Ship of Fools Review (Vitlöksbjörn)
Animated trailer, custom song, amazing look... at this point, I'm 100% expecting to be disappointed by such games. But oh, the concept was so enthralling. Made for 2 player coop. Sea-themed. Silliness mixed with badassery. It seemed perfect for myself and a certain friend of mine... So we decided to give it a go.
It lives up to the trailer. Hell, it surpasses it.
But there are a few caveats. There is no online matchmaking. Come with a friend or not at all (even if you can, technically, play solo). We played online, and never had an issue - not once; it's possible to play locally, though. And you can play with exactly one person - you can't bring your crew, only one friend.
As far as roguelikes go, the twist of having exactly two players allows for some interesting design choices. A lot of stuff is happening at the same time - and the game WILL punish you for getting in each other's way. You can't clip through each other, and of course your melee attacks will interrupt and even stun the other player... so a certain level of trust is absolutely necessary. Especially since there is usually no time to communicate about split-second things such as deflecting projectiles.
I find the difficulty particularly interesting. The game's rather hard, but also... not really? If that makes any sense? There's a lot of stuff that can sink your ship incredibly fast, especially later on. Endgame bossfights have some hard to avoid stuns, and if both players get hit at the same time it's almost guaranteed game over; you WILL lose runs to these moments.
And yet, once you understand the when and the what, once you get comfortable with deflecting and firefighting, once you develop some unspoken rules with your crewmate... the difficulty slowly melts away. The keyword here is 'slowly'; beating the game once is not enough to truly win, and you'll be presented with a nice ladder of ever-increasing challenges. And it's a very nicely paced ladder.
As you go, you unlock new trinkets, artifacts, cannons, ammo types, characters. There's a quite nice selection, but this isn't Risk of Rain 2. These ruinous combos of ungodly power simply don't exist here. There are some items that break the game under certain circumstances, but the, uh, interaction chains are pretty short. So the POWER items do all the heavy lifting while the other ones are just... there. That sucks a little.
You know what doesn't suck? The music. It's fantastic. I feel like this game is good in general, but it's the music that pushes it into amazing territory. Every boss has its own theme that progresses as you enter further and further phases. The soundscape is pretty great as well; some fights encourage listening for audio tells for better clarity during the fight. It's not necessary though - it just helps.
Look. The game's good. It's probably better than you think. And it's still receiving some updates, plus some minor things in DLC. If you have someone that you'd see yourself playing this with, don't sleep on it. Great time all around.
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