SEA OF SOLITUDE PS4 REVIEW PLUS
SEA OF SOLITUDE PS4 REVIEW SERIES

There are some enjoyable, even magical moments, in Sea of Solitude but they’re mixed in with some mediocrity that make it just a decent experience rather than sublime one. The fantasy setting makes it easy to get into, as does the streamlined gameplay. It felt like it ran out of things to offer me long before it ended. Sea of Solitude may tell a story that’s painfully personal, but it’s also incredibly approachable. While not a long game, by the end of Sea of Solitude I just wanted things to be done. The story was compelling enough that I wanted to see it through to the end, but the repetitive tasks within it lost their charm in the first half. It’s beautiful to look at, but it ends up being a lovely splash in a shallow pond. Sea of Solitude’s potential is never fully realized. Self-loathing, marital strife, bullying, suicidal leanings. Towards the end of the four- to six-hour story, there’s a slight variation on how you clear corruptions where you have to work with NPCs to reach some swarms that are otherwise inaccessible, but this quickly becomes a boring back-and-forth. The game doesnt play coy with its themes of isolation, loneliness, and the troubles it can bring. That’s fun for a time, but unfortunately it never really changes in interesting ways as you play, eventually getting overly repetitive.

The school chapter also establishes that gameplay loop of meeting a monster, getting to know their problems, and then getting rid of corruptions until they’re human again very early on. There’s no real point to it, no story reason for doing so, and it seems unnecessarily rude to the seagulls. You just have to find seagulls and shoo them away. The other collectible you can track down is, by comparison, a snooze.

SEA OF SOLITUDE PS4 REVIEW PLUS

Plus exploring and enjoying the lovely environments was one of the best parts of Sea of Solitude. While these are optional to the main campaign, going out of my way to get them was a great way to add an extra challenge. They serve as both a fun thing to hunt for and an interesting and eerie reminder that others have been here before. Scattered throughout the world are different collectibles to find, the best of which are the messages in bottles.

SEA OF SOLITUDE PS4 REVIEW SERIES

The voice acting didn’t help in this regard because the larger than life cadence of the monsters often made things feel like an overacted stage play rather than a series of real conversations. Intense screams and overuse of exclamations such as “leave me alone!” felt overly dramatic and consistently took me out of the story. If that was me, I would be asking for the bill early. It’s a shame that Sea of Solitude’s heavy-handed writing often gets in the way of the story it’s trying to tell, since it’s hard to buy into a relationship where someone says “you’re the kind of person I could imagine having kids with” on the first date. Things don’t always turn out how Kay wants, but eventually she accepts that the right decision isn’t necessarily the ideal one and that not all relationships can last.

Most of all, I respect that Sea of Solitude isn’t all happy endings. Sea of Solitude is technically low-poly in its textures, but the game is so vibrant and the environments are detailed enough to where the world feels real.

Sea of solitude ps4 review