Lost Sea review

The Bermuda Triangle, it’s a small storytelling cliché but Lost Sea uses it in a glorious way. As the mystery unfolds you realise that games like Lost Sea are pretty rare, a simple exploration and combat game combined with rogue-elements and colorful randomly generated islands. Do you need to buy this game? Jump into the triangle and read the review for Lost Sea to find out!

THE GOOD

• The generated Islands keep the game fresh, it kinda needs to be as a Rogue-like game, but I can name a few  games that get boring fast, that is really not the case with Lost Sea.
• Lost Sea uses a decent looking colorful cel-shading look that make it stand out from other games. It’s in no way impressive but it totally works for the game. The jungle environments from Xbox 360 game The Baconing is pretty much very similar and that’s definitely not a bad thing. In short everything on screen looks very charming!
• Developing skills and improving your ship isn’t necessary but highly recommended, it’s an easy to understand system that isn’t flooded with difficult tasks. It’s a little time-consuming reaching everything but a great motivation to continue playing, each and every time you start over from a death.
• At some moments it brought back old game memories, the developer manages to bring a pretty unique modern experience and combines it with nostalgic gaming mechanics. I know that’s pretty vague but I really want to make it clear that this combination in a game is very rare.
• You explore and find coins and secrets on the map, most of the times you’ll be fighting great designed monsters and bosses. The combat system is easy enough so everyone can use it. Don’t expect depth like Bayonetta but you have a few skills that you can learn so you can fight enemies more easily. Overall the fighting system is really fun.

THE BAD

• Sometimes you get ambushed by little enemy bastards, resulting in some cheap and frustrating (perma) deaths.
• Gathering and finding crew members is a big part in the game but besides some extra abilities, like reviving or carrying items I feel that it misses some extra meaningful elements. Some funny dialogues or some other way that you could bound more with your crew survivors would have been welcome.  Nothing game breaking though, just a small thing that could have been better.

Conclusion

Score: 88% | Lost Sea has been on my radar for a long time, screenshots and trailers made it stand out and I am not disappointed with the end result. I fell in love with the art design and colorful islands. I can’t wait to visit the Bermuda Triangle again, if ill escape it that’s another question but ill be having fun trying it!