SUNLESS SEA

(I don't have the DLC, so this is a review of the main game only.) Gameplay: While you're definitely going to be sailing and discovering places and combatting/looting monsters and pirates and whatnot, this is a small part of it. The game mostly plays like a choose-your-own-adventure, centering on text narrative. Pros: * Enticing atmosphere * Captivating plots * Many possible paths to choose from for each plotline * Range of goals * Replayable * Randomised map * Many random events, many randomised outcomes * So many stories that I've only seen like half the text after over 250 hours of gameplay (subtract a few hours from my stats cause I just left the game open for a while) * Great music * Extensive worldbuilding (BUT - see the last "cons" point) Cons: * Even though there are always new things to explore, parts of the experience can be tedious (mainly due to slow travel, and also repeating some stories you've already done to unlock other options). * You are ostensibly encouraged to take risks, but since each playthrough is very time-consuming, failure can be quite punishing for someone encountering a conundrum for the first time, having no idea what might happen (yes, you can manually save, but then that takes away the randomness factor, which is a big part of the thrill; plus, it locks your entire lineage out of a certain achievement). * You'd think each lineage would have its own autosave slot, but nope! If you start a new game, it will autosave on top of your previous one. This means that if you want to play two lineages concurrently you have to enable manual saves, locking yourself out of an achievement (unless you stop playing the first one until your first win on the second one). * Some achievements are ill-conceived. Stone's curse (luck-dependent) requires either crazy luck, or a very long time trying the same thing over and over with different captains, or manual saves plus major savescumming. Roaring Rise (luck-dependent) requires searching in many different maps (ie many different playthroughs). Other achievements (spend X in-game years at zee, lose X captains) don't require you to do anything other than play a whole lot. * Unless you've played Fallen London, you'll be missing some background, so you won't exactly get the full experience. This is the only "con" I consider a serious reason not to buy this game. To clear up certain things, you're going to have to look up the lore elsewhere, and you really shouldn't have to. They should have somehow included some relevant information from Fallen London to fill in those gaps, since Sunless Sea is meant to be a standalone game. All in all: Great game, and you can play it for hundreds of hours before you've seen all of it. It just feels somewhat incomplete because there's some background that should have been included.