Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

The game overall has a nice, free-flowing experience. You fight monsters, solve puzzles, go dungeon diving, collect gear. All the things Zelda had. The major problem with this game are the boss fights, which are an exercise in frustration and how much can you take before rage-quitting. By the time you learn the pattern and how to cause damage, you've lost most of your health. There is too much trial and error involved in a game that doesn't seem like it should have such irritating boss fights. Easy levels but hard bosses that essentially ruin the experience. Maybe I'm just terrible at games like this.

Best played with a controller, this game is the true spiritual successor to Wind Waker. It's an excellent port of a game too cool for the iOS to handle it's awesomosity. As you play you gain levels and unlock various achievements with in game benefits. As long as you have a controller and like Zelda you can't go wrong with this.

I recently played Wind Waker for the first time with a very nostalgic friend who wanted me to experience it. Playing Oceanhorn afterwards, it amuses me that this game does a rather good job of being how she _remembered_ Wind Waker. Actually playing Wind Waker: "Okay, eventually we'll get an item that makes boat travel a lot faster..." "Um, I guess this is one of the filler dungeons, but most of them are really good...well, some are." "The art looked really great back then. Look at all the bright colors..." I think if you are a Zelda fan, you will like this game a lot because it improves on a lot of the grind areas. It's not quite as good in that it is mostly a copy, but it doesn't do anything worse than Wind Waker, necessarily. It does greatly improve on voice acting... For Zelda haters: you won't like it. Your character can't jump, the combat is simple and constant, you just keep playing to win eventually, most of the content is optional collection/exploring stuff, you play as a child (why does anyone trust stretched-collar boy with their destiny?), the environmental world-building is crap (there are three people in this town, and the only woman is elderly)...all the stuff you probably hate about Zelda games. I'm giving it 4/5 for "above average Zelda clone," but I personally found it tedious.

It's quite obvious that Oceanhorn was inspired by Zelda, especially by its GameCube incarnation Wind Waker. Which isn't a bad thing and actually during the first few hours, I really loved it and hummed to the music while exploring its colorful isometric beauty. Yes, the 3D models are a bit simple and the animations pretty basic, but this didn't bother me. At least there is some voice acting (though the hero remains silent for some reason). While the world to explore is not gigantic, I loved to discovered new islands, explore them and solve some riddles. Even the 1st boss fight (the plant thing, I don't count the centipede as boss) was OK. From there on, my excitement was marred by flaws in the game design and bugs. Things like collected bloodstones bot being accounted and you need to go back to all the places on a island and try to collect the invisible (!) stones again. Or things like being forced to go to Sky Island just because you collected the weather cuckoo and thus having to fight the end boss there without the Coral Saber. Or treasure chests permanently disappearing because you ignited two flames before the game want you to. Or falling into death traps even though you just pushed a crate into the damned hole. There are also design flaws in the boss fights like Shadow Mesmeroth not attacking for a whole round so you're battered again by the laser turrets without being able to reflect even one of his fire balls. And yeah, the 1st part of the boss fight against Oceanhorn is a PITA. Last but not least, the game doesn't give you any hint what you're missing to reach 100%. Even the number of missing stones is only displayed now and then. I completed all islands, collected all available bloodstones (some of them twice due to bugs), caught a fair amount of fishes, completed all visible challenges (and even some more I think) and still ended with only 87%. No idea if this is a bug or if there are things to do that are not communicated. Anyway, it's a bit frustrating.