Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

Superb plotline with innumerable twists and wonderful characterisations. Immersive and deeply satisfying.

Choo choo go brrrr

I liked the story and atmosphere. The criticism regarding too much boring travel is true.

Calming, chill, stress-free. Recommended even though I havent been able to finish it yet!

Beautiful. Terrifying. The best way to spend an afternoon drifting through the void

Has great atmosphere good for chllin on a weekend

Maybe my favorite game that I've ever played. Wonderful story, engaging combat, and an improvement on Sunless Sea in every possible respect. For about a month, I couldn't put this down, and I still think about it all the time.

High hopes, low realization.

It's not awful, it just fails in comparison to Sunless Seas on nearly every level. Big time.

x

Did you like Sunless Seas, but not all of that darned ol gameplay!? Sunless Skies has you sailing from port to port for hours upon hours across regions the size of the first game, but with only a fraction of the content. For starters, as I said the regional maps are each the size of the first games map, but there's only 6-8 ports in each region. This means that the majority of your game is going to be spent being completely bored and waiting for you to be at your next destination.

The extremely large amount of distance between objects is alone not an issue. The problem is that sunless SEAS takes place in a wide open cavern and sunless SKIES takes place in a series of inch-wide caverns. Every region is filled with massive asteroids that form little caverns you can sail between, meaning the already amazingly boring and slow travel times are made worse by constantly requiring you to adjust heading. In the time it takes to do one total three hour "loop" of The Reach hitting every port, you can visit every single port in Sunless Seas.

To make matters worse, you need certain stats to equip certain items. So if you were too stupid to not pick Veils or Mirrors then you practically cannot equip anything. Engines are downgrades, not upgrades in this game as well. None of them actually make you faster, but you do get to burn more fuel. Buyng a new locomotive past the trade ship is pointless as there's no ship that actually seems to go faster (which is the only thing that matters in a game about waiting 10-30 minutes between ports)

There's also a bit of childish censorship, which I always find funny in games with overt racism. Words that have no actual negative meaning like "Bloody" or "Damn" are censored in this game for seemingly no reason. Meanwhile the game is very happily racist, offering you a "Clay Man" (A person with dark, rocklike skin) who refuses to sing with anybody who is also not a "Clay Man"; you can murder them an take their stuff without consequence as well unlike any other officer you employ. "Clay Man" is basically a way of saying "black person" in the Sunless series, in case you were wondering. Even if you argue it as "it's just a Lovecraftian thing" then you have to recall that he was... sorta extremely racist. In any case, the hypocrisy is hilarious.

I really don't understand what the developers were thinking by making their game so boring. Ports in Sunless Seas were ten feet away from eachother, why is that not the case in the sequel? What drooling idiot played the first game and said "Yuck, I really hate all of the content here. If only the game was just watching a locomotive sailing past rocks"

SPACE TRAIN

Sunless Shiz

bluey kingdom

I made an entire bloodline of insane space train captains who wished to figure out the truth about all of the insane stuff on their universe
This is one of the most "gives me weird dreams" game I've ever played. It's basically a visual novel with some exploration and naval battles, so this is a game for the readers. Still, heartily reccomended, delicious gamers.

Eldritch wonders and horrors packed into this game. if u like reading this game is for u

Gender nonsense

It's a good book, but a terrible game.

You can lose 8+ hours on a single coin flip (or worse odds) at which point you'll have to play those 8+ hours again to get to the same point and potentially lose again! You'll find yourself doing the same trade route for hours straight, just to get enough money to buy food and fuel to get to a new area. It really is a game of unrelenting patience for minimal payoff.

Requires patience, if not bloody-mindedness, but this is Fallen London after all. Good, gloomy fun.

really really good. I think this is one of the most beautiful games you can play both visually and in its writing. Handles game pads perfectly, so you can play it on the sofa quite happily. The risk of accidental death while travelling feels much lower than in sunless seas and it's generally much more easy going.

Ambience, writing, and world-building give this game an overall lovely feeling of gradual building toward inexorable horrible ends.

the core concept of the game, an RPG that spans 'generations' as your captains die, is kind of interesting. the application is endless fetch quests, pretentious writing, tedious combat, and difficult to track storylines as every character is 'named' with a descriptor + noun combination ("the incautious driver," for instance). getting the same RNG "skill checks" constantly because someone saw a spooky enemy that you've killed thirty times already just makes the entire experience more tiring.

tldr: the writers completely over do it in this game with the non-binary genderless stuff


i dont mind representation, i didnt mind the antiquarian from the first game, that had the character quirk, that they are not defined as male or female.
in this game? they constantly shove it in your face and never shut up about it:

the first hirable crew member, a driver, is a they/them. ok.
the faction leader of the first port the tutorial mission sends you to is a they/them. ok.
couple story pages later the writers point out that they (the npc) are very satisfied, that none of their staff know if its a male or female - and im already rolling my eyes.

on and on it goes, they use "they" and "them" so often, ist sometimes not clear anymore, if they mean 1 or more persons:
theres 2 Twins, one ran away and youre on the fetch quest to reunite them. i stmble over the word "they" and wonder if they are reunited already because of a timeout or something... of course not! at leat one of those twins is a they/them, and i bet my behind the other one is too.

worst part was when my driver needed to see a doctor for brain parasite and the writers make a point of it, htat they(the driver) crossed out the section where the patient information form asks ab out the gender.... you know at the dotors of all places, where it is in fact really important to know the biological gender of a person because of different procedures for different physiologies, different pharmaceuticals for different body chemistries and different risks and long term concerns attached to each of those things, according to gender and age...

but nah, the writers take the nonexistant gender soooo very important, that their characters would rather vandalize an offficial legal document (patient intake form). a document that in my country has to be signed and dated by the patient, to vouch for the information they gave to mediacal staff, and the doctors office is required (by law) to archive it, to protect both parties from potential legal trouble in the future.

A fantastic game that more people need to experience.

This is a very cool novel, but a somewhat poor game.
If you're looking for exciting combat or interesting puzzles, it's not here. Gameplay consists of an incredibly large CYOA book, managing key resources (fuel, food, crew, terror) and running fetch quests/chain-of-deals quests to get money and resources to continue CYOAing. Once you figure out how to fly around without dying, it can be kinda boring, to be honest. Travel is slow and late-game quests are about traveling really long distances one way, then the other way, then back again.
That being said, I still tentatively recommend the game because it is a VERY GOOD narrative experience, though lacking much of the mystique of S.Seas or the company's earlier works, trading it for more direct and in your face cosmic horror and social commentary. If you want a management sim layered onto a book, it's a good time.

Симулятор чтения интересной книги с геймплеем уровня отскребания печной сажи

Better game design that Sunless Sea, but I miss the darker atmosphere.

A lot of reading that very much pays off.

Wonderful game. Fun to explore. Lore is great.

I love these games. Like Sunless Sea, this game is hard and impossible to play the same twice. There’s always a better strategy and a new piece of map to uncover. Each journey into new areas forces you to weigh the cost of the journey and yet has you on the edge of your seat to see what new Lovecraftian horrors await.
I personally prefer Sunless Sea for the vibes but this game is a lot of fun and has great stories to tell. Just be prepared to a fly trains in space beteeen places and evade space pirates for hours.

I haven't been able to leave the Reach yet, but I've had a lot of fun trying!

A great game.
Pro tip: make sure to get at least 25 Hearts since most checks in this game are based on this stats and you need to have 25 to equip the most powerful weapon in the game. Go check in the settings to slow down the speed at which your fuel and food are depleted and give your projectiles homing properties. Then your good to go. Prioritise finding safe trade routes before trying to complete your quests. Although helping the circus in the first area ASAP is a good idea).

It sure takes a while before getting to the most interesting things this game has to offer, but it makes you more invested in this strange world, and it rewards you generously if your patient enough.
And alongside Bloodborne it's my favourite lovecraftian game.

If you like this stuff there's no better. It's great

I regret buying this game, too much going back and forth with not enough interesting things happening.

slowwwww

How do you follow up a masterpiece? WIth a good game a lot like the first. Sunless Seas is amazing. Sunless Skies is still great but pales by comparison.

Expect to slowly explore, find new ports, get involved in a bunch of stories and trucking cargo. It's bigger in scope but feels less deep than the predecessor. It's also more accessible. There are only 4 stats instead of 5, and there is a more traditional experience and levelling mechanic. There are far, far fewer random events. Combat is more active with dodging, aiming, and heat management all on the player. Fuel and supplies are always a standard price so getting around is less expensive when you don't have much cargo space.

It's all about currency exchange. Visit a port and get a Port Report. Exchange a Port Report at the Windward Company for $100 and 1 point of Favour. Exchange the Favour for 2 Salon Stewed Gossip. Exchange the Favour at Port Avon for 4 points of Welcome. Exchange the Welcome for 4 chances at Visions of the Heavens. Go to Titania and exchange the Visions of the Heavens for $85 and 50 Experience. Return to the Windward Company with 2 Port Reports (Port Avon and Titania).

That's not a loop you want to do a lot as there are plenty of ways to be more efficient, visiting many ports along the way and incorporating other currencies. You'll find quest-lines that call for stuff so I ended up hoarding a lot, making exchanges as needed.

So, I recommend, with the caveat that you should play Sunless Seas first. A House of Many Doors is also a fine example of this genre with more story weirdness than Sunless Skies (but it's far less polished and has some bugs).

Very, very weak recommend. Sunless Seas was able to carry me further and in better spirits. (Two of those spirits were crewmates we ate along the way.) Sunless Skies has some very nice writing, it has some engaging characters, it also really tries my patience with how it sets up story chains or even the basic grind of making money. For whatever reason, I found Sunless Seas managed to intrigue me into exploring the unknown in ways Sunless Skies has never done, although it would be very wrong not to mention there are a lot of improvements to this game over its predecessor.

Delicious

Was a big fan of Sunless Sea and Skies is a worthy sequel. This is an excellent setting with some of the best writing found in gaming. The music is reserved but does well to set the mood. The core game-play loop can be a bit hard to lock down at first and as the game warns, many of your captains will die early on, but keep at it. Invest in your engine, prioritize finding ports, and then learn to leverage the various economies found within the game. ALWAYS gather a port report as they at minimum can fund your fuel and supply costs.

Fun, but make sure you like to read. Play on merciful mode if you're casual.

Mixed feelings on this one.

Although there are some serious improvements over sunless seas when it comes to the game loop and general QoL,
the game takes some serious steps back regarding atmosphere and moment to moment writing. The more you dig into the world, the less interesting it seems to get, which is completely opposite to the previous game in the series.

It's still pretty good, but yeah.

cant even open the game

It's a neat concept but it just doesn't pan out, nor is it terribly well executed

It has a slow start, you really need to explore in the beginning, no matter how many times you die, after that the game picks up...

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i love fallen london, so i just HAD to try a sunless game, and i LOVE IT. i'm not very good at it but i love it

PLEASE MAKE MORE OF THESE

One of my favorite games ever made, nothing quite like it.

For me, this is an amazing game, just like its predecessor. A strange and wonderful alternate world you can explore and immerse yourself in, full of interesting stories, places and characters.

Pretty neat

Great game.