Sea of Remnants Review: First Impressions of Joker Studio's MMO

Sea of Remnants, developed by Joker Studio and published by NetEase, presents a curious and visually striking mash-up of Age of Sail exploration, graffiti tag art, and wood-carved puppet character designs. First impressions reveal a game with deep turn-based combat and engaging rogue-like survival mechanics, though it is currently hindered by severe English localization issues and tedious camp-fire mechanics.

World and Story Setup

The journey begins with your character rowing across a calm ocean, discovering a mysterious magical rudder, and washing ashore at the central hub island of Orbtopia with total amnesia. This opening sequence leads into character creation, which during early preview builds was limited to male-presenting characters.

The game quickly establishes its tone through a combination of main story progression markers, interactive collection nodes, and scattered mini-boss encounters across initial island zones. Visually, the title draws favorable comparisons to the fluid, bouncy animation styles found in games like Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero.

Gameplay Mechanics: Combat and Sailing

While exploring on foot, players experience a surprisingly robust turn-based combat system. Features include:

• Pre-combat Advantage: Striking enemies with active sword swings while exploring the overworld grants the player the initial upper hand.
• Dice Mechanics: Players utilize dice to empower individual attacks and trigger chances for extra combat rounds.
• Element Exploitation: Exploiting specific ability damage types against enemy elemental weaknesses adds significant tactical depth.

Navigating the seas shifts the gameplay into an arcade-style ship movement system controlled via WASD, paired with mouse-aimed cannon fire. Reviewers have likened this maritime combat to a simpler iteration of the ship-to-ship battles seen in Skull and Bones.

Rogue-like Elements and Risk Management

To prevent the role-playing experience from feeling overly routine, Sea of Remnants introduces rogue-like survival stakes. If your party perishes or your ship sinks during exploration, any items not stored securely inside a waterproof bag are permanently lost, leaving you with a damaged vessel to repair. To mitigate this risk, players can utilize couriers to safely send valuable currencies and materials back to Orbtopia, or trade miscellaneous island "gubbins" to specific NPCs for extra rewards.

Localization and Mechanical Criticisms

Despite its creative premise, early builds suffer from severe drawbacks, most notably in translation quality. Described by early reviewers as some of the worst localization seen in a video game—reminiscent of issues found in Chimeraland and NetEase's HPMA—the English text frequently suffers from:

• Incorrect Prompt Instructions: On-screen tutorial guides telling players to press keys (such as "S" for cannon aiming) that do not match the actual controls (such as right-clicking the mouse).
• Truncated Text: Tutorial slides and battle windows cutting off English characters, making instructions unreadable.
• Language Barriers: Chinese voice acting combined with broken or comedic English translations that frequently pull players out of the narrative.

Additional mechanical frustrations include the healing loop, which forces players to hold down the "F" key to continuously roast food skewers at campfires. Character progression is similarly reported to be overly fussy, requiring players to grind levels, tackle harder bosses, learn sea shanties at campfires, and clear minor achievements to unlock advanced classes and level caps—though these hurdles may stem in part from confusing translation guides.

Verdict

Sea of Remnants displays genuine potential, blending unique art directions, tactical turn-based combat, and maritime exploration into a distinct package. However, before a full release, the developers desperately need to invest in a dedicated human localization team to clear up the confusing text and polish tedious survival chores.