SUNLESS SEA

THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN...

The atmosphere and writing is perfect

The game is a mix of two genres and unfortunately it does both bad. Much has been already written about the boating part so let's complain about the interactive fiction. I knew of Fallen London for years so I knew it was going to be confusing but I didn't know it was this confusing. The game threw loads and loads of hooks at me. Still new to the game and still trying to figure it out but suddenly I have 10 companions and each has a quest, not to mention stuff happening in each location of the game. But to progress all of them require some impossible things you don't know where to acquire. And selling those things is also the way to keep afloat in the game. To add insult to injury the game doesn't keep track of anything for you. Or rather it keeps track of random things. Some things will have a helpful info in your journal others will not, in some places it tells you what you need to progress in others it's hidden. And the journal is a complete mess and it's really hard to find anything when you go looking. So if a person tell you to go somewhere you must note it down on your own, and when you reach there it turns out they need some things you haven't brought with you. Also the "qualities" are an awful game mechanic. To pass somewhere it tells you that "quality XYZ must be higher than 40". But that quality either is a stat that you can raise as expected by doing deliveries and so on (do a task, gain +2 to someone's trust). Or it is a marker of progress in the story and it will just turn to some number after you do something, showing it to a player just feels like the devs were fighting with the game engine. Oh, and one thing about trade in the game. The game can't decide if it's a textbased or not. So in one port you can buy 20 goods in the trading menu just buy shift+left click twice. But then you go to a place that you can trade those for something else, but it's a text event. You must click through the text menu 20 times to trade, and it's not just one button that you must mash but having to move your mouse to click different buttons. If you decide to do it for some reason it will allow you breathing space so you can enjoy the story without constant money struggle. And money constraints also means having to clickthrough a lot of things like port reports which are always the same and you have 10 to submit and you seen them a dozen times...But you forgot that something special happened and one of those will be something new and unique you won't see ever again. But you will click through it because there's so much clicking. Generally there's a lot of pointless clicking that will show you walls of text that you've seen before I do like the story of this game and the boating was fun for a few hours but I feel like I'm fighting with the UI and game design to let me enjoy the story. I enjoy it and want to explore it further but I can't recommend it to people without warning them.