YMMV / SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman

• Accidental Innuendo: The banter between SpongeBob and the ghost pirates in the Flying Dutchman's Graveyard. Due to the way they talk about the "booty" (as in "treasure"), it can be downright hilarious for older players to listen to. Here's a montage of the hilarious banter.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Despite being the Final Boss, the Flying Dutchman himself is a complete pushover. Many of his attacks are easily avoidable, and he goes down in a couple hits from his own bombs.
  • Technically a mini-boss, but the clown in Jellyfish Fields challenges Spongebob to a fight for the Chum World bus ticket. Said clown is located in a big arena that requires climbing a mountain to reach, so it seems like it will be a pretty tough fight. Instead, you hit him once and he immediately gives up and hands over the bus ticket. If you happen to be wearing the Mermaid Man costume, you can end the fight in under two seconds by throwing a waterball at him as soon as his dialogue ends.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Mermaid Man outfit theme, which is generally considered to be the best costume track in the whole game.
  • The Reef Blower theme too, to a lesser extent.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Running into Patrick delivering food in Downtown, and the subsequent reveal he's working for Plankton. The reveal comes completely out of nowhere (the last time you see Patrick before this interaction is when you deliver food to him in the construction site, which is a sub-area of Downtown), doesn't make sense story-wise, the interaction is extremely out-of-character for Patrick (he smugly reveals he got a job to SpongeBob and insults him for being slow), and it's never brought up again after confronting Plankton in Bikini Bottom.
• Critical Backlash: While it might not be as fondly viewed as SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, there are some fans who played it back in the day and might admit to some of its flaws, but still consider it a decent game.
• Cult Classic: The game is starting to be seen as this by the many people who have played it back when they were kids and, as such, have very fond memories of it when they got older.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Early in the game, Spongebob makes food deliveries to people's homes due to Mr. Krabs mentioning that everyone "thinks it's too much trouble to leave home." Come late 2010s and the early 2020s, and the surge in popularity in food delivery apps such as Doordash and Ubereats would flood the market for this exact reason.
• Memetic Mutation: The lifeguards in Goo Lagoon have become a meme associated with the game, due to their Narmy accents, and how they pause, and then reset the music when they talk. They also only have four lines, and seem weirdly mad about Spongebob running on the beach.

"Hey, no running on the beach"

• Mis-blamed: For a very long time, the PS2 version's Game-Breaking Bug was widely believed to be the reason behind the closure of the developer BigSky Interactive. As it turns out, BigSky went out of business because THQ blacklisted them after they declined an offer to become a subsidiary of the company.
• Narm: The game's soundtrack is solid, and does a good job of capturing the style of the show's music. Unfortunately, the individual songs are exclusively tied to the costume SpongeBob is currently wearing instead of being level-specific like most platformers, which means for 95% of the game you'll either be listening to the main theme or the Fishing Gear's music. The kitschy easy listening style of those two songs will grate on you after a while, especially when they often don't at all fit the mood of the scene you're currently playing through.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The narrator's voice. Due to a different voice actor (for some reason), he has a completely different voice which makes him sound much more sinister and threatening than usual.
  • At one point in the Goo Lagoon level, the Dutchman hijacks a boat and attempts to kill SpongeBob by plowing the ship into the pier. Adding to this, there’s audible SCREAMING that’s heard while you’re fleeing from the Dutchman, and SpongeBob's scream of terror at the end of the section doesn't help. While this can easily fall into Narm territory if you’re wearing the default or fishing gear costume due to the inappropriate music completely ruining the mood, it’s still an oddly dark scene for a SpongeBob game.
    • After completing Goo Lagoon, you're abruptly brought back to SpongeBob's house with no fanfare, and no cutscene of anyone getting kidnapped... then you walk outside and immediately come face-to-face with the Dutchman, who finally decides to make SpongeBob part of his crew. Thankfully the treasures SpongeBob has collected make him immune to the Dutchman's hypnosis, but the abruptness of the scene can easily startle younger or unsuspecting players, especially since it's the first (and only) time the two directly interact aside from the beginning and ending of the game.
  • The game’s atmosphere as a whole has gained a reputation among players as being creepy and unsettling. The game's levels all have very dark lighting (most notably in the GameCube version), along with the levels themselves having dark environments (such as Downtown taking place at night and Goo Lagoon taking place during a thunderstorm), giving the whole game a dark gloomy atmosphere. There are little to no characters to interact with in the game, and the few characters that there are have strange uncanny animations and models (especially Plankton and Larry). This is especially prominent once all of SpongeBob’s friends have been kidnapped, and you’re left aimlessly wandering around large empty levels that are almost completely barren, most notably Bikini Bottom, Tree Dome, and Downtown. Coupled with the game’s limited and monotonous soundtrack, and you’re left with what many players have compared to a horror game.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The Game Boy Advance version is seen as a fairly enjoyable 2D platformer.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: While the game's been somewhat Vindicated by History, it has some flaws that cannot be overlooked. These include repetitive music for the costumes, sluggish controls, an at times unresponsive camera, frame rate drops during certain sections, unsatisfactory enemies and combat, a disappointing ending, and no clear indication of objectives. Fortunately, THQ (along with Heavy Iron Studios) got the formula right a year later with SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game’s costume mechanic has been criticized for being poorly implemented. There are several reasons for this:
    • The game's soundtrack is tied to the costume you're wearing rather than the level you're currently in. This makes certain songs (ESPECIALLY the Fishing Gear theme) extremely grating and repetitive, since there's only four costumes available, and since only one costume is really useful for anything, you'll be listening to the same song on repeat for about 90% of the game. Oddly, two levels, Chum World and the Flying Dutchman's Graveyard, DO have their own music that doesn't change with the costume Spongebob is wearing, so it's unknown why no other level behaves like this.
    • Spongebob cannot change costumes unless he goes to a changing tent. Said changing tents are sparse, and are often located in out-of-the-way areas, meaning you have to backtrack all the way through an area just to change costumes, then run all the way back to get to whatever task required the costume at hand. The locations of the changing tents aren't even used for any sort of puzzle either, so there's no reason why switching costumes couldn't have just been done on the pause screen instead.
    • There’s major balancing issues between the four costumes that are available. The Fishing Gear is the only costume able to catch jellyfish, which are a required collectible needed for several of the SPONGEBOB letters as well as unlocking the Reef Blower and Goo Lagoon. It’s also the only costume able to use fishing hooks, which are used to progress in many of the game’s platforming sections, meaning there’s little reason not to be using the Fishing Gear. In comparison, the default costume does not grant Spongebob any additional abilities and he keeps his moveset while wearing other costumes anyway, making it overall pointless to use. The Mermaid Man and Reef Blower costumes are largely situational and are only used for a handful of tasks that require them. The Mermaid Man costume has a projectile attack that can be used against enemies, but combat is largely nonexistent and can be handled with the default or Fishing Gear costumes anyway, while the Reef Blower can’t attack enemies at all, making it more of a hinderance than anything else. Chances are, you’ll most likely use the Fishing Gear for about 90% of the game, switch to the Mermaid Man or Reef Blower costumes for the one or two tasks that require them, then switch back to the Fishing Gear. Better get used to hearing the Fishing Gear theme…
• Soundtrack Dissonance: While on the subject of Costume music, There are times where depending on what you're wearing, the music absolutely does not fit the exact moment like at the pier when The Dutchman hijacks a boat and tears through said pier in an attempt to kill you.
• Squick: The Dutchman's lost "treasures" are actually old and gross possessions he had when he was alive, and they're pretty disgusting to look at by SpongeBob standards. Naturally, you get a quip from the kids in the background saying "EWWWWWW!" whenever you collect one.
• Tear Jerker:
  • SpongeBob finding out that the Flying Dutchman has captured Gary.
    SpongeBob: Gary? Where are you, boy? Gary! Why did you take Gary, mister Dutchman? Why, why, why? No one makes my best friends into pirates! And I mean NO ONE!
    • Before that, SpongeBob pleads for the Dutchman to take him instead of Gary. It doesn't work.
    • Even worse is why the Dutchman goes after Gary: in a fit of fear after the Flying Dutchman emerges and declares his intent to make SpongeBob a part of his ghostly crew, SpongeBob threw Gary under the bus by explaining that technically, Gary was the one he wanted because he dug up the Dutchman's bottle.
• That One Level:
  • The pier section in Goo Lagoon is a MASSIVE difficulty spike in a game that is otherwise pretty light on that kind of platforming. It’s very long, has several different paths that make it confusing to navigate, and is filled with tricky jumps over large gaps and moving platforms. What makes it so difficult is the whole level is situated above water that instantly kills you if you fall into it, so there’s very little room for error. On top of that, checkpoints are few and far between, so you’ll constantly be redoing large parts of the level every time you die. To top it all off, once you reach the letter tile at the end, you have to backtrack all the way through the level again to leave unless you had the foresight to save that tile for last.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Jellyfishing contest in Jellyfish Fields is infamous for being a massive brick wall that left many a kid stumped due to the sheer amount of Guide Dang It! in it. To clarify, the quest requires you to have 100 jellyfish, but there's only 84 jellyfish in the jellyfish fields area. The 100 jellyfish are actually the total jellyfish caught in the game, and the only indications of this are an easily-missable message that only appears when you're first given the task and the objective list in the game's pause menu. So, if you aren't paying attention when given the task and don't bother with checking the objective list, you won't realize that you already have the 100 jellyfish (and that's assuming you've already caught 16 jellyfish in the other sections of the game). What's worse is that this quest has to be completed in order to obtain the Reef Blower and two of the SPONGEBOB letters.
  • The 50 jellyfish needed to get Larry's bus ticket to Goo Lagoon. Normally, this quest wouldn't be too bad... except it comes right after the Jellyfishing contest in Jellyfish Fields, meaning you need to catch 150 jellyfish with the only break in between being Jellyfish Field's treasure hunt sequence. And since Jellyfish Fields and Bikini Bottom are likely devoid of life at this point due to the Jellyfishing contest requirements and Tree Dome doesn't have jellyfish at all (due to the lack of water), that leaves Downtown and Chum World as the only areas where you can possibly catch any more. The only purpose of this quest seems to be to railroad you into going to Chum World first before you can go to Goo Lagoon.
  • The Chum Putt course in Chum World is another potential brick wall. The course makes you use your Reef Blower to get a ball to hit 10 goals, but the problem is that the ball's physics are very slippery and imprecise. Combine with some tricky obstacles to get past, and you get a very tedious mini-game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Plankton, mainly due to his usual Big Bad status being taken by the Flying Dutchman. His only real role is for a very small subplot in Downtown that's dropped as soon as it's introduced, and introducing Chum World. After that, he only appears for a single conversation in Jellyfish Fields and one of the letter tile tasks in Chum World before disappearing from the game entirely. He doesn't even interact with the Flying Dutchman or have anything to do with him aside from Chum World containing one of his treasures.
  • Oddly enough, the Flying Dutchman himself. Despite being the Big Bad (and having his name in the title of the game), he does little for most of the game other than kidnap Spongebob's friends one-by-one. Aside from the final area, none of the level subplots have anything to do with him (see Trapped by Mountain Lions below). Goo Lagoon is the sole exception, where the Flying Dutchman actually directly opposes Spongebob, and one of the NPC characters mentions how the Dutchman has spread panic and fear among the populace. But this is the only level where that's the case, begging the question of why every level didn't have something like that.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Although the Flying Dutchman breaking out of his prison is the main plot of the game, none of the levels aside from the final one have anything to do with this other than the treasure hunting sequences at the end.
  • Bikini Bottom simply involves Spongebob going through his morning routine, such as visiting Patrick and getting ready for work.
  • Downtown has Spongebob making food deliveries for Mr. Krabs and later helping Sandy clean up trash.
  • Tree Dome involves SpongeBob helping Sandy plug holes in the tree dome due to a leak and later clear out bees and wasps that infest her house from a gift he gave her.
  • Jellyfish Fields has SpongeBob participating in a Jellyfishing competition, with nothing else involved.
  • Chum World has no plot, and is simply a collection of mini-games that award a letter tile if Spongebob beats them.
  • Goo Lagoon plays with this: The main plot involves getting a letter tile off of Larry's belt, while one of the side objectives is purchasing a bottle to imprison the Dutchman once again. Subverted in that the Dutchman steals the bottle and attacks the pier, then double subverted when he drops the bottle after the final boss fight, which Spongebob uses to send him back to his prison.

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