Every time a game is successful we get a bunch of clones and before you know it we've got ourselves a new genre. Darkest dungeon was one of those that was successful enough to launch a thousand imitators. This game was supposes to be a DD like game from the perspective of the other side. The only problem is that it's not only nowhere near good enough to be compared to DD, but it's nowhere near good enough when compared to the trailer. The best way of describing this game is that is doesn't have a soul. This is a cash grab. Someone saw the success of DD and wanted some of that money so this cash grab was born. There's not really anything else to say.
I bought this years ago as a way of supporting the dev that made Fallen London. I did not find the game play compelling and frankly found it incredibly boring. Then I bought the expansion and the sequel. They're slightly better than Sunless skies but also very boring. The developers think they made narrative games... 95-99% of what you do in this game is "sail" the unterzee. It's boring, and it's incredibly slow. Entire games were build on the skeleton this game uses. This game is an insult to trading games, an insult to exploration games, an insult to frankly every type of game genre it has even a bit of in it's DNA, including narative games. If you liked Fallen London you might think you'd like this game. You'd be wrong. Because 99% of what this game is about is just patiently waiting for your boat to go from point A to point B. This game and it's sequel are everything wrong with open world type games today, pointless "content" that adds nothing to the game experience. This game's core gameplay loop isn't a narrative chose your own adventure book, it's not trade, it's not exploration, it's waiting as your ship slowly crawls from point A to point B. The fact this has a 3 on here is an insult to good game design. The fact that only sycophants and idiots like me bought the sequel resulted in that having an even higher rating is absurt. They say no game really deserves a 1 star review. They are wrong. This game is the literal embodiment of the phrase "time waster". The RNG map generator, the shitty combat and the freaking slow movement need to have all been removed from the game. The chose your own adventure book style narrative is the only good part of this game and it's locked behind incredibly shitty game play. If anyone from Failbetter games is reading this: you did not make a narrative game, you made a waiting game with attached narratives. The core game play loop is waiting, not reading. Congrats on failing to fail better.
The problem with this game is the same as the problem with Sunless skies, 99% of what your'e doing is useless busywork that's not interesting at ALL. You're a locomotive in space... ok, so what next? Next you go from point A to point B over the course of hours at tedious speeds. Then you get a nice chose your own adventure short story in point B and go back to point A, rince and repeat. I thought Sunless Seas was boring but hey, I actually liked Fallen London, and everybody said this was a major improvement. And you know what? This is a major improvement over Sunless Sea, but that doesn't actually make the game play good or compelling. I bought this a few years back as a way of supporting Fallen London, I do not do subscriptions, sorry for not being sorry. And frankly, I feel as cheated with this one as I did with Sunless Sea. Do I regret having bought this? Honestly, yes. Sunless sky should have been enough of a thank you for the fun I had with Fallen London, I really shouldn't have bothered with Zubmariner and Sunless Skies, they're all extremely bad games. (not an exaggeration) If you want a decent game go try Fallen London, it's free. If that's too restrictive for your given it's limited number of actions go read Lovecraft. But do not come here expecting a good game in the same vain. The devs that made this and Sunless Sea really do not understand what they made the core gameplay loop of these games. They think it's narrative, it's not. It's wasting time going from point A to point B at ludicrously slow speeds. It's not reading, it's watching a small locomotive float over a background Amanita would be proud of. If I wanted an Amanita game I would have bought one. I was here for story, not interminable waiting.
I liked the original comic books and when this came out I thought about buying it but the trailer looked really bad - graphics wise. Then I got it for free on GoG. Great deal, right? I finally got to installing the game. I regret both dl and wasting 15 minutes on this game. And yes, 15 minutes is all it took for me to give up on the controls and uninstall this game. It's console crap. If you like console games you'll probably like this game. I do not and did not. The game says it's best played with a controller... by that they mean the game is a piece of s*** without one and just a bad console game with it. Then again, I do dislike console games so your mileage might vary. I wish I could enjoy the story but actually trying to play the game has put me off even watching a let's play of it. The gameplay in this one is so... console-y if I'm to be polite, that I'd rather forget this game even exits. Hell, I dislike the console gameplay in this game so much I'm almost regretting having read the source material. I think Fahrenheit(2005) is the last time I was this disappointed in the gameplay and controls of a game. A lot of people that don't mind this kind of console gameplay have really enjoyed the gameplay as seen by the 5 star reviews. If you don't mind console games you might enjoy this one, and you might as well buy it on here and play it with a controller on PC for years to come rather than risk loosing access to your purchase when your console of choice's store get's closed. As for me? I sincerely regret having wasting any time on this game.
This is one of the few times I regret buying a game. For as much good publicity as this game gets I have never been engaged enough by it to get past the tutorial island that is act I. I decided I wouldn't buy any Larian games as a result of it. Fallowing the launch of BG3 I decided to give this game a 5th or 6th try. This game is just not for me. There are two kinds of RPG players, the story kind that gravitate to RPGs because they tend to be the games with the best stories and the mechanical kind that like TTRPG mechanics and would be content with skipping all the story. I'm a story guy. I buy RPGs because that's where the best stories can be found - at least when it comes to video games. I don't mind mechanics, but you have to give me a reason to engage with them since I'm not there for them. The story of DOS is bad, to put it mildly. And while some people can't stop gashing over the mechanics I find them tedious and SLOW. For me, this game couldn't be worse. A story not worth remembering and an incredibly tedious and slow combat system. The idea behind the system is great and was I not an owner of this game already I'd probably be extremely exited hearing it described, but yeah... NO. The fights in this CRPG are just way, way too boring for my taste. I avoid JRPGs because of the slow turn based combat. Putting them in a CRPG won't change my mind on them. I understand why some people might like the depth the combat system provides but for me it's a snore fest and a waste of time. Honestly, if you intend to buy this game or to try out a game you've owned for years but never played because of some new release, please ask yourself just this one question: do you like turn based combat or not? It doesn't matter how in depth the combat system can go, if you don't like turn based combat you will not like this game.
Got the game for free during the 2022 summer sale. Since It had a linux port I installed it and it ran. Initially I was very impressed. This games brings forth a lot of nostalgia for us 90's kids. The trouble is that the linux port seems to have some serious UI problems, namely part of the UI is missing. I hit a few dead ends so I decided to look up a walkthrough on YouTube. Went there and realized the person playing the game was seeing a few things I wasn't. Came here and realized even the screenshots showcase some UI elements I'm not seeing. Rebooted the game and looked over the options and the ingame help with a fine toothed comb and nothing. Whoever did the port either never played the game so they never realized parts of it were missing or one of the many library updates that Linux is known for broke something in the few months since the game launched. Either way, trying to play it on linux pointless with the gog version. I like it, but I don't know if I'd be willing to pay for it on steam just to try it under Proton. Not with a botched linux native version.
I played the game at the start of the year on an i5 9300H, 8Gb of ram and a GTX 1650 on Linux - Solus distro. Nothing special. The first half of the game, tower levels 1-5 were OK. Then came the constant crashing that made it literally impossible to progress past level 5. I ended up giving up. I was looking for a crpg to play when I realized I hadn't reviewed this one. The game itself isn't bad. I personally ended up liking the combat, even if the dialogue was a bit off and the story might as well have not been there. Would I have been able to finish it I would have done so but alas repeated crashes made it impossible. Also, I'd like to remind anyone reading it, the crashed did non become a problem until the halfway point. That's going to take one quite some time to reach and you are unlikely to know if you'll encounter the same problem I did for at least the first dozen hours of play. Under these conditions I'm afraid I can't recommend this game. Which is sad since I'm one of the few people that gave it a change in the first place, not to mention someone who liked the game. But let's face it, we're here to buy games, not the first half of them.
Having bought this a few years after it came out of Early Access I expected a great game. This is a decent game, but it is not a great one. I played it on linux for just over 33h. Time was kept thanks to a manager called GameHub. I reached the end credits around 24h in. Since the game doesn't stop there I kept playing. At 33h in I would have two more expansions to win, the last 7z club reward to buy and two dozen or so treasure chests to find. I don't think I will do any of that. Now, as for reviewing the rest of the game. I played the game on linux with the native port. That means no directx. I dunno if it was opengl or the engine but the game had problems with the light. At near 90 degrees the cell shading was replaced by glaring reflection. - minus half a star The game engine itself had problems rendering shadows and sometimes they only loaded as I entered the exact location - minus half a star. The UI was made during early access and it was never improved. While that is excusable for an indie, the game's first impression, UI wise, makes me reluctant to give this as a gift to somebody - I'd hate for anybody to think I was cheap with their gift or gave them some janky crap, first impressions matter - minus half a star. I dunno if this was linux, opengl related, or just me not liking some of the shaders the game uses - this one is subjective, but so are reviews in general- minus half a star. I played this on a 9th gen i5, a GTX1650, with the game installed on an SSD. All setting to high, no FPS drops but loading times continued to increase. Towards the end initial loading was close to 40s. No other loading during gameplay though. - minus half a star. (I don't like seeing noticeable load times on an SSD, others might not mind) Finally, the game itself just didn't hold my attention. I bought it at a discount and I can say I more then got my money's worth. But I don't know how often, if ever, I will reinstall it. 2.5/5 stars. Not bad, but not great either.
Don't bother with the recommended or the minimum speaks. This game still has problems loading. You don't need 8 GB of memory, you need at least 32GB of fast memory, a CPU that can handle it, and NVME or PCIE SSD and patience. Now, I know what you're thinking, patience? really? Yes, really. The game has solved a lot of it's more egregious loading problems since it came out, but people that think the game now load fine must be insane. That or repeated second long load times on an SSD is something they think is acceptable. The game is rather well optimized, processor and graphic wise the minimum requirements, let alone the recommended ones should do, but load wise... well, modern, decent to powerful machines will still have trouble loading. And when you need to go thought six or seven consecutive load screens, well it just makes you miss the "good" 'ol days of Mass Effect elevator loading screens, at least they tried to mask them there. I just can't wait for the day PS5 games finally start coming out and people start defending them when they have seconds long load times. What's even the point of progress if all we get is lazy devs that invalidate any and all progress that might have been made in a given field? And yes, I'm still talking about the PC version of this game, not about the PS4 one. TL;DR only bother buying this if you don't mind wasting what will probably be hours on load screens by the time you finish it. And that's if you are using an SSD, On a HDD you'd probably spend more time on the load screen then you would in game.
The first screen you see is one telling you the usage of a controller is recommended. That's not really true. This game was not envisioned to be played with a mouse and keyboard. You need one. Everything, from the options menu to the keyboard bindings shows how not for a mouse and keyboard this game was made. The keyboard controls options are woefully inadequate and for some of us controllers just aren't an option. I never liked controllers while I was on Windows, and now that I'm using Linux controllers are completely out of the question. More often then not they are broken. That leaves me with only one option, mouse and keyboard - this game was not meant to be played that way. Hell, based on how the menu looks and behaves I'm not certain the game was ever really intended for computers in the first place - probably just released on pc as a result of the common Windows/Xbox architecture and the engine's support for the platform. I really don't know what else to say, this is just an incredibly lazy console port. I'm the kind of person that thinks skyrim is unplayable - on the PC - without the SkyUI mod. If you usually only play your games with a controller this might be more to your liking but for me this is a bust.
