Punk rock has had a resurgence in recent years as more and more people fight oppression from tyrannical governments. Sea of Remnants, by Joker Studio and NetEase Games, takes the idea of some of the original punk rockers and pirates and adds its own stylish spin on the seven seas adventure. We got the chance to check out Sea of Remnants early, before its upcoming “Wanderer” test. Summarily, this free-to-play ocean adventure RPG has made being a pirate the most fun it’s been in a long time.
Sea of Remnants is, at its core, about memories and what makes us human. However, in this case, the world is full of puppets lost at sea. Your puppet pirate awakens in a supernatural ocean, rowing to a bright light. You know nothing of your past, who you are, or why you’re even on this inescapable sea. All you have is a piece of luggage that contains a fragment of a flag. Upon waking up in the city of Orbtopia, you embark on the high seas with other pirates to find answers to who you are and what is really at the end of the Sea of Remnants.
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Sea of Remnants sports over 300 interactable NPCs.
During the preview, the overall story wasn’t too much of the focus. Its goal was more of a MacGuffin to explore the ocean and the islands within. Even for a story that’s set up to be dark and gritty about what you’d give up to reach your goals, what was able to be experienced was quite lighthearted. For what purpose does memory serve when everyone around just wants to live in the moment?
But we did have some insight into how the story will progress once Sea of Remnants launches in full. Firstly, there will be a complete story at launch. Additionally, the base story will be much more lighthearted than the additions that it’ll receive via future seasonal updates. The grand adventure to reach the end of the sea is meant to be about camaraderie and the personal stories of each of the 300+ interactable NPCs. 15 of them have complete stories that delve into much darker, deeper sides of humanity.
The smaller side stories experienced so far were a mix of fun requests to help different communities and deeper quandaries about love and what one would sacrifice to help a loved one have a better life. Similarly, the recruitable pirates with story relevance are very carefree in nature, as shown through their voice acting and interactions with the world. Yet even then, there are lots of teases of darker aspects of the first primary companion, R.S., who somehow has ties to you. She also had ties to another washed-up, unconscious puppet to be explored later on in the story.
Sea of Remnants is a world full of color.
There is a motif of infinity in every aspect of the game. From loading screens to subtle infinity symbols scattered throughout this world to even the idea of starting fresh wherever you go. There is something bringing souls back to this ocean, never to leave.
Even those who’ve made it to the Sea of Remnants decided to forget the truth revealed by reaching the end, to go back and live a good life. We were told that this neverending cycle will also be a key gameplay aspect, as once you reach the end, you are able to choose to go back and change some of the choices you’ve made.
What really highlights this world as being so different than any other pirate adventure one may have experienced to this point is because of how stylish, bright, and flashy everything is. Every puppet you interact with has their own personality.
The world is full of color. Some parts even look like they’ve been spray-painted on to give a more je-ne-sais-qois beyond emphasis. Creature designs also steer heavily into the doll stylization. Full of stiff movements that lead to overexaggeration and colorful flair to their actions. Yet they also feel unnaturally natural to the environment wherever they’re found.
Turn-based combat in Sea of Remnants is surprisingly complex, even if presented as fairly barebones.
The dolls stand out from the rest of the world in whatever form they take each. It’s as if they’re not meant to fit in here. The world has a sense of realism to it beyond the color splotches everywhere. Joker Studios even emphasized how they used an advanced ocean tool to make the water look great, and it does look as refreshing as it looks on an ocean cruise. Same for the non-aggressive fauna and flora. They all look alien, yet natural to their environments. In other words, this world feels like it could be any ocean we’d have in our world, it just also has living dolls running around it.
With the idea of dolls playing around in an oceanic sandbox, Joker Studio has really leaned into the silliness and how movements can be exaggerated when not constrained by skin, muscles, etc. This is shown in two key parts of the gameplay: exploration and turn-based combat.
Whalloping on an enemy found in the world will start a battle. Then, each of your party members and yourself can attack the foe to take them out quickly. Turn-based combat in Sea of Remnants is surprisingly complex even if presented as fairly barebones.
Gambling like a pirate is translated into the gameplay in a fun way without over-relying on luck.
Allies can synergize attacks. Buffs and debuffs are doled out, and dice play a focus on improving attacks. A famous aspect of pirates, their love of gambling, has been translated in a fun way to the gameplay. Luck doesn’t have the same necessity as it does in, say, tabletop RPGs or even normal games of chance.
Luck is a way to emphasize attacks. For instance, at the start of the battle, enemies you come across have a number highlighted on them. Hitting three hits on them will allow you to roll three dice at the start of combat, played out with an adorable hamster.
Rolling a number higher than the foe’s will let you land a pre-emptive strike on every enemy. Or during combat, enemies will occasionally have a weakness exposed. Using at least one node of “dice” to improve your attack also lets you roll them. Getting a higher number will deal more damage to the enemy’s stagger bar.
Going back to the flashiness of everything, every recruitable pirate has their own moveset and ultimate attack that can be queued up at any time once charged. Not every ultimate attack is equal in presentation. Yet they are all quite fun to watch play out. Particularly in tense moments. Yet so far, only three people can be in a party at one time. A fourth is unlockable, but that point wasn’t reached during the preview.
Sea of Remnants is full of layered progression systems.
However, the reliance of party members to find good synergy highlights one of the big flaws of Sea of Remnants, and that is its progression systems. Similar to other free-to-play games, Sea of Remnants is full of layered systems, each of which needs to be understood to grow more powerful. How they all interact is a little too convoluted in its current state.
To break it down, every character has their own levels. There is also an adventurer level, where experience is gained by completing quests and solving puzzles in the open world with our hamster god friend. There is a cap on the number of levels a character can achieve, though, with the starting cap for every character being 5.
Once someone gains five levels, you need to give them a mix of conches that let them unlock passive bonuses and named traits. You then also have to fight boss enemies throughout the world to get another trait. But each boss you defeat only lets you choose one trait for one person.
After someone gets specific traits from the aforementioned boss and conches, that character can then choose a specialization that’s tied to their class role. Once that’s chosen, they can then gain five more levels before hitting a similar roadblock.
Exploration levels are capped until you collect enough honey-like substance.
That’s not all, though, for character progression. There are also talent points and the option to choose more traits specifically for each character’s role. At least for those two, they are gained just by leveling up. Layer on gear, and the requirement to explore the world to even be able to unlock new tiers of talent rows, there’s a lot that’s asked of you just to even progress the game. It’s when you hit several leveling roadblocks that the game nearly comes to a standstill.
Exploration levels are also capped for a time until you collect enough honey-like substance. That’s accrued through secretive creatures on the islands, defeating certain world bosses, and completing world puzzles. So you need to be sure that you’re not wasting experience by regularly doing side content and bringing levelable party members with you until you go fight harder enemies to unlock the next tiers.
Even then, leveling the exploration level comes to a crawl a little way into the first area. And when the main quest requires you to be at a minimum exploration level and side content gives you a trickle of experience, all three of these slow-downs can lead to some headaches.
Sea of Remnants emphasises late-game ship combat over the early-game experience.
What really feels lacking is on-sea combat. This was a key focus of the presentation Joker Studios gave us at the start of our preview. And what could be experienced so far was tremendously fun. Ship combat and sailing the open seas between islands is snappier than you’d expect. Yet outside of combat, the ship is very slow until you unlock highways connecting islands.
However, the late-game ship combat seems to be the big focus. Multi-phased, tied heavily together with a stellar soundtrack, and big cinematic moments tying different parts of the fight together create an enjoyable combination for fights that could be stale.
Nothing at that level was playable as far as one could get in the limited amount of time allowed for the preview. Where the preview is at, though, the combat is still fun. One world boss was found just sailing around. It was a tentacle-y squid thing just sitting out in the ocean. It did have some good music, but it wasn’t as much of a tentpole experience as other bosses experienced during turn-based combat. It’s basically point and click.
Think a third-person shooter with bullet-hell-like attacks that you need to dodge while chipping away at your foe. Wherever you face, your different cannons will do different attacks. For instance, the front-facing cannons will fire chained cannonballs to slow ships. The side cannons will shoot bigger cannonballs. The cannons and who mans them are all customizable and also have their own level of complexity to find the right synergy to produce the maximum amount of damage.
There is a downside to the whole experience, and one that really feels weighed down by its free-to-play nature. That’s dying. No matter where you die, you’ll end up back at Orbtopia. But you’ll lose all of your inventory. This part feels much like a roguelike. The loot you get from your adventures is a key resource to improve relationships with townsfolk and unlock certain abilities for you and your allies. That loot is only retained if you either ship it back with a courier found on the islands or return back to Orbtopia.
The courier can only take back so many items in a 24-hour period. The shippable amount can be increased as you progress and complete daily/weekly challenges. But tying a way to keep advancing wherever you are, without having to go back to a time-limited feature, doesn’t feel great. Particularly with how feature-complete most other aspects of the game feel when playing like a free-to-play player.
Additionally, we were told that more pirates will be purchasable. Not all will be gacha-like, however. Several will be tied to the story and only unlocked that way. While we couldn’t test this aspect of the game out, we did get to ask questions to some of the team members present about this.
Most interestingly, purchasable comrades will not be stronger than those obtained by the natural progression of the game, nor for those playing strictly free-to-play. But there are still some unknowns about the monetization strategy beyond season passes and purchasing new pirates to join your crew. For instance, can items needed to get past the aforementioned leveling roadblocks be bought with real-world money?
There will be legendary pirates, each having even more unique abilities, cinematics, and more, but if they don’t bring extra oomph to your side, then how do they weigh their “legendary” status? Are they just flashier or more detailed-looking?
Monetization was only described as a way to give players more options to experience Sea of Remnants, not by making them stronger or faster, but just giving them more choices. How the final game is monetized will really make or break bringing new players here, given that the free-to-play RPG-rich market is already quite saturated.
Sea of Remnants grabbed me in a way many other free-to-play games out there never could.
But for now, even after playing for just a limited time, Sea of Remnants is gripping. Its free-to-play aspects only peeked their heads out occasionally, simply as a reminder that they will be there eventually. When those parts aren’t around, this game is a blast to play.
It grabbed me in a way many other free-to-play games out there never could. Maybe it’s the setting, or its presentation, or even just how fun the dolls are, but this may be the first real free-to-play game that really takes hold of those who’ve been averse to them up to this point.
Even with many unknowns, Sea of Remnants’ style, flair, and carefree attitude make the game worthwhile for all fans of pirates and RPG games. Its use of music in tandem with its artstyle delivers a flashy experience. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its issues.
The progression, pacing, and turn-based combat need refinement. Yet the vision is there. From what’s playable so far, that vision is as clear as the blue seas. And the seas are rife with a great turn-based RPG, full of lightheartedness and joy that only a Pirate’s dream could come up with.
