The game feels a lot more accessible than sea straight away. It's also a lot more fun to actually play, I liked sea, but there was too much frustration to get to the good stuff.
The game feels a lot more accessible than sea straight away. It's also a lot more fun to actually play, I liked sea, but there was too much frustration to get to the good stuff.
Despite saying I was going to wait for a console version, I ended up buying myself and a friend copies last night. I hope this is a huge success for you guys.
Despite saying I was going to wait for a console version, I ended up buying myself and a friend copies last night. I hope this is a huge success for you guys.
Bought and started the game already, figured it'd be a nice balance to Kingdom Hearts' anime silliness.
Really nice to see those difficulty modifiers in the beginning. I'm not a huge fan of resource management in most games, so I went with merciful mode and lower fuel/supply depletion rate.
Really nice to see those difficulty modifiers in the beginning. I'm not a huge fan of resource management in most games, so I went with merciful mode and lower fuel/supply depletion rate.
I can appreciate the nail-biting tension limited resources bring to the gameplay loop for some.
But providing an alternate baby-mode for those more interested in the game's narrative opens the doors to a much wider audience.
It's sounds counter-intuitive, but I find easing the difficulty level to actually be more immersive for my gameplay style. I absolutely hate feeling rushed in games. But with these modifiers instead of feeling the pressure to desperately scamper from port to port, focusing solely on my depleting Fuel and Rations meters, I'm instead given the luxury to soak in the gorgeous environment & level design.
It's still not a complete cake-walk, but it's nice to not have the pressure at my back making me feel like I have to rush though the content. It allows me to mentally take everything in at a gentler pace.
Bought and started the game already, figured it'd be a nice balance to Kingdom Hearts' anime silliness.
Really nice to see those difficulty modifiers in the beginning. I'm not a huge fan of resource management in most games, so I went with merciful mode and lower fuel/supply depletion rate.
Yeah, it's what pushed me to get the game right away. You can adjust the speed of enemy projectiles, whether or not your projectiles seek out the enemy and if so, how strong the homing effect is and, like I mentioned, how fast or slow your fuel and supplies deplete. There's also a merciful mode, where you can load an earlier save if you die rather than having to start over with a new captain.
Bought and started the game already, figured it'd be a nice balance to Kingdom Hearts' anime silliness.
Really nice to see those difficulty modifiers in the beginning. I'm not a huge fan of resource management in most games, so I went with merciful mode and lower fuel/supply depletion rate.
Someone explain ambitions to me. Does picking one lock me to a main quest line and if so, when I finish the quest line, do I get to do like a NG+ type of thing and pick another ambition? Because truth sounds like a much more intriguing ambition than wealth or fame, but it says it's a challenging ambition that's "best played by a lineage that has already completed wealth and fame". I can't tell if that just means it's for experienced players, or if it means that doing wealth and fame first will let me start truth with a stronger captain or something.
Someone explain ambitions to me. Does picking one lock me to a main quest line and if so, when I finish the quest line, do I get to do like a NG+ type of thing and pick another ambition? Because truth sounds like a much more intriguing ambition than wealth or fame, but it says it's a challenging ambition that's "best played by a lineage that has already completed wealth and fame". I can't tell if that just means it's for experienced players, or if it means that doing wealth and fame first will let me start truth with a stronger captain or something.
I'm not especially far right now, but in Sea there were "hidden" ambitions that could be done instead of your main one, like founding your own colony. I expect that it's similar here but I can't say for sure.
However you probably cannot choose Truth after you've chosen Fame.
Edit: Within the same captain, I mean. Your next captain can of course pick Truth.
Is anyone else getting terrible framepacing and intermittent drops to the mid 50s? Adoring the game so far outside of the controller bugs but a bit of a stuttery mess at times as well.
So nice to see this is finally out. Sunless Sea was incredible and I'm loving this so far as well.
Some early impressions (after a couple of hours):
The game looks really good. The art is gorgeous and the world has a lot more going on then Sunless Sea did (which was mostly just sailing around a dull sea 90% of the time). There's some really cool looking places to find as well.
Unfortunately, the performance is pretty bad. There's constant stuttering everywhere and the only graphical option is texture resolution, which only makes the game look terrible without helping the performance at all. Granted, my PC is pretty shit but the game still should not be running this poorly.
The writing's still incredible.
I wasn't aware Kieron Gillen did some writing for this. What little I've seen of the officer he wrote is great so far. One of my favorite things so far actually.
I'm not sure how I feel about the world being split into multiple parts. Mostly because I have no idea if I should already leave the first area or explore everything there first.
The combat is actually fun now. It's still not super deep or anything, but hitting long range shots feels really satisfying and not paying attention can be pretty punishing. Fighting multiple enemies at once is also really intense.
One thing I'm completely not sure about is whether buying better ships locomotives is worth it. Buying new ships in Sunless Sea really wasn't and I'm wondering if things are different here. I'm also curious if they actually made the roguelike way of playing it any good. I know they talked about that before release but I'm not sure how well they managed to pull it off.
One thing that took me way too long to figure out is that after you recruit an officer, they don't actually give you any of their bonuses until you actually "equip" them. Which you can do at any port by clicking on the small circle bottom right of their portrait in the officers menu.
You probably already figured this out, but just in case anyone else is wondering: there's two small ports next to Winchester (they were a bit north for me, but I don't know if the map is randomized here), one for each faction. And it's worth checking both, as they provide different rewards in exchange for the reports.
One thing that took me way too long to figure out is that after you recruit an officer, they don't actually give you any of their bonuses until you actually "equip" them. Which you can do at any port by clicking on the small circle bottom right of their portrait in the officers menu.
Saw this on the Steam forums, and figured it would be worth posting here as well.
It seems like the "An oath of silence" facet on the "A Thief-Oath" past is currently bugged, and causes you to lose stats when you pick it. It should be patched soon, but for now I guess you shouldn't choose it when levelling. If you already did, Failbetter says they can fix your save if you email it to them.
I've been playing the Early Access version of Sunless Skies, but didn't want to post until I had at least played the release version a bit.
Simply put, I like the game, but think it has the same polarizing issues/perk as Sunless Sea, although definitely improved. This is a game with a fascinating universe, amazing art, and fantastic writing, making you want to explore every nook and cranny and explore the stories of every port. So its frustrating that everything possible gets in the way of doing so. You will spend a large part of the game simply doing trade runs to get by, although now its significantly easier to make a profit thanks to the the prospect system. The act of managing supplies, hold, fuel, and terror will always take away from planning an optimal route or exploring, as you are always staring at the bottom left of the screen.
Each port has a lot to take in, and almost always seems to lead into a long and quite grindy questline of sorts. You always seem to need a lot of supplies, accumulate a lot of terror, roll a LOT of dice, spend a lot of money, etc. Then you often need to leave and come back several times. They're all massive time-sinks, pure and simple, multiplied by the fact that you will then need to tie in the usual supply runs just to get the resources to do them and enjoy their experiences. Managing the hundred piece-meal questlines and necessary items is confusing to impossible, and its common to round back to a port forgetting what the heck was going on, since the journal is not the greatest at tracking things outside of major or companion quests. I had what was, at least a couple updates ago, the best locomotive, and despite the chance of using a save from EA causing bugs I can't bear thinking of all the grinding again and so I'm using it. I simply died and took advantage of Sunless Skies' much more generous inheritance system, a life-saver and much appreciated.
Despite the EA process, there's some serious bugs on release at the moment. A player on the subreddit reported entering a port in the most recent end-game zone simply deleted the entirety of one of their stats, effectively ending their game instantly. Strange empty dialog boxes pop up, some things can't be clicked on certain monitors, Guests are disguised as Company Dreadnoughts (even more scary now), text overlaps on the charts, rare instances of relays spawning in walls, or questlines refusing to complete. With how much of a time-sink this game is, the thought of losing your save to a nasty bug at the end is really off-putting, but I know they will be working on this. Just be careful - you can actually back up your saves if you know where the folder is.
Interesting note: The Reach was completely open up until just a couple updates ago. Nothing but ports and the odd big asteroid floating around. You would just open your chart, point at a port, and then hit autopilot and alt-tab out of the game. It made the grindyness mindless, and the new Reach is a huge improvement despite the frustration of the huge detours needed to get some places.
Some tips:
Increase hold first. More hold means more everything - trading and exploring.
I find a mining drill to be more useful than a food tool if you only have one slot. You can mine hours, nectar, bronzewood (all very expensive), and get some unique options in certain storylets.
If Carrilion and Lustrum spawn next to each other, you can use Lustrum's cheap terror-reducing tea shop to deal with the myriad of terror-increasing things that happen on Carrilion.
Already said, but after recruiting an officer you need to equip them, and it can only be done at port. Open the tab and click on the little circle under their portrait to equip them.
Some "facets" you choose upon level up grant items in addition to stats. Make sure to take a look through them. Some facets will affect choices in storylets.
Always seemed to be handy to have one item of tea on board for companion quests or Albion.
If you've got the guns and grit fighting bees near their hive area was a surprisingly quick experience boost. 150 per kill if you pass the dice roll.
Your sideboosters are extremely useful for getting through wind and wells. Just angle your locomotive diagonally and use the boost to get through.
I've been playing the Early Access version of Sunless Skies, but didn't want to post until I had at least played the release version a bit.
Simply put, I like the game, but think it has the same polarizing issues/perk as Sunless Sea, although definitely improved. This is a game with a fascinating universe and fantastic writing, making you want to explore every nook and cranny and explore the stories of every port. So its frustrating that everything possible gets in the way of doing so. You will spend a large part of the game simply doing trade runs to get by, although now its significantly easier to make a profit thanks to the the prospect system. The act of managing supplies, hold, fuel, and terror will always take away from planning an optimal route or exploring, as you are always staring at the bottom left of the screen.
Each port has a lot to take in, and almost always seems to lead into a long and quite grindy questline of sorts. You always seem to need a lot of supplies, accumulate a lot of terror, roll a LOT of dice, spend a lot of money, etc. Then you often need to leave and come back several times. They're all massive time-sinks, pure and simple, multiplied by the fact that you will then need to tie in the usual supply runs just to get the resources to do them and enjoy their experiences. Managing the hundred piece-meal questlines and necessary items is confusing to impossible, and its common to round back to a port forgetting what the heck was going on, since the journal is not the greatest at tracking things outside of major or companion quests. I had what was, at least a couple updates ago, the best locomotive, and despite the chance of using a save from EA causing bugs I can't bear thinking of all the grinding again and so I'm using it. I simply died and took advantage of Sunless Skies' much more generous inheritance system, a life-saver and much appreciated.
Despite the EA process, there's some serious bugs on release at the moment. A player on the subreddit reported entering a port in the most recent end-game zone simply deleted the entirety of one of their stats, effectively ending their game instantly. Strange empty dialog boxes pop up, some things can't be clicked on certain monitors, Guests are disguised as Company Dreadnoughts (even more scary now), text overlaps on the charts, rare instances of relays spawning in walls, or questlines refusing to complete. With how much of a time-sink this game is, the thought of losing your save to a nasty bug at the end is really off-putting, but I know they will be working on this. Just be careful - you can actually back up your saves if you know where the folder is.
Interesting note: The Reach was completely open up until just a couple updates ago. Nothing but ports and the odd big asteroid floating around. You would just open your chart, point at a port, and then hit autopilot and alt-tab out of the game. It made the grindyness mindless, and the new Reach is a huge improvement despite the frustration of the huge detours needed to get some places.
Some tips:
Increase hold first. More hold means more everything - trading and exploring.
I find a mining drill to be more useful than a food tool if you only have one slot. You can mine hours, nectar, bronzewood (all very expensive), and get some unique options in certain storylets.
If Carrilion and Lustrum spawn next to each other, you can use Lustrum's cheap terror-reducing tea shop to deal with the myriad of terror-increasing things that happen on Carrilion.
Already said, but after recruiting an officer you need to equip them, and it can only be done at port. Open the tab and click on the little circle under their portrait to equip them.
Some "facets" you choose upon level up grant items in addition to stats. Make sure to take a look through them. Some facets will affect choices in storylets.
Always seemed to be handy to have one item of tea on board for companion quests or Albion.
If you've got the guns and grit fighting bees near their hive area was a surprisingly quick experience boost. 150 per kill if you pass the dice roll.
Your sideboosters are extremely useful for getting through wind and wells. Just angle your locomotive diagonally and use the boost to get through.
I agree to an extent, but I find it much less "narrow" than Sea about it. In Sea, you held to those money plays until you got a dreadnaught-ass ship going and then went hunting for stories, this has better mixing of that, plus more parallel storylines, and factions. It feels like a "fixed" version of Sea mechanics in all the right ways, or at least in the right direction.
About the underlined: if it doesnt get like 8 swarms on your ass. :D
Hello – I'm one of the developers on Sunless Skies. It's great to hear people are (mostly!) having a good time with it. I'm really glad to see the positive response to the difficulty settings, as well – I felt strongly about that feature and did most of the design for it. One of our goals for Sunless Skies was to make a game for people who wanted to like Sunless Sea but couldn't because of issues with its gameplay – the grind, the combat, the unresolved tensions between the scripted narrative and its roguelike elements, and its inflexibility in catering for a range of players.
I'm really sorry about the problems people are having with controllers. This is mostly my fault, since I scheduled a rework of the panel UI late in early access. (There were reasons, which I won't go into right now.) We're working to fix them. For now, if your controller experience is really bad generally and you're comfortable editing your registry, deleting Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Failbetter Games\Sunless Skies may help. We'll almost certainly release a patch with some initial controller fixes tomorrow, and I'd hope to roll out another later in the week.
The game looks really good. The art is gorgeous and the world has a lot more going on then Sunless Sea did (which was mostly just sailing around a dull sea 90% of the time). There's some really cool looking places to find as well.
Unfortunately, the performance is pretty bad. There's constant stuttering everywhere and the only graphical option is texture resolution, which only makes the game look terrible without helping the performance at all. Granted, my PC is pretty shit but the game still should not be running this poorly.
That texture resolution option actually is useful – our artists would never have let us include it, otherwise! It's just that it helps people whose bottleneck is VRAM, and it sounds like you're bottlenecked on CPU. For what it's worth, I'm hopeful we'll be able to release some further CPU optimisations soon; controller fixes and high-impact content bugs will be our first priorities, though.
A few people asked about ambitions and endings – completing an ambition means a successful end to the career of that captain and unlocks a useful bonus that all subsequent ones inherit, but there's no equivalent form of victory for your entire language. The game is like a sandbox in that respect.
That texture resolution option actually is useful – our artists would never have let us include it, otherwise! It's just that it helps people whose bottleneck is VRAM, and it sounds like you're bottlenecked on CPU. For what it's worth, I'm hopeful we'll be able to release some further CPU optimisations soon; controller fixes and high-impact content bugs will be our first priorities, though.
I'm pretty sure my issues are actually with the GPU. The main thing that makes me believe that is that I get large FPS drops (down to sub-30 fps) whenever there is a lot of text in the text-log. I can't imagine that would be caused by the CPU. It's something where I thought texture resolution would help, but it didn't. Maybe it just doesn't effect the text.
I'm pretty sure my issues are actually with the GPU. The main thing that makes me believe that is that I get large FPS drops (down to sub-30 fps) whenever there is a lot of text in the text-log. I can't imagine that would be caused by the CPU. It's something where I thought texture resolution would help, but it didn't. Maybe it just doesn't effect the text.
Ah, there's a known issue with the storylet panel redrawing things far too often. We had a fix for it we'd hoped to include in the launch build, but it was intermittently causing certain branches to be invisible, so we need to get to the bottom of that before we roll it out.
It (and Sunless sea) isn't really much of a roguelike. The only real roguelike elements are:
There's perma-death (though you do keep a lot of stuff for the next playthrough), and even then that's only an optional mode.
The world is sort-of randomized, with different ports/cities having different locations.
It's more of an open-world RPG, with a bunch of text-adventure elements. The gameplay centers around exploring a really bizarre world, doing quests and sailing (well, flying in this one I guess) between cities. Each city has it's own story presented in what is basically a text-adventure with a lot of reading. On top of that, there's a big focus on resource management with fuel/supplies/terror that you need to keep an eye on.
And yeah, the narrative is the main thing people like about Sunless Skies/Sea. It has a lot of really good writing and the world is really strange and interesting. The story isn't random, except for some random events you can run into in cities.
There's a permadeath option and the port locations are somewhat moved around in new playthroughs, but these games aren't roguelikes. The best summary would be a text adventure naval exploration RPG. Heavy on the text. heavy on the exploration and discovery
I've seen there's already a patch, and the next one should be this week to squat the more annoying bugs? Great!
I backed the game and haven't started any of the beta branches, because I wanted to discover the game once it was complete. Looking forward for next week-end to fully dive in!
I'm really, really enjoying this so far. The QoL improvements over Sunless Sea make the game so much more pleasant to play. I no longer feel like I'm enduring the gameplay to get to delicious bits of story.
I'm really, really enjoying this so far. The QoL improvements over Sunless Sea make the game so much more pleasant to play. I no longer feel like I'm enduring the gameplay to get to delicious bits of story.
I do wish there was more done to make the world feel "alive," like locomotives doing shipping routes and stuff. It's an improvement over Seas (where "friendly" ships just spun in circles, Khanate and Glorious ships shot at you even if you were allied with them, etc.) but it still feels very gamey.
After about 20 hours with the game, I finally finished my first ambition (the Story of the Sky one), plus a lot of other areas and storylines (with the exception of Blue Kingdoms), and I feel like I've now played enough of the game to share my thoughts on it:
First of all, the writing is still incredible, which is the main thing that matters. Even if everything else was crap (it isn't), just the writing alone is enough to make this one of my favourite games ever. I was somewhat worried with Alexis Kennedy no longer working on it and some of the reviews I've read, but those worries ended up being for nothing. It helps that most of the writing team from Seas is back for this one.
As far as the gameplay is concerned, my feelings are more mixed. I'm one of the few that didn't really mind Sunless Sea. The gameplay was bad, but it was also pretty easy to completely ignore and just focus on the story parts. Skies does improve the gameplay tremendously, particularly in the combat and trading department. Combat is now actually fun, and trading is actually functional. But on the other hand, some of the changes from Seas are pretty odd. Mainly the fact that you can no longer buy faster engines, and the fact that finishing stories is now much less rewarding than it was in Sea. The economy of story items also seems worse here. In Sea, you had a pretty clear progression with Secrets (the common resource you'd get all the time and also use for leveling) -> Searing Enigmas (the more uncommon resource you'd need for advanced stories) -> Dread Surmise (endgame resource that's hard to find but also necessary to finish the game). Skies adds a ton of other resources, but most feel sort of weird. Crimson Promises are supposed to be rare but valuable, but I don't think I ever saw a use for them. Searing Enigmas are even rarer, but also have very few uses. Moments of Inspiration seem to now be the rare currency that's actually needed all the time, but they aren't so much rare as they are simply annoying to replace. Also Savage Secrets I guess, but the game gives those out so regurarly they might as well not matter. It's all just much more complicated than I feel it needs to be.
I also liked what they did with the leveling system, but also felt like it could have been improved. I think I only saw one story option that was influenced by what you chose during leveling. I get that you don't necessarily want to lock content away from players, but it would still be nice to see your past actually matter. In addition, there's pretty much no reason not to chose options that also give you additional bonuses over just stats.
On the technical side, I still had a lot of performance issues related to the text log even after the patch that was supposed to fix them. Particularly in ports that carry over a ton of text between events.
I was also kind of disappointed by the new legacy mechanics. Being able to carry over your ship and completed officer stories is great (although pro-tip: make sure to keep some old gear in storage. Your new captain might not have enough stats to equip your good ones). But on the other hand, the bonuses for completing an ambition seem very disappointing, particularly given the fact that the game tells you to only do the truth ambition after already finishing the others. It also kind of sucks that you can no longer manually save the game. This was a great help in Seas for getting through some of the more poorly designed events (like the one that would instantly kill you if you failed a very difficult skill check, and then sometimes bugged out and killed you anyway even if you succeeded). It doesn't even add anything to the game to remove this option, since save scumming will always exist.
Difficulty wise, I found the game pretty easy, having completed the ambition without dying even once. Most enemies are easy enough to just run away from (with one glaringly annoying exception), and even if you don't they don't really hit for that much. Supplies and fuel are also much easier to come by here than in Seas, with most ports selling one or the other. All in all, it feels like a much more welcoming game than Seas, which isn't really a bad thing.
Visually, the game looks great. The added art in the world really adds a lot to making the world feel weird and to making exploration feel even better than it already did in sea.
As far as the stories go:
I enjoyed a lot of the ports. Before playing the game, I read some reviews that said the game feels much emptier than Seas, but it feels the opposite to me. There's a ton of ports, and while some of them are pretty empty (they were in Seas too), there's plenty that have their own engaging story-lines. My favorite is Piranesi, which I feel just has a great setup and a relatively lengthy story that requires you to pay some attention to finish it.
From a purely text perspective, I'd also put the Floating Parliament (which I'm not surprised to learn was written by Richard Cobbett) and the Well of Wonders on my favourites list, as well as any event having to do with cats. Plus that one line about blue passports. But really, there's just so much good text in this game
I also liked what they did to the officer stories. Most of them seem more involved here than they were in Seas, and their stories expand on the overall plot quite a bit, particularly the Devil and the Aunt, of the ones I've finished. The Aunt was probably my favourite, since she ties up the story with Fallen London and Sea pretty well, while still leaving you with more questions than answers (in true Failbetter Fashion).
I felt like for all the setup they did about the hours, this aspect of the lore was pretty wasted. It only really shows up on the Workworld, and that's about it. It also felt like a perfect plot excuse to add in things like fast travel, but that sadly didn't happen.
I didn't get to delve much into the other ambitions yet, other than starting the Cup for a bit. It was actually surprisingly easy to miss the way to unlock it on my first captain, and I stumbled into it more by luck then anything else. But so far, it seems like it's going to be pretty interesting, and it's way less obscure than the hidden ambition in Sea. But I can already see that manual saves would really help with it, even more than in Sea.
In the first area, the Tackety vs Stovepipe war was also kind of dissapointing. There's really no huge benefit to siding with one side over the other. And the Tacketies give much better port report rewards than the Stovepipes plus they're the "good guys", so there's really no dilemma over which one to choose.
I also saw a lot of people wondering if you can play this without playing Seas. After playing through the game, I'll say there were a number of places where I would have been totally confused without knowing what happens in those games. But most of the game requires no real knowledge of previous events. And the lore of the franchise can be so cryptic that even playing those two might not necessarily help.
All in all, it feels like a worthy successor to Sunless Sea (which is incredibly high praise). I'm not sure if I would call it better yet, as that's going to have to wait until I finish with all of the stories. It's improved (gameplay wise) over Seas, although not quite as dramatically as I would have wanted. You still get to spend a lot of time watching your slow train getting anywhere, except now you can't even buy a faster engine. But the writing makes up for all of its flaws, just like in Sea.
To be fair, buying engines was kind of a noob trap in Seas. It was more efficient to get the Avid Suppressor and then just spam "Full Power" with the beginning engine until you got the Impeller. Full power on the starter engine gave you the same speed as the Compulsion for significantly lower fuel consumption (58 barrels per hour vs. 126!).
I just saw that Failbetter published a blog post yesterday about the launch of the game, and it contains some very good news:
Sunless Skies is doing very well for us commercially, too. Far better than we needed it to do. We occasionally receive sympathetic enquiries about our financial health from the community; to be clear about that, we're in a very good position, and now we're really looking forward to spending several months further extending and improving Sunless Skies.
Which is very good to hear after reading about the problems they had during development.
And also something about plans for the future
In the next couple of months, we'll be releasing at least one major update, with a focus on filling out the game with more to see and do while travelling, including more narrative choice and consequence and, of course, unusual ways to die.
Very nice to hear the game is doing well, clearly this shockingly dead OT isn't any indication. Apex Legends has pulled me away from pretty much every other game for the time being, so I might as well uninstall Skies and return after a major update or two, seeing as they're adding content.
After 45 hours I finally managed to finish the truth ambition. This was definitely the best game I've played in a long while. I loved Sunless Sea when I played it a couple of years back, but that game had a lot of obvious issues that made playing it quite frustrating. Sunless Skies somehow not only fixes those issues but manages to improve on the predecessor in pretty much every way.
The gameplay improvements are the most obvious. I'm really impressed with how balanced getting money is in the game. Simply exploring the world, turning in port reports and doing the occasional prospect mission gives you more than enough to keep going, which means you never have to grind. On top of that, I never ran into a situation where I had too much money, even at the very end of the game. There was always something exciting I could spend the money on. A lot of RPGs have the problem where you just end up with way too much money in the end game so I'm really impressed with how well Sunless Skies does in that regard. It's a complete 180° turn from Sunless Sea.
On top of that, combat is impressively good. The fact that it's action-based means that player skill can have a huge impact on how the battles turn out and since repairing your locomotive requires you to return to a major port there's always incentive to try to avoid as many hits as possible in each fight. The enemies are also quite diverse and you often have to make minor adjustments in how you fight them. The different types of weapons feel nicely different as well, and require you to change things up a bit.
I also quite like how the text-adventure parts are balanced now. Sunless Sea always felt like it was a bit too eager to kill you. This worked nicely in creating a scary, oppressive world but with the combination of perma-death meant that I was often too afraid to actually click on scary-sounding options. Which kind of sucked since those were often the most interesting. Sunless Skies feels much gentler in that regard, but still isn't afraid of hitting you with events that give you a lot of terror or permanently drain your stats so the world still feels oppressive.
It's also impressive just how huge the game is. It makes Sunless Sea look tiny in comparison. It took me 45 hours to finish (and that was with me constantly using the slightly exploity way of going faster), and there's still things I haven't fully explored (though admittedly, there isn't all that many of them). There's also the fourth ambition, but from reading about it that one sounds like it isn't any fun at all.
What's the most surprising to me is that I even enjoyed the writing more than I did in Sea. The thing I enjoyed the most is that Skies feels a lot less cryptic and obtuse. The whole being-deliberately-cryptic thing mostly worked fine in Sea, but there were quite a few cases where I felt it went too far, especially as someone who had not played Fallen London beforehand. Skies leaves a lot of the more confusing elements in the background and also actually explains some of them with a straight-forward explanation, which is something Sea absolutely refused to do. Because of this, I feel Skies might actually be a better starting point to the universe than Sea. I also liked that the tone felt a bit more lighthearted, with more humor sprinkled throughout the game.
And then there's my favorite part of the game: Blue Kingdom. It's just awesome in every way and I love everything about it. I was not expecting to be completely blown away after over 30 hours of playing the game.
The game does have some minor issues though. I really don't like how fetch-questy some things feel. It's fine if a quest sends you to another port since they are mostly structured so that they require multiple visits. It's not fine if a quest sends you to revisit every signal station in the Reach (since there's absolutely nothing in them) or if a super late-game quest requires you to revisit ports in every region of the world after you've already explored everything in them. The quest that requires you to make a difficult skill check that you can only attempt once every 14 days is also not any fun. Thankfully, quests like that are pretty rare. I also really don't like that you can't buy faster engines or locomotives. In Sunless Sea, the fuel efficiency made buying those a terrible idea, but in Skies I actually had enough money that I would have gladly bought one even if it spent 10 times as much fuel.
There's also the truth ambition, which is great and has some truly incredible writing, but I can't help thinking it feels a bit underwhelming in a way:
Getting to kill a sun is obviously great, but the way you do it feels a bit underwhelming. Mostly because pretty much all of the work is done by the Spider Senate and the Deviless, to the point where I don't really feel like I did anything to deserve killing a sun. There's several optional quests that do show the player character how to potentially kill a sun (like the Unclear bomb, or the ritual from Well of Wonders) and I feel like giving you the option to use those would have felt much more satisfying.
With that said, the writing was truly great. Especially in the very last part, when you're just waiting for the years to elapse.
I wondered where my long weekend went and then I checked steam to see "25 hours played" next to this game. I bought it Saturday night...
But yeah, I'd played Sunless Sea a little bit but found it way too frustrating to figure out how to make money and survive. Wasn't a fan of the combat either. But I was really into the setting and the idea of an exploration game with some really awe-inspiring and horrible discoveries to find. I feel like I've been looking for a game that did something along those lines ever since I saw the Dark Rift in Skies of Arcadia.
In particular this game makes the trading a lot more straightforward with the bargains/requests system and the combat is really simple and fun. It's less punishing when you die as well, though I haven't had that happen in a while.
I'm currently just about done with the Reach - I have the Moloch and the best equipment I could get for it in the area (I also 'crafted' a heavy weapon). I spent a little time in Albion, I bought some gear there but haven't been back in a while. What I want right now is to spend some of my pile of money on gear, and I was wondering what's the best way to do so. The Elutheria relay says I can't get back easily if I go in, so I chickened out there. From what I understand the Blue Kingdom is even newer content so I assume it's for very high level ships - could I make it to the main port and buy some ship gear then make it back easily? Is there even decent stuff there? I don't want to look at the wiki, but I caved a bit and it doesn't even have an entry, lol.
I'm also a little bit curious how other people set up their weapons. I feel like the upgraded versions of the default cannon are all I need, but I've been testing out other weapons as well. Getting up close and shotgunning someone with the blunderbuss weapons should do a lot more damage than sniping them from 750 yards with a grimalkin or marauder magonel but it doesn't seem worth the risk. The new weapon I just built is cool and the stats look good but the shots tend to go all over the place.
I'm currently just about done with the Reach - I have the Moloch and the best equipment I could get for it in the area (I also 'crafted' a heavy weapon). I spent a little time in Albion, I bought some gear there but haven't been back in a while. What I want right now is to spend some of my pile of money on gear, and I was wondering what's the best way to do so. The Elutheria relay says I can't get back easily if I go in, so I chickened out there. From what I understand the Blue Kingdom is even newer content so I assume it's for very high level ships - could I make it to the main port and buy some ship gear then make it back easily? Is there even decent stuff there? I don't want to look at the wiki, but I caved a bit and it doesn't even have an entry, lol.
If you only want to shop, Blue Kingdoms should be fine.
I don't know how much the randomness effects this, but for me the main Blue Kingdom port was right in front of the relay, without anything bad in between. And I think it sells pretty good gear.
Just make sure not to actually fight things there too much, because Blue Kingdom has by far the most dangerous enemies in the entire game.
As far as weapons go, I just use 2x of the upgraded cannons, and it works well enough. I prefer to put my money into economy items (hold space + mining + assaying) as well as as much armour as possible (I think helath is more important than damage personally). But then again I mostly just avoid combat in the first place.
If you only want to shop, Blue Kingdoms should be fine.
I don't know how much the randomness effects this, but for me the main Blue Kingdom port was right in front of the relay, without anything bad in between. And I think it sells pretty good gear.
Just make sure not to actually fight things there too much, because Blue Kingdom has by far the most dangerous enemies in the entire game.
As far as weapons go, I just use 2x of the upgraded cannons, and it works well enough. I prefer to put my money into economy items (hold space + mining + assaying) as well as as much armour as possible (I think helath is more important than damage personally). But then again I mostly just avoid combat in the first place.
Good to know...I'll stash some good stuff in my bank before I make the trip, though. Just in case. I'm extremely belligerent and normally try to at least fight every new enemy I see to get used to them, but yeah I'd just be making a beeline to the major port and getting the hell out.
I know my first trip to Albion resulted in me wandering around lost and going back through the relay because I wasn't sure where to find the port, lol. I would've easily made it if I'd gone just a bit further. I have the Cavy scout now instead of the useless bat so that kind of thing wouldn't happen anymore.
