Abandon Ship Review (Lark)
Ok finally a gritty survival ship management game that is actually good. I've played a TON of garbage, i've played so much garbage that i've learned to love garbage. THIS is not garbage, this is what a good ship game should be.
BEFORE I GET INTO IT: THE GAME IS FRIGGEN HARD! It gets much easier as you go, the snowball is really really nice and slow but starting out is very difficult, the cult hunts you down on a timer which is easy to evade if you are watching but sometimes you get caught out, but you can clear this timer after you defeat the kraken which is actually more a mechanics fight akin more to an MMO than it is a power level fight. I beat it at a point where my boat was in the red health because i was broke, i couldn't fix it, i was missing some men, and i just said screw it and once i realized it was rotation based i knew i could beat it.
The game has a lot going for it. Save Points are actually a recourse you get either from saving someone or missions. I actually really like it because it's a great way to get yourself into a save point when you are doing really well and then you can go do risky stuff and revert to your save.
Another thing is navigation is really fun, you instance into a zone, clear the zone, and can go N E S W to the next part of the map, at first i didn't think i'd like this but it's actually quite nice. You can go back to these places and they will have more events occasionally but you mostly go back if there is a port you like there with items you want to buy.
It's a slow game, so far i haven't found an efficient way to farm gold or abuse mechanics, you have to go out and get lucky in a series of events in order to go over in gold, it's tough to save but once you do and upgrade your ship, you really feel a difference, every enhancement swaps over to a new ship you buy so you dont' just lose progress.
Combat is varied, you can specialize in many different ways to fight such as ramming into boarding, close range shotgun like weapons, long range bombardment, sinking their ship through water intake, going for high damage and ripping them up, setting fire for them to deal with so they can't man their equipment, killing the crew from afar, etc etc. It's so cool and your play style is probably here.
Over all 9/10 game.
I wish in the earlier ships i could buy a couple more crew per ship, sometimes i felt really understaffed and it was annoying. Also I played on normal to learn the game and while I ended up fine, i did experience some serious frustrations early that might push some people away who would other whys love the game. The difficulty might be a little much for normal. I can't imagine higher difficulties but i'm pretty excited to try them. Also i'd like some abilities in the over world, something to boost you faster at times to help you escape persuers or something.