The Sea Eternal

Be warned -- this is a "message" game, to such an extent that making sure the player gets the message completely and totally overrides any sembelance of story. While I agree that such themes are important, and I even agree with the positions the game forces you to take, being /forced/ into those positions kinda defeats the purpose of "Choice Of Games", doesnt it? I can't recommend the game because: 1) If you agree with the postions that the game forces on you, then there is no game. 2) If you /don't/ agree with the positions that the game forces on you, then you'll find yourself totally unable to express your opinions. 3) In either case, the game is hardly worth of the title -- it is really more of a quasi-interactive book. I'm not going into details of the games message because its irrelevant to my recommendations. I rather suspect that I'll get a dozen comments accusing me of a bigot, so if you /really/ want to know, read the comment thread. :(

I find that my charecter supports things that I disagree with and I can't choose otherwise since he already said so in dialouge.

What could have been a great story/game gets bogged down with hamfisted allegories, confusing pronouns, and obvious conclusions. It's a shame, because this started out strong. I understand the desire of the author to want to create something with a "message," but this is over the top and detracts significantly from the creative potential of the author. I'm not in particularly vehement opposition (or any opposition at all, really) to most of the social justice themes in this game, but it's so disappointing when storytelling takes a backseat to moralizing. What a waste.

I had very high hopes for this starting out. One of Lynnea Glasser's previous works, Creatures Such as We, was what first sparked my interest in CYOA games (though it was later with Choice of Robots that got me seriously into them) so I bought this as soon as it was available. I ended up not doing my first playthrough for quite a while and by then the reviews had started to show up. I was surprised and honestly a bit disappointed to see the overall ratings. They caused me to delay even longer. All that aside, though, my actual thoughts on the game. Firstly and most importantly: this was EXTREMELY engaging for me. I'm sitting here at 9am, with about 4 and a half hours put into navigating the story and then several more thinking about what I'd just read. That should speak for itself. A lot of people mention how this is a "message" game and while I can't really dispute that it didn't feel that way to me. There were definitely some, uh, "PC" elements but they never detracted from the story. They were well couched in the themes and elements of the setting that they felt quite natural... most of the time. Though, as always, with this type of content your mileage may vary. As for the actual writing and editing... top notch. I really don't think there's any argument here, whatever people may think of the content. I may not exactly at my best due to sleep deprivation (and if there are any errors in this: sorry) but I didn't notice any typos or anything of the sort. The writing was concise without being too brief and generally quite evocative. Aaaaaand speaking of concise... the length. My first playthrough definitely took less than an hour and the many half-skipped-over proceeding playthrough, totalling about 5 or 6, only ate up about 3-4 more. Now, I'm far from done with this but already this isn't a bad amount of time for a CYOA game to keep my attention. My only real complaint is that I find myself unable to get a lot of the things I want to happen to happen. I don't know if this is a lack of freedom, overly harsh choice requirements or my own addled ineptitude but it's getting pretty annoying. I may have to ammend this section in the future, but for now it's... a problem. Not a huge one, but still. Anyways I feel like I'm in equal parts rambling and entirely missing the point of a review so I'll wrap this up. Interesting, complex setting with generally interesting characters and some pretty seriously dramatic branching paths. I give it a "pretty great" out of 10. (Again, apologies for the probably massive number of typos and errors both grammatical and logical.)

I spent 6-8 hours playing through this game on tablet and bought the steam version just so I can write a review. As a fan of choose-your-adventure games for a year, I rank The Sea Eternal as my number one favorite due to the emotional complexity the game delivers (my second favorite is Choice of Robots, due to its multidimensional characters). The Sea Eternal is well written, typo-free except for one minor mistake, and has a very fluent flow. You play as a merfolk living in a mersociety. I love that the game does not bury you with tons of merfolk backgrounds in the beginning, but rather introduce you to the society through several dialogue choices scattered throughout the game. Many dialogue choices inform you of some relevant truth before you make the choice. Character development is average in The Sea Eternal, but whatever it loses in character dimensionality, it makes up for with its huge plot. You are placed in the controversial world of merfolks in which the very concepts of your life, memories, and identity are a well plotted scheme. Throughout your journey, you will inspire younger versions of yourself to either fall for or avoid the scheme. I myself have had the misfortune of pushing everyone I care about down the cliff. But the fact that you will inspire others to fall despite sensing that something is off is just what makes The Sea Eternal so beautiful. If you enjoy choose-your-adventure games with mind-blowing plots and don't mind melancholy, you should definitely pick up The Sea Eternal.

Sadly, Choice of Games seems to get a lot of negative reviews that can basically be summed up as "wouldn't let me be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" and "this story has a POINT" which tbf makes me like it MORE

I agree with the people who say that the choices weren't really choices: I felt railroaded into responses that I didn't want but that the "game" decided I should in order to move the story along.

Despite the fact that there are only two stat bars (independent/respectable and bold/patient), the stats system and way of determining which is dominant seems overly complex for such a short game. At times, it seems like the game purposely stacks the deck against you in terms of which stat you’re gaining in and which you need for some important upcoming story choices. Say, you’ve been patient for the most part of the game, but this one or two choices force you straight into the bold direction and what do you need for some upcoming choices? That’s right, a high patience percentage. It’s just needlessly frustrating, especially when you’re trying to explore all the options the game has to offer, but you have to restart again and again because you’re lacking the correct stats again when they were just fine two sentences ago. By the way, let me just mention that I’ve played several Choice of… games before and normally playing around with the stats can vary from tedious to fun depending on the game, but this is the first time I’ve been so frustrated by the stat system in any of these games. It's like the game won't allow you to do anything it doesn't want you to do, as if it's only giving you the illusion of choice, but no actual choices. The story itself, well, there isn’t much of one, but it’s interesting enough I suppose if you’ve an interest in merfolk to begin with. The romance options feel like they were just thrown in there because the author felt obligated to put some in. I’ve gone through several playthroughs now and still haven’t figured out how to romance anyone, even though the option should be there.

Oh dear, another moralilizing busybody story. And there was such a nicely crafted world and conflicts being set up before a whole diatribe about racism had to be forced dead center. This is a game that talks down to the player. If you don't like being talked down to, don't buy it.

I tried to like this game, I really did. I like so many of the other CoG games that have been released that I picked this one up day one. Now I really wish I hadn't. This game is less a game and feels more like an agenda is being pushed. I was forced to say or agree with things that the way I'd played my character didn't, and felt somewhat railroaded into some choices that I had to make. This is not good writing in a game engine that is all about 'choice' (something that is in its very name!) I'm long past the ability to refund this preachy game, but I will *definitely* be taking the fact that this game was published into consideration when buying CoG games in the future!