I can simply my feeling with the phrase "The game is not complex. Much to its detriment." In a sense the original falconeer felt like a much more ambitious project compared to this one, who feels like a very good tech demo. A potential basic structure to a more complex game, I like the vistas, I like audio, I even like the dialogue, and how that changes based on your faction's internal power, with some factions or individuals within a faction, refusing to work if a certein civilisation is the dominent one. Yet I am not satisfied with the basic level of progression and building. Building is automatic, you just need to place something on shallow water or on a cliff. Progression too is automatic, at first I felt I would've had to explore around to find NPCs for your faction, but in reality they just show up when you have enough influence of a specific faction. There are some "businesses" that supposedly show up but the game doesn't tell you what they do. And some rare buildings to place. This can be good as each general or trader can have it's own personality, but you won't see much of it, same for the story which seems to pick up 30 years after The Falconeer, the big story event potential happens at the end of the progression with you unlocking a faction wonder, from there it's effectively GG. I don't dislike it, not at all, but I want more. I want to be able to walk on the side of my airship and fire it's cannons like in Guns of Icarus, I want to que the creation of as many airships, gunships or falconeers as my resources permit, stuff that you'd find in a Real time RTS. And with that I want the other settelments to be able to threaten me with the same capabilities., to have trade routs and actively expand. If you can't abide that feeling of being on the cusp of something better, I would suggest getting it on a sale. If you just want pretty vistas, somewhat clucky automated bulwark building with a light dose of RTS and City Builder, then yea get it.
The game felt like a slog at times, in chapter 4 I just stopped. Now that I return I must sign away my right to privacy in a single player game or not play at all? The choice is easy. And with this another company goes into my black list, a sadly ever growing one, but I can stay jaded longer then a company can stay solvent.
I have recently bought a whole new pc with an Nvidia 1660 TI and the game keeps crashing it. Really I have very little to say, game is fine, not as interesting as its previous games but it was decent for the price once it was on sale. However I had server issues with the graphical setting, even switching the (Very generic) graphical settings the game would freeze, no response forcing me to forcefully close it. The final kick came during the beginning of the "Spring" session. All of the sudden, the game just black screened forcing me to restart my whole pc. I don't know if it's an issue with my GPU, or else, but a quick scan of the internet seems to confirm it. So be ware future buyers. You may have the same issues.
Usually I'm not a fan of puzzle games or adventure games with puzzles as the center stage of of their gameplay. Those tend to be essentially walking simulators with bare bones puzzles and pretty visuals. The interactivity with the enviroment is limited if not absent in those cases, and with some severe cases of moon logic to boot. This is not the case for Westmark Manor. First of all, this game is not a straight line between exibition points, those do accour but they happen naturally as you explore the open ended mansion, diverting your eye and attention for brief moments, aided by camera shifts and voice acting. In that case the mansion is almost a Metroid-style in its exploration, requiring the player to find or craft objects scattered through the mansion in either pre-designed locations or by looking through random items in hope to get useful items and not some sanity draining random event. Then there's the puzzle rooms which effectivly are the main pieces of the game, but you are free to solve each one in what ever other you can or wish. The only requirement for you is to solve a fine amount, but I'm willing to bet that which room you decided to do over others will change at least some elements of the ednging. It must be noted that there seems to be a timer to each playthrough, but the main game doesn't seem to be excessivly long or straightforward so giving it another attempt if the time runs out doesn't come out as a punishment for me. And finally there's the design and theme of the game. It's ineherently Lovecraftian but it's not the same derivitive copy-paste homage to the author works (Like the Call of Cthulhu, Dark Corners of the Earth or Stygian), rather it uses it's Gothic atmosphere with elements of Cosmic Horror in a decent balance. Making it, for me, one of the best portray of Lovecraft's world. My biggest complain? Lack of mouse support. You can only play this game with a keyboard or a controller. I can't understand why, but it's not the worst.
Let's get this get out of the way. The beginning of the game sucks. The rules are convoluted, complicated, poorly explained and the UI doesn't help mitiganting that in any way. Actually it makes it worst at times. Why do we need that giant wall of text for every ability, even those that are just more powerful versions of the same thing? Which litteraly boils down to the game calculating one more six sided dice? Why dose the tell you how a Combat Manouve is calculated but not what a Combat Manouver is? How can I tell in game if that enemy counts as being flanked? Why is there no easy to read icon to undestand if the enemy is Shocked, Flat Footed, Sickenes etc etc. You get the idea, the game and the engine do A LOT of background work even just for a simple stab in the ribs, but you don't have many ways to understnd it, granted you can press Y and over the mouse over an enemy and wait a split second to see if that guy is affected by some effect but that's hardily readable. But why the 4 star then? Well because if you can go past that the game is actually very, very very very good. It's a different take on the typical PnP Fantasy story and it all shines because of the Kingdom Management system. Suddenly every single rest you take matters because more often then not you'll be in a race against time to face off story related issues that will negativly affective your barony, it keeps on your toes and the characters that up untill that moment seemed like annoying mindless meatshits or walking DPS meters actually start to become more interesting. I won't proclaim they are the best companions in any game ever, but they sure are detailed enough not at least not be annoying, and that's good enough for me. One just needs to go past the initial learning curve. In conclusion, it's a very strong PnP System adapted to a CRPG with high replayability due to its complexity and depth glued together by the Kingdom Management system.
I honestly can't recommand this. Even though I'm a fan of Lovecraft's work and I do believe this is one of the best attempts to recreat the horrors of the mythos, the visuals in the game achieve the desired effect and recreate the atmospheres perfectly, despite being only a 2D game. I have to give special mention to the sound designers. Even though those tended to glitch in my game, causing an unending sound of high volume howling winds that required a restart to fix. And here comes one of the reasons for my low score, the bugs, I never found anything gamebraking, but I found a good amount of UI glitches and sound problems, such as the game not registering the use of the keyboard to open the menues. Then there's the general game design, even though the game makes use of statistics, weather it's during combat or exploration, you are never told weather your states will effect your actions, such as your chance to hit or if that locked box requires a skill check plus an item to open. You are always left to ponder weather some interactions are not working because of a decision from the developers or you're just not good enough. This goes even into the actual game animations, spells in particular and some enemies have long winded animations that drag on longer then one would like. Finaly there's the matter of the ending, I am aware the devs said in a dev blog that the game would end in a cliffhanger, but usualy one expects the story to reach a conclusion, in this game the journey just stops. The goal and the main mysteries set up from the very beginning of the game are not addressed. Sadly, this last part puts the cherry on top of it all, the game can become really grueling at times and without a satisfing conclusion one is left only with disappointment. The technical and design decisions don't help. I strongly suggest people to wait a few months before buying so they can fix the glitches and bugs or maybe when they finish the story.
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.
