Posted on: August 6, 2024

Ramevox

Games: 650 Reviews: 68

Not good

The game has a fatally bad onboarding and the starting hours are an excercise in frustration at arbitrary (at best) and moon logic (at worst) systems. I tried and managed to struggle through this. I did lose one captain, and "finished" the game with the retire to the life of luxury goal, and came to the simple conclusion. Sunless Sea is not a good game. It's also barely a game at all. 99% of negative comments coming from the first impressions and ditching the game altogether by most of the players are 100% accurate. The game doesn't really get better after completing "a crew", having a well equipped ship, finished/ongoing multiple quest lines, artifacts, high character stats, you name it. It's the constant and never changing struggle against the awful fuel/supplies/terror slider management. You are constantly held back by these systems, and everything you're trying to do is suboptimal. You can't trade using the game's trading system, unless you're trading within scripted quest chains using the abysmal journal/dialogue system. Buying and selling stuff gives you almost no margin of profit, if any at all. You can't really fight, because spoils of war are also abysmal and the activity always costs you more than you will ever earn, unless - again - you're fighting a specific quest marked ship/monster. You can't really explore, because there's no real exploration, and you do it only because it's the best way of progressing your ship and character by doing missions for the navy (ie. reach a port and click a dialogue button, go back to London). There's no real main story, only a ton of disconnected and mostly not interesting white noise. Some events are pretty fun (Pigmonte Island), others are awful (the island with masks). And 90% of the time you're idling in the background, slowly losing sanity when watching your slow ships advance through cramped and small world map. Only 0,3% Players have "finished" the game. It's not a hidden gem.

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Posted on: May 24, 2019

nwsaccol106

Verified owner

Games: 338 Reviews: 3

Creepy, Creative, Engaging

SUMMARY: Great game with lots of replayability. The atmosphere is awesome. The story is engaging. There are a huge variety of potential interactions and outcomes. I have sunk hours into this game and I expect to sink hours more --- FULL REVIEW: I can see why some folks are not fond of this game. It can feel a bit slow at first, but as you get upgrades to your ship and develop your character and crew, things really start to open up. ---- The world is one of scarcity. I find myself trying to plan and map the best route to use my lamp as little as possible while accruing the least terror for my crew because fuel isn't always cheap and terror will either open new and exciting stories or (and) make your crew go crazy. So while travel can be slow, it isn't passive. On top of that, the story is great and ever developing. Your last captain died and you don't want to do the same thing all over again? Run to different ports and see what happens. Choose different crew members as they become available and explore their stories. If you played well, your last captain will give this captain a leg up, and maybe they can find out what really happened to... whatever your main questline is for this captain! ---- What this game isn't: It is NOT an action game. Combat is boring and slow, but it can also be punishing. More often than not, I try to avoid it. It is NOT a roguelike. While there is some change in the world, it is not enough variety to be considered a roguelike. It is NOT less than a 4 star game. I almost gave it 5, but I try to reserve 5 for truly spectacular titles.

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Posted on: March 15, 2015

lmahieux

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 1

Lovely and addictive

A beautiful game, with a very peculiar atmosphere. From the very beginning, being able to set your victory conditions sets this game apart from the "kill everything, get rich" routine. The game feels a bit unforgiving at first with the fuel and food management, but it's quite easy to get the hang of it. The music, beautiful graphics, and the tone of the unfolding adventures really create an immersive experience. Random events add to the atmosphere as they usually contribute to the world-building in small ways. The idea of the legacy you leave the next captain when you die is interesting. This would be a brilliant setting for a RPG. I just started, and already feel it was money well spent. I should add that I'm running the game under Linux with Wine, and it runs flawlessly.

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Posted on: January 30, 2024

piranha1

Verified owner

Games: 568 Reviews: 9

It's just bad.

Let me see. You start with barely any money (used to buy both fuel and food, which run out WAY too fast), and make barely enough to resupply (if even that). And if your ship gets damaged? Too bad, no funds left for a repair. Not giving the player tools to deal with what the game throws at them is not "difficulty", it's just bad design. The quest information is really insufficient and unintuitive, sometimes I didn't even know, what do they want me to do. Or where to take something, f.ex. some "Station III", ok, but where it is? Apparently nobody knows, but take me there! On the final attempt to give it a chance, I got attacked by two enemies at once... and apparently your crew can only even aim at one of them then (even though they are far away), and totally ignore the nearby pirate ship firing at you. That's when I gave up, F mark, terrible service, no tip.

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Posted on: September 5, 2016

CaptainSakonna

Games: 30 Reviews: 1

Superb fare if you dislike being coddled

I have sunk uncounted hours into SS and "finished" by retiring a captain, and I adore it. It makes my top ten list, flaws or not. The tone is unique. SS is classed as horror, but it's not about gore, jump scares, or unremitting despair. It's about ominous beauty, unsettling otherworldly forces, and subtle spiritual menaces. Danger is constant, but so is wonder. SS will soothe you with its peaceful interludes, fascinate you with strangeness, and trouble you with melancholia. Perhaps best of all, I found it nailed the obscure emotion of sehnsucht. SS can both induce and satisfy it. (At least on behalf of your character. You, it might cling to.) I love the minimal overt information about what's safe. You'll make decisions on instinct, and some might end tragically. I'd call this excellent design for a game trying to model interaction with the unknown. If the idea of being a real explorer and finding your feet in an unfamiliar environment enchants you, then this is just what you want. If you dislike permadeath, turn it off, for pity's sake. I recommend leaving it on. Some might say permadeath has no place in what is essentially a narrative RPG, not a roguelike, but I disagree. In most RPGs, self-sacrificial or daring actions taken by your character are cheap; just load an old save if anything goes wrong. In SS? They count. Depending on what destiny you wish, SS can involve lots of grinding. This is both what I like least and part of what I love most. Again, it makes decisions carry more weight than a game can usually muster. As you approach the endgame with a character in whom you've invested several tens of hours, a cozy retirement in London starts to sound alluring; moral dilemmas grow teeth; and you'll be forced to ask yourself difficult questions. It wasn't just my character who was scared while attempting the preludes to Salt's Song/the exaltation. I WAS SCARED and did it anyway. And that, I think, is one of the better opportunities a game has ever given me.

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