Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

The game so far lacks many important features, like buying new ship. The world is rather barren and you can't talk to your crew members, but that's going to change (soon I hope). So far Sunless Skies feels like a much faster, better looking Sunless Sea, with improved (albeit not great) fighting system. The rate, at which you lose fuel and supplies has decreased, which allows going further, and exploring more, which is a must given how few important places are. The bugs are there, although not game-breaking. Overall it's a pleasant experience, if the developers keep improving this title, i won't mind giving it five stars.

The people at Failbetter are such masters of their grimdark craft, they've managed to make me lose my actual real life sanity... due to how slow the trains move. And there is no way to improve the speed your craft travels at. There was an overdrive function in 'Sunless Seas', but it didn't make it into 'Sunless Skies', But not only is the game slow to begin with, you'll also frequently encounter headwinds that further reduce your movement speed. Another review astutely noted that, unlike 'Sunless Seas', in 'Skies' you have to navigate a maze of corridors rather than cruising off freely into the unknown. This makes getting from point A to point B take that much longer, and that much more tedious. The game overall is a little easier than 'Sunless Seas', but everything takes longer. Also, the 'Seas' soundtrack was better.

So I'm a person who never, ever buys games at full price. I deal hunt constantly. There are few exceptions. One of these is Failbetter. The Sunless series is unique and beautiful. Others complain about "slowness," but that's only because they don't understand what the game is. It is slow, but its slowness is for a reason. It builds tension. It forces you plan. It makes your decisions matter in a way that modern slot machine inspired games just don't. This isn't an arcade shooter. This is a disjointed choose your own adventure set in one of the most unique universes ever concieved in gaming. The writing isn't just superb for a game; it's superb in itself. If this were a book, I would demolish it in a sitting, but it's better than that: It's a book baked into a starship sim. This game series is unique. I bought it at full price because I want the devs to have my money, and -again- I'm a total skinflint. I'd pay them more than just the $25 if I could. This game is unique in the way that Planescape: Torment or Undertale are unique. There's just nothing out there like it, and it is an *experience.* While this game is better than Sunless Sea in practically every way as a game, I would still recomend starting with Sunless Sea. Why? Because it's absolutely beautiful and weird in its own right. Would I recommend this series to everyone? No. Absolutely not. If you hate reading, don't like difficulty, or prefer constant action from your games, avoid this. For everyone else: Get it. Get it now. Not sure which game to start with and you only have money for one? Well, do you like Joseph Conrad, cosmic horror, and Gulliver's Travels? Get Sunless Sea. Do you like Verne, starships, and steam trains? Get Skies. Do you not mind a less slick experience? Start with Sea so you don't spoil yourself, then get Skies. I'm very rarely in love with a game. I'm an older man. I don't get excited anymore like I did when I was a kid. This makes me feel what I used to feel.

The core idea from Sea remains intact, but Sunless Skies provides quality of life adjustments, a better UI, stronger combat, and more forgiving difficulty options to make this sequel superior to it'a suberb predecessor.

This game has almost gamebreaking framrate, pacing and AI issues, it will break immersion, ruin combat(most enemies will just slowly grind into a wall or corner, framrate fuck up with enemies that does function). The locomotives are to sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww, it takes forever to get anywhere with the same repeated 3-5 random encounters(scavenging included) I could go on The pros are there. interesting story, beautiful art and sound design. But this game need a lot more development time before it went full retail. I would call this late beta/early access. If the problems arent fixed then i would not recommend buying this at full price and to hell with the developers if they release dlc before fixing this.....