Introduction
Today we will be looking at an indie game called Oceanhorn Monster of the Uncharted Seas! For simplification, we will call it Oceanhorn in this review! In this game, you will need to save the world by sailing to different islands, where you will solve puzzles and gain various new tools! Backtracking is a must if you want to gather 100% on every island! If you like Legend of Zelda, this indie game tries to emulate it but with a much cheaper budget!
What did I think before playing Oceanhorn?
My wife and I were very intrigued to play this game, we saw this game on the Nintendo Switch store, it reminded us of Legend of Zelda from the Wind Waker era. We did hope that controlling the boat would be easy, since that is not our forte. We were very interested what the bosses would have to offer, and what tools we would find to explore more islands!
The Nintendo Switch Page
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/oceanhorn-monster-of-uncharted-seas-switch/
It is your job to find out what happened to your father, as he left, at least he left you a necklace! It is your job to find out what happened by exploring islands, recovering ancient items and saving the world hopefully! I also wondered if the game, really had good graphics and soundtracks!
Rating
I rate Oceanhorn with a 7.1 before playing.
It seems like a fun game, but I wondered what if this game would be good or not.
Story
The story of Oceanhorn starts on a small island, where you get some information on why the world is shattered instead of one whole. It becomes your job to find special emblems to save the world and unite the islands! While you also need to find your father, and figure out what exactly Oceanhorn is!
Rating
I rate the story of Oceanhorn with a 4.2.
While the story propels the game forward, it is quite bad and predictable!
Gameplay
The gameplay of Oceanhorn takes place on different islands, but before you can go to certain islands, you will need to find their locations, either from non-playable characters or books. On every island you can find chests and complete challenges, these are needed to gather experience points to level up! To gather all chests, though, you will need tools that you can find in certain dungeons, along with some spells!
There are certain points on islands that can be hard to access for 100% completion, however it is possible! On the islands you will find enemies that want to harm you, using your sword and shield you will need to take them down! There are also a ton of puzzles to clear, for these you need the ancient tools like bombs and arrows! Leveling up lets you hold more of these items! You can also use coins to buy new stock of these items!
On every island you can also try to find bloodstones, these are needed to get the best spell in the game! Before getting the best sword in the game, you might need to hit them over ten times! There are no bloodstones to be found while sailing around on your boat, but there are monsters! You might want to level up to get a gun to shoot them while sailing!
Rating
I rate the gameplay of Oceanhorn with a 6.3
While the game is fun, there are quite some bugs, gameplay wise and graphical! It is also very hard to find the missing item on an island since there is no legend showing you what you are missing, it could be a book, a piece of the map, or maybe even a treasure chest!
Sound and Graphics
Graphics
While the graphics look good of Oceanhorn, the cutscenes are very stiff, it looks very weird when looking at the non-playable characters that talk, there are also a lot of walls that you will get stuck in. The hitboxes of many enemies are also very odd. When fishing, your fish also goes into the wall, sand or even on land!
Sound
The sound was great, in the beginning. Until you realise that the soundtrack is on repeat for most of the islands, while there are some great soundtracks among the fun sound effects, it is not fun to keep hearing that soundtrack on repeat.
Rating
I rate the sound and graphics of Oceanhorn with a 6.6
While Oceanhorn puts up a good effort, it is not good enough and could have used a lot more polish!
What did I think after playing Oceanhorn?
My wife and I had a lot of fun when progressing through the story, but getting to 100% was pretty hard! Since there was no legend or collection log! The final boss was very easily to destroy, but the second phase was mostly trying to figure out what to do to end the game.
The most annoying island was the island of whispers that came from a later update in Oceanhorn. The game was very unclear on what to do on this island except for collecting crystal skulls. Also, even after finishing everything on the island, it was still on 96%. Later in the game, it suddenly jumped to 100%
Rating
I rate Oceanhorn with a 6.4 after playing.
I wish the graphics got more polish, also there were too many bugs!
What are my personal thoughts about Oceanhorn?
My wife and I had a great time when progressing through the story, however, we did encounter a lot of bugs!
Rating
My personal Rating of Oceanhorn is a 7.6
Last Words
Pros
- Sail to uncharted islands and explore them!
- Find ancient tools and use them to explore!
- Fight enemies and gain experience points to level up!
- Solve puzzles to to gather new chests with loot!
- Complete challenges for experience points!
Cons
- There is no legend to see what you have missed on a island!
- The soundtracks keep repeating.
- There are many bugs that prevent you from getting the game to 100%
- The story starts off bad and breaks all immersion unless you have read the comic books
If you want to play an indie game that resembles Legend of Zelda, this is a game for you! You can even play it on your mobile phone!
Final Rating
6.1
Let me know what you think of Oceanhorn in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!
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It’s nice to have a Zelda-like Wind Waker game with a cheaper budget, though it’s disappointing to hear that the game is in need of more polish. Still, it was made by indie devs, so hopefully they can fix some things in later updates and learn from their mistakes for next time. Also, do you think the game is too derivative of the Zelda games or does it have its own identity despite taking a lot of inspiration from them?
I liked this game very cool.
Good review!
nice game 🙂
Really cool and pleasant graphics.
This game seems great, reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Waiting for the sequel
similar to zelda but not quite as good but still decent
Decent mobile port
even the costumes are Zelda-like, huh.,
Yep!
Mediocre at best.
looks like a really nice game
I remember watching my friend play this game on Twitch and my first thought was “Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker knockoff?”, seems like nothing that great.
A knock off, yes, a good one? While fun, it is not Legend of Zelda at all!
Quire pretty for a Switch game.
*Quite.
Impressive for mobile I think…
Attempts to be a Zelda but doesn’t live up to it
At least they tried!
I played the demo for this on the switch and I found it somewhat boring! Love these kind of games but it lacks the charm and personality that makes a game really special!
Nice review