SUNLESS SEA

It's tricky to recommend this game. It's painfully slow, and hard. The moment-to-moment gameplay is, truth be told, pretty mind-numbing. It's intentionally esoteric and obtuse-- which the game usually plays as a strength, but this also makes your early hours feel directionless and confusing. You need to read. A LOT. And a lot of that reading is *also* esoteric and obtuse. BUT when it all comes together, the experience is truly wonderful. When you better understand how to push the game to its limits, you can get some real magic, even out of the dull voyage gameplay. Narrowly skirting by a big scary monster, or arriving home with nothing but a quarter-barrel of fuel and a dream, or finally finding the exact piece of Lovecraftian Knowledge you need for a big breakthrough in an island's story-- only to ♥♥♥♥ your pants at the toll it has taken on your crew's sanity... all of these things are, mechanically, kind of boring and slow in gameplay, but in the macro, they present tension that can scarcely be found elsewhere in gaming, outside of maybe Fear & Hunger. Ultimately the person I can most heartily recommend this game to is actually not so much gamers, but fans of literature. The writing is far-and-away Fallen London's greatest strength. Storylines for different officers and islands can be so incredibly vivid and interesting. The esoteric nature that I described before infects almost *every* piece of the puzzle. There are things you will come to know that don't make any sense outside this universe, and truthfully don't really make much sense within it. You won't know why they are true, but they are. There will be words added to your vocabulary that truly have *absolutely no meaning explained within the game* and yet you'll come across them regularly and come to almost understand their meaning through context clues. Lovecraft has truly never had a better vessel-- take it from someone who claims him as their favorite author. The gameplay appeals to something like a management sim, kind of? Like, the elements of discovering where to spend and acquire your resources, and finding out the best way to turn profit out of them is the most prevalent part of actually playing the game. It feels kind of like playing a survival-horror, exploration-focused game of Sid Meier's Civilization. I DEEPLY love this game, and for the right person, it is a VERY hearty recommend. But that right person, I know very well, is few and far between. If you do try it, here are some tips and recommendations: - The simple act of killing Zee Monsters and sinking ships modestly reduces Terror. When you get good at this, it can be very helpful in managing Terror on long voyages. - When you get your first 'Strategic Information,' don't turn it in/ sell it. Save it until you have 2, because you can combine them into a more valuable 'Vital Intelligence." - Study the mechanics of *how* your Terror actually increases-- what causes it to increase fast, and how can you slow it down. Keep your eyes on that meter while on a voyage. - Sometimes, it can be VERY helpful to sit your ship in the harbor, not actually docked, and wait for the next in-game day to give you another event at port. I won't say where, but keep an eye out for those opportunities. - The game's permadeath is part of what makes it very engaging early-on, but it will also stifle your growth as a captain. I recommend leaving it on for your first 5 or so captains, to get the full nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat experience, but consider turning it off after that to allow yourself the comfort of making hard saves and trying out different, risky paths-- if only to see what happens on them out of sheer curiosity.

I found the writing a bit frivolous, the storylines a bit meaningless, the grind a bit slow and the UI a bit awkward. It's a neat game, and some people obviously like it a lot, but i guess i expected more from the writing after reading other reviews.

It’s a very boring game with way too many dialogues and very little immersion. On top of that, you run out of fuel ridiculously fast, which makes it impossible to enjoy the exploration. I can’t recommend it

I don't hesitate to say that this game is my favorite game of all time. Fair warning, there is a LOT of reading (which I love!), and even with all that text it still manages to put incredible amount of care into every single word, with each new paragraph you read subtly helping you uncover some new layer of its weird eldritch universe. It's quite a punishing game (though it doesn't have to be if you don't play on Unforgiving Mode, even if it's not the recommended (by the devs) way to play), which I really like! You might die a few times, but eventually you learn how to navigate the Unterzee with confidence and it really makes you feel like a veteran captain! And you can rather quickly secure a house and an inheritance for your next of kin, so dying ultimately becomes much less of an inconvenience. Imo, the slowness of your ship (which can be overcome with upgraded engines anyways) contributes to the atmosphere, along with the music. Your boat rocking side to side, slowly making its way from island to island across a windless, submerged cavern, no sound but that of your engine (and the amazing atmospheric tracks.) There's so much to do and so much to explore, it's addicting. It's imo basically infinitely replayable, with all the different ambitions and endings to chase, and all the things you could have done differently. There will be consequences to your actions, but you can try something different on the next run. It's kind of like a long-paced roguelike in that way! Please please do yourself a favor and get this if you like story-rich games, it's a treasure trove honestly.

Decent game, got it for the price of a sandwich. Wish i could reccomend it, but i can't. it's a glacial, slow burn of a game. The creeping dread mechanic that threatens to waste supplies or canabalize a crewmate, slowly uncovering the stories of locations of key crewmates, that part is a delight. the errie 2D visuals, the eldrich horror and little popups of flavour text are exactly what you want to fit the mood of the Underzee. The first couple hours of exhausting the starter ports, and figuring out trade routes, that's fun, reminds me of Tradewinds series, from waaaay back in the day. Then, you retire or die and have to start mostly all over, and that's where the lack of good metaprogression hits you like a oversized suppository. If run wern't soooooo slow to get back to where you were, i'd want to play more. I'd even praise the map randomization, but the progression and grind it wants you to do is just too much even on the simplified difficulty. The combat is one note and a grind with the bigger monsters. The event system is neat, but ties to skills RNG system to story progression, which is not a good practice. A multi hour run to accomplish a specific storyline can just whiff even if you know what to do, which you will not without a walkthrough. This game doesn't respect your time, and the tension of horror is antithetical to a cozy game, so you can't fully relax playing it unless your grinding. If you think this is your bag, buy it on sale and make sure you have a lot of free time for the repetition.

A grindy textathon of boring and overall bad gameplay. Funny how many positive reviews but such a low all time peak.

I got more hours on this game on other platforms, around ~500 total. This is an AMAZING game if you like exploration and learning about the game's world & lore. The characters are interesting, the writing is super high-quality, and each port is memorable and has its own side-lore/plot going on. Play with manual saves the first time around. It makes the learning phase of the game way less punishing and saves you frustration if you make a dumb decision and die. Get the base game first, and then the DLC if you like the game. The DLC adds more locations and characters, but it basically just expands the (already considerable) game world and adds a few new mechanics.

Many people apparently love this game. The story part just didn't do it for me. so I would not recomend it. But not an awful game. I just had other things I would rather play.

游戏很经典，没想到这么多年后也几乎全部汉化了。和大多数的航海类游戏不同，这游戏不支持低买高卖，玩家要是凭老经验妄图花成本买货物跑商的话会惊恐的发现没有什么赚头。 这游戏更像是模拟欧洲航海时代初期的小型探险船队发家模拟器，鼓励玩家探索地图在每个港口登陆，海军会根据港口记录数量给玩家报酬和提供燃料。每次出海尽量多写港口报告，多战斗掠夺战利品，外加介入干涉每个港口当地人的内政，另外再顺手走私点违禁品回老家就是最快的赚钱法子。 与其开一艘大货船跑商没赚头，不如开火力强大的护卫舰消灭遇到的敌舰和海怪以战养战反而能赚到钱。游戏里能同时安装甲板副炮和舰首主炮火力强大的护卫舰是性价比最高的船，货仓也不算小够装战利品。

At some point in your life you come across certain games.. They grow on you, even when it's not the typical game you'd play. You cannot explain to your friends why you like or why you started playing it. You can only sit still, and be in awe. To me, Sunless Sea is one of those games.