There are games that are super defined and know exactly what they are. There are games that have no idea what they want to be. It is rare to find a game that combines different aspects of different games and genres that doesn’t feel bloated or like its a jack of all trades master of none. However, at Summer Games Fest this year, we got to go hands on with the upcoming stylish pirate RPG Sea of Remnants, and this games feels like a bit of everything yet doesn’t get too complicated or lose itself to that design.
The demos we got to play during our time with the game included the start of the game to get a sense of the story and then we got to jump into a later section of the game to take on one of the game’s bosses. The first thing you’ll notice about the game is its style isn’t comparable to the typical pirate game. The game is so stylized with music being a big influence (as seen with the newest trailer at SGF). It was shocking how different the game felt during the sections of the game, but still felt congruent in what the game is. In the demo we got to see a look at both forms of combat. There is overworld real time combat where you are attacking enemies like your typical action game. However, when we jumped ahead to the boss fight, the game turned into turned based combat and that when it drew us in the most.
The boss fight itself was against a mermaid while our party of four confronted her. In battle, we could have full control of our party or turn on an auto battle mode allowing characters to attack on their own. Characters have the typical abilities such as healing, buffing the party, or debuffing the boss. They each all had an ultimate move they could do that didn’t take long to recharge once it had been used as we were able to use some over and over again. The most interesting mechanic in the turn based battle system is the Roll mechanic. This mechanic saw the boss have a number next to them and we are able to roll up to a slot’s three rollers to try to get a higher number. If the number was higher, then we got the chance to attack again. If we succeeded, the boss’s number would raise and, if we could roll again, we could repeat the process until the boss’s number got too high or we ran out of roll opportunities. Once we defeated the boss, we were given the choice to spare or kill the boss to which the developers said would have an impact later in the game.
Overall, Sea of Remnants is shaping up to be something that stands out thanks to its unique style and combination of gameplay mechanics that actually works quite well. Sea of Remnants is set to release later this year.