game based on a highly popular movie

3. want to be excited and have limited time to play games, so the lack of addictiveness doesn’t matter.

For these cases specifically, I would recommend getting the game.

It was really fun to check out this game after so many years! Feel free to comment on your experiences, too!

Thank you for reading!

EideticMemory : Another great review by you again Eidetic, there's only one thing I think you may want to edit in this review and that's where you gave the score for you sound/music section as you gave it a 10 out of 10 in the beginning but near the end of your description you gave it a 9 out of 10 saying it was near perfection. Just a mere oversight but I just figured I'd let you know.