After playing Blood Message, I checked out another NetEase-published title (admittedly, one that is extremely different in tone than the last) – that game being Sea of Remnants. I can only describe it as a puppet-y pirate gacha game with a unique style and pleasantly silly writing. Though I obviously can’t really speak to the gacha elements from a showcase-designed demo build, the rest of the game did indeed pique my interest.
The first portion of the demo was largely narrative-oriented, having me row around as a fairly nondescript puppet in a small boat. Some impressively crafted sea creatures then swam around beneath the boat while quotes appeared on screen, leading me to find a ship’s helm floating in the water. It was a bit slow, but it certainly got me acquainted with the colorful visual style right off the bat.
Credit: NetEase
I was then steering a full-size pirate ship and battling a nasty octopus lady whilst being devoured by a whirlpool. This was a bit rough, as aiming the cannons to hit her was far trickier than I would have anticipated. No matter how much I accounted for the whirlpool’s movement, it felt as though I was never able to consistently get a handle on lining up shots. It felt pretty frustrating, though it’s hard to articulate what exactly it was that made aiming so difficult – it just didn’t quite gel with all the mobility that was happening.
On the other hand, the standard combat was turn-based, which I didn’t anticipate. I’d describe it as fairly traditional at its core, centering around unique attacks that each party member can use, with a turn order bar at the top left of the screen to show you who’s attacking when. I really enjoyed the slot machine-esque mechanic that had me trying to match a rolling slot number in order to gain an extra move. It’s a solid system that seems simple enough to be accessible yet retains enough depth to avoid feeling immediately dull.
Credit: NetEase
Sea of Remnants looks unlike any game I’ve seen in some time.
As you can probably gather from the screenshots, Sea of Remnants’ visual style is one of its most distinctive features, featuring puppet characters with wooden skin and visible joints. I’ve always had an affinity for this marionette look, so seeing it done in such a colorful and lively way is pretty delightful. Though they’re all puppets, the characters absolutely stand out from one another, and while I was designing my own player character, I was presented with a huge range of options with which to craft my wooden avatar. The characters were all charming, in part due to their lanky appearances and quirkily animated movements, and making my own character that would fit in with the rest of them was a breeze.
It seems that there’s a gacha system in play in Sea of Remnants, which makes sense given it’ll be free-to-play. My understanding is that the gacha pull mechanic will be used to obtain new crewmates to battle with. I’ve seen the devs note that it won’t be pay-to-win, but it’s hard to say how true that is at this point, since I wasn’t doing pulls in this demo. I can understand being a bit hesitant about a game with gacha elements, given how prominent and manipulative they can be, but I’ll wait to see how the full game handles this before passing any real judgment.
Credit: NetEase
In the end, I came away from Sea of Remnants mostly impressed with what I saw. I love the marionette look, and the turn-based combat did appeal to me as a traditional RPG sicko. I think the ship combat might need a bit of work in terms of nailing the accuracy of aiming, but I’ll definitely give the full game a go when it launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC later this year.
