With more than 400 unique NPCs, free PS5 pirate adventure Sea of Remnants is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious games ever made — I’ve already played 10 hours, and I can’t get enough

Don’t be fooled by its cutesy-puppet art direction – pirate RPG Sea of Remnants is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious free-to-play games ever made.

Hailing from Identity V developer Joker Studio, it’s centered around the open-world city of Orbtopia, a sprawling privateer metropolis populated by more than 400 unique non-player characters (NPCs). Each is individually named, with their own daily routines that have them doing everything from traveling to the local market to pick up their favorite snacks to enjoying evening drinks in a nearby tavern.

This isn’t all just for show either, as individual NPCs offer dynamic storylines with multiple outcomes to discover. With the right support, a character could establish a successful business – or one that’s doomed to fail thanks to your inaction. Some can be recruited as companions, while you have the freedom to kill others if they get on your nerves. Be careful with your choices, cautioned the development team ahead of my hands-on, as each can affect the fabric of Orbtopia in interesting ways.

Go on a bloodthirsty rampage killing everyone you encounter, for example, and you should expect empty streets, struggling businesses, and an overriding atmosphere of decline and decay.

The life aquatic

Although I haven’t experienced such long-term dire consequences in my time with Sea of Remnants so far, I have been getting to grips with the truly vast selection of minigames on offer. Almost every NPC has some form of associated activity, ranging from mahjong matches and board games to drinking competitions and even a Rhythm Heaven-esque challenge that has you mashing buttons in time with a catchy beat.

It’s safe to say that you wouldn’t really be a pirate if you always played fair, so many minigames give you the option to cheat via a set of magical on-screen dice. A high roll gives you a glimpse of your opponent’s move ahead of time in rock-paper-scissors, for example, or silently transforms a mahjong tile in your hand to a more advantageous piece. You can only do this once or twice in each game, and there's a surprising amount of strategy involved in deciding exactly when to use them. I’m also fairly sure that your rivals can cheat too; that, or I’m somehow even more hopeless at mahjong than I previously thought.

It already feels like there’s more than enough here to occupy you for countless hours in Orbtopia alone, but the core gameplay loop of Sea of Remnants involves venturing out into a surrounding sea brimming with possibilities. As an amnesiac puppet sailor, with a range of charming customization options rendered in exquisitely stylish detail, your ultimate objective is to uncover your lost memories and Orbtopia's mysterious secrets, with each excursion edging you a little closer to that goal.

These excursions play out like little roguelike runs, and see you assembling a team from your available crewmates and exploring the high seas freely in a highly customizable galleon. Naval combat is frequent – you exchange cannon fire with enemy ships to whittle down their health bars before plundering any available loot from the ensuing wreckage.

The controls here are significantly more approachable than those found in the likes of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and, while some might lament the apparent lack of depth, I personally appreciate the opportunity to focus on the pirate fantasy, rather than fiddle around with raising or lowering sails and switching between multiple types of cannon.

Land ahoy

Islands litter the ocean, all of which can be visited by you and your crew. They can be surprisingly large, and with quite a lot going on, be that countless enemy camps to clear, seemingly endless hidden chests, or a variety of fresh NPCs to befriend. The bigger islands also have their own unique currencies that you can spend on special unlocks or useful gear, so you have a good reason to hang around and engage with the activities on offer.

While ocean fights play out in real time, combat on land is turn-based, with you queuing moves and trying to chain attacks on vulnerable enemies. There are crewmates that roughly fulfil all the traditional RPG roles, be that healers, ranged fighters, or tanks, each with flashy special moves and plenty of voicelines. The dice from the minigames are important here too, with enemies often displaying a numeric value before you attack. Choose up to three dice to roll and, if you manage to beat that number, you’ll inflict massive damage with the potential for a follow-up strike.

It’s all incredibly stylish, with slick animations that incorporate elements of street art and graffiti for added visual flair. Some standard, but nevertheless appreciated, quality-of-life options, like an auto-combat toggle or the ability to instantly kill enemies that are much weaker than your party, help ensure that the system doesn't become grating even after hundreds of hours of play.

If you die outside of Orbtopia, you’ll return to it without all the loot that you’ve accumulated in that specific run, adding an almost extraction shooter-like degree of tension to each encounter. Luckily, there is an insurance service introduced earlier on which can preserve your most valuable acquisitions, though uses of it are limited.

It’s all very promising, especially when you consider that this PC, consoles, and mobile game will be entirely free to play, with only cosmetic microtransactions. Still, my experience wasn’t perfect, and it’s clear that the localization needs a bit of extra polish.

Any of the lines with existing voice acting were perfect, but much of the flavor text and tutorial interface was either grammatically incorrect, somewhat confusing, or completely incomprehensible.

Given the frequent appearance of obvious placeholder text, I’m optimistic that this is because I've been playing with a build that’s still in the middle of development. We’ll have to see how all the translation fairs when it launches later this year; but, either way, Sea of Remnants is one to keep an eye on.

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