Salt 2: Shores of Gold

If you are looking for a more relaxed version of the Sea of Thieves experience then this game is for you. Salt 2 focuses on a more casual PVE experience with your pirate ship also doubling as your base and crafting center. You can fully customize the layout of your ship with all kinds of neat decorations and freely explore the ocean to find 50+ little islands with loot, plunder, enemies to fight, and mysteries to solve. Overall the game has cool graphics, great sound, music and the controls are solid. A few notes on what some folks might not enjoy are the lack of PvP, no ship vs ship combat, and the map mechanic may be a bit complex for some(I personally thought its was really cool). Overall this is a fun game to play and well worth its price.

The game looks very nice and the previews seemed interested, but ultimately it just feels "hollow". There's not enough going on in the world, it all feels very empty, not truly random. I want to find cool stuff exploring but its all just, empty. No ship cannons, lots of stuff missing.

It's a casual sailing simulator, nothing more. If you bought it thinking it will be a pirate game you will be disappointed. There isn't even much to do on the sailing front.

5/5! If Sea of Thieves were a PVE-focused RPG rather than a PVP Action game, you'd get Salt 2! I'm 5.5 hours in and I keep giddily shouting at my wife every time I discover some new cool item or game feature. Beautiful graphics in an immersive environment, from the wind in the tree leaves to the waves on the sea. The RPG elements are fun, well-balanced, and seamlessly implemented. The skill bonuses and skill trees are exciting, the crafting is casual-friendly, and the equipment is terrific - every new gear piece I get feels rewarding! There's also a surprising amount of lore and depth to the world, much more than I expected, particularly if you read the in-game books. This game has everything I wanted and so much more! I can see myself happily investing dozens of hours into this awesome gameplay loop. Best money I've spent on a game all year!!! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

I took a chance on this game after lengthy consultation with Copilot AI. In many ways it reminds me of the Elder Scrolls games, which were among my all time favorites - Salt is just a little watered down version set to a pirate theme. I'm not looking for intense combat, just very relaxing exploration, very light combat. I'm already putting in 8-12 hr days and really feeling drawn into it. This is NOT pirate PVP, but it certainly fills a niche for those players who aren't looking for that experience. This game gets a high five from me! Edit: after 100 hrs I'm uncovering unsettling aspects of the game that would have prevented me from buying it had I known in advance. For those with a Christian conscience, this game refers to magic (but not utilizes it as a weapon form) and has the player engage in an occult ritual as part of the main quest. Unfortunately there's no mention of any of this anywhere. You decide if it's right for you.

Do NOT buy this game if you want to play it with friends. I would return it if I could, because I have never seen worse multiplayer functionality in a so-called "released" game. We were really hoping for a good Sea of Thieves replacement, but this ain't it. Pros: - The map/sextant functionality is actually kinda fun and I enjoy game maps that don't hold your hand - Some minor boat customization, I guess? Cons: - The game does NOT look good. As in: the style of islands to sea/sky is completely unmatching and many meshes look like placeholders. - MP functionality gives every player their own boat, but doesn't let them sail further away than 2km. Even if you just want to enter a house to talk to a merchant, EVERY SINGLE PLAYER needs to accept and join - in addition to other shenanigans like clipping out of bounds upon teleporting, etc. - Sorry excuse of a character editor. I choose a name and then it doesn't even display that name to other players? - Fade-out/fade-ins everytime I climb up 3 rungs on a rope ladder... this is insane. - No cannons.

I like survival games. I like sailing games where you have to manually manipulate the sails and steering yourself. I think why I am enjoying this game so much so far is that I purposefully stayed away from any type of videos showing gameplay or discussions about the game. The world is a complete mystery to me and so far it has been super immersive.

Oufff... there's a lot to say here. I forced myself to finish the main storyline and I probably shouldn't have. Salt2 is a very very basic game, in all aspect. Graphics, gameplay, world building, puzzles, it's game making like we did in the late 1990s early 2000s. If you are intimidated by videogames, are looking for something to get your feet wet, and the theme appeals to you, this game might be for you. The price is friendly too. In many ways it feels like a student project where the teacher forgot to tell them to stop. At no point are you going to forget you are playing a videogame. Everything is generated, fake and planted. Unique locations and named NPCs repeat all over the place, completely breaking suspension of disbelief. Ebony is a metal that you mine. The progression is the blandest possible, with only numbers going up and nothing changing. The ship are undifferentiated. The puzzles are spelled out and obvious. It's all fetch quests and kill quests. It's 95% sailing and walking. The world is empty and only exists for the player. Technically it is ok, and the ambiance has its moments with seagulls and sunsets. But if that's what you are looking for, turn to Black Flag or even Sea of Thieves. The absence of naval combat in a pirate game is just... Controller support is tedious an lazy, with use of a cursor even to select items in a list menu (main menu for example). If you actually enjoy the basic blandness of it though, there is TONS of content. Questlines upon questlines, side quests, deliveries, orders, random loot. None of it is meaningful, satisfying or differentiated, but there is a LOT of it. As a side not, always focus on quests. I did a lot of random exploring early and it slows down progression and acheives nothing, forcing you to revisit locations onces a quest inevitably send you where you are already been. So I sunk 48hours into this and I really wish I hadn't. I hope your time is more fruitful.