51 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 10.0 hrs on record
Posted: 28 Oct, 2017 @ 8:23am

It's a good story manifested in a game, and the game is it's downfall.

The general gist is: You are an unterzee (under sea) captain exploring the depths. You travel in your ship from place to place to interact with things and keep the story going.

The biggest issue I have with this game is EVERYTHING to do with sailing the ship from place to place. It's a very, very slow minigame of you mostly just avoiding combat to get to the next place to continue the story. In fact, my hours would be a third of what they are, had I been able to just say "Set sail for this place" and then have RNG decide if I encounter a monster or arrive there peacefully.

The next big issue is the quest log/inventory. It is disgustingly unclear, and understanding what certain things are used for is difficult. This is a big problem, because for some things, you might have fair reason to know what it is, why you have it, where you're going next, etc. For other things, you're not meant to know. So Google runs a risk of telling something you actually don't want to know.

And the final issue brings us back to sailing, and is the combat. There were only ever three enemies I bothered to fight, because the combat system is truly awful and adds nothing to the game.

Overall, I wish they'd just made this a text-adventure game. I really love the world and want to be involved in the story, but the slow sailing speed killed it for me. It's a fun mechanic to begin with, but after an hour you'll just end up thinking "I just want to get to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ salt lions".
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6 Comments
Staticwombat 24 Nov, 2017 @ 5:43am 
Churschtschow, good point. I am aware of Fallen London being the original, and being text based. At some point, I keep telling myself, I will check it out.
Lцсᶖаᶇ º¹ 24 Nov, 2017 @ 5:34am 
If you get The Fulgent Impeller and the Avid Suppressor you can zoom around the map at a pretty decent speed. But I agree, before you get those it's quite a slog. And the other engines besides the FI don't seem to actually add that much speed at all for some reason, and none of the ship options have a good base speed either.
Weeny Wikki Beeki Birdi 23 Nov, 2017 @ 2:53pm 
I hope you know Fallen London. If you don't, you should take a look. It's the text-based browser game, of which Sunless Sea is a spin-off. There you get the storytelling without the minigame.
Mike Loeven 4 Nov, 2017 @ 8:13am 
Try the modding forums alot of people have been tweaking ship stats for things like fuel efficiancy and speed
Staticwombat 4 Nov, 2017 @ 2:01am 
I haven't played in a good while, and the Salt Lions were one of the few locations I can explicitly remember. The point I was trying to make, that the sailing is pretty much dead time, stills stands.

Though tbf I didn't know that. There's so much of the game and story I don't know because I don't want to just sit there doing absolutely nothing waiting to reach my next destination.
Mike Loeven 4 Nov, 2017 @ 12:56am 
Should we tell him the salt lions quest dries up after a few runs >.>