Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

I can see why a lot of people are in love with this game. It reminds me of games when I was a teenager in the 90s. However I am guessing that this is a real niche game that the fans really love and the people who don't like it kind of hate it. I found the game bizarre and boring. I really like exploration in games but this game did not give me the rush of excitement familiar to that genre. The in-game items and their descriptions were odd in a bad way. The locations were weird in a bad way. The way the game functioned and the menus reminded me of "King of Dragon Pass." If you liked this game then maybe you will like this one. I disliked both.

There's been an underline shift in design with sunless skies compared to the previus game. While I do agree that the gameplay in a game is important and should be curated, I also believe that a game should first of all try to merge story and gameplay in an harmonius fusion to create a vast array of sensations. This game seems to focus most of its effort by fixing some of the gameplay complaints people had in the previus game, but it dose so in the wrong way. By attuning its currencies, combat, exploration and movement to some unspoken standard found elsewhere in the gaming industry. Healt, Fuel and Supplies can go down pretty easily, but they are just as easily refounded by sending your bat to search the wilds, and more often then not, a wreck will have at least one or more supply, which is often enough to return back to one of the main ports, and due to the much higher speed of exploration, I never felt engaged or fearful to explore. In fact, I was frustated by what exploration may bring, combat. This is bound to be the most contested claim in this review of mine, but I sincerely dislike the combat and its twin stick shooter playstyle, it reminded me of SPAZ 1 more then anything. And that was not what I was looking for in a Failbetter game. The UI is another point of contention for me, I enjoy it visually but I do not enjoy the very tall and wide Port UI, it seems fit for a mobile game in all honesty. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but I did favour the more utilitarian design in the previus game, alongside its design being reminiscent of an old sailor's notebook. Perfectly in theme with the game's atmosphere. And probably here lies the problem for me. It seems this game was stuck in the middle, beholded to the rules of the first game while trying to make something new to address the complaints, without realizing that the downtimes present in Sea, made the more exiting events that much more important, giving weight to the whole. Which is now lost.

First of all, the good - game engine is decent, and controlling your steam engine feels nice. Even though combat is challenging you can . I'll give it a star for that. What's bad is everything else. The whole pseudo-victorian world with steam engines flying through space (?) with Big Ben, rusty pipes and trees below reads like a bad acid trip, not a coherent story. Even worse are long pretentious dull texts with cardboard characters which you have to endure when going through "text quest" phases of the game. That phase has problems even without that lazy writing, it just goes full RNG on you. Wanna jump there? It's 50% chance you'll make it. Oops, you missed, better luck next time! All in all if you're just crazy about STEAM ENGINES IN SPACE!!!111 - go ahead and try it. Otherwise it probably will be a disappointment.

Review based on 100+ hours of play. Being a big fan of the "Sunless sea", I couldn’t pass it up. Well, the game has made a big step towards the user and now the gaming experience is much more balanced, one might say gentle (in comparison of course with SS). It’s still nice to follow the narrative of the story, of course, if you choose the main plot point - “the truth”. (The remaining two objectives are not particularly interesting and may serve as a general immersion into the lore for new players) The overall design is beyond praise, a huge leap in quality. Now it feels and plays like a full-fledged game, and not like a product from browsers. It's about the good. And now the fly in the ointment: And everything would be great if not the desire of the authors to emphasize the non-binary agenda as much as possible. It’s terrible. Honestly. The whole so carefully constructed image of the Victorian era is shattered by they/it, and all pseudo-positive characters are necessarily non-binary individuals with a bias toward the female gender and corresponding character. And so on and so forth. If you are trying to create something authentic, then be kind enough to remain within the framework of this authenticity, and leave all this nonbinary shenanigans for Netflix. And this is quite critical, the whole image of the narrative collapses. Unfortunately, I cannot rate it positively and cannot recommend it to the average user.

I played this quite a lot and after grinding my way collecting wealth and upgrades I noticed that some of the language written in this game is taking into account non binary pronouns. The game is already a slog to read, but to try to divine who is who when the writers use the plural "they" instead of he, her or it, was just too much effort to sort out.