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It gets a 1 because underneath this awful trash fire I can tell there was the possibility of a decent game.
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You’d be better off never upgrading your boat and simply rowing through the game.
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Resources are scarce and sailing is an absolute nightmare. Your stamina will immediately drop after eating and your character will be perpetually hungry. It does blatantly rip off elements and styles from games like BOTW, but fails to use them in any meaningful way and thus falls flat. The worst pita rat about this is the game seems like there is actual potential, but somehow just threw it away. Not just the worst “survival” game I’ve played, but one of the worst overall games I’ve ever touched. The inventory is frustrating, the sailing is ridiculous, the combat is simple and repetitive and the story is lacking. The only thing positive I can say about it is that it has an interesting artistic style…I guess. The combat isn’t as intuitive as it could of been and the game is definitely lacking polish. The repetitive nature combined with the rogue like elements don’t make exploring outside of the story path worth the risk. Overall my experience with Windbound was not as great as I had hoped for this game. The only major bug I encountered was playing on story difficulty, for my second play through, but the game not registering that I was on story difficulty, therefore resetting all my progress upon death. There are slight performance issues and occasional frame rate dips at time but that doesn’t takeaway from the experience too much. Sailing is disappointing until the later parts of the game once your boat has been upgraded and your used to the way you should be sailing, however it never felt rewarding enough. The game looks pretty, clearly drawing inspiration from Breathe of the Wild, this translates to combat aswell, however it never felt as clean and smooth as you would expect. You also keep all your items on the easier difficulty, compared to only keeping what is held on your person on the survivalist difficulty. Whilst there is an easier difficulty the only real difference is either restarting from chapter one, or restarting from the chapter you’re currently on. Whilst this is generally the norm for rogue likes, I found myself feeling like it didn’t fit the style of the game. The rogue like mechanics in the game conflict with the open areas that kind of deter you from setting out on your crafted boa and exploring what the seas have to offer. The story is okay and spans five chapters but failed to keep me interested past the second chapter. The story begins here as you progress from island to island (all procedurally generates) activating beacons before ultimately heading to your next set of islands. The story begins here Windbound is a rogue like, third person survival game where your character, Kara starts of stranded on a small island. Windbound is a rogue like, third person survival game where your character, Kara starts of stranded on a small island. Crafting includes food, weapons, survival tools and upgrading your boat, improving your boat is extremely rewarding and you can build it the way you want, and since you need to survive tides, sea creatures and other kind of hazards it is a core mechanic on this game, Combat is rather simple but that is not a bad thing, you face big monsters to obtain unique materials, you have melee (spear/knife) and ranged combat(bow/slingshot) to complete this task and even minor stealth mechanics, every chapter the game introduces new types of creatures and types of biomes I highly recommend this game, if you like survival/crafting games.
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In storyteller you don't lose anything, this mode is perfect for those who are not into that kind of gameplay. You can pick from a survivalist mode, or storyteller mode: If you die in survivalist you lose most of your items upon death, except the ones you held in your possession outside your pouch (if you have any), but you retain all the skills and crafting recipes obtained between chapters, this include some unique unbreakable items. If you like rogue-like survival games, great music, beautiful art style and a decent crafting system you should try this game, the only If you like rogue-like survival games, great music, beautiful art style and a decent crafting system you should try this game, the only problem is that navigating in your boat gets a little wanky at times.
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