Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas Review (PC)

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas made quite a splash back in 2013, when it launched for the iOS platform as an action-adventure experience that's part love letter, part clone of Nintendo's famous Legend of Zelda series.

After quite a while, developer Cornfox & Brothers has finally released the game onto the PC platform, overhauling its mechanics, visuals, and controls to fit a mouse, keyboard, or controller. Throw in the pretty great story and the already praised features, and the game is looking like a winner.

Seeing as how Nintendo isn't willing to bring its Zelda titles to PC, does Oceanhorn satisfy the action-adventure niche or should it go drown in the sea? Let's find out.

Story

Oceanhorn kicks off with a pretty cliché premise, as a father must leave his son to go take part in a tough battle. This time around, the father must eliminate the Oceanhorn, an underwater monster whose genesis is quite interesting. There is a fair amount of world building right at the beginning of the game, but unfortunately, it doesn't exactly play a big part in the rest of the game.

You then control the abandoned son who must travel the world in search of Oceanhorn and his father. The journey is a fairly interesting one but don't expect that many intense story moments, as the game offers a lot of freedom and doesn't impose that many courses of action upon the player.

The conclusion is alright, but given the pretty interesting premise of the Oceanhorn universe, it feels a bit of a letdown.

Battle enemies in Oceanhorn

Gameplay

Let's make it clear from the get-go: Oceanhorn is more or less a reskinned version of Legend of Zelda in terms of gameplay, as the protagonist requires just a green costume and a blond love interest to become Link. This may sound like criticism but it's not, considering PC users haven't been able to play Zelda games, at least not by legal means.

What's more, given the amount of polish and the solid gameplay mechanics, Oceanhorn can easily stand out as a pleasant experience.

You start things off with a stick that you can use to fend off foes, but soon you obtain the sword and shield used by your father. Your inventory starts to expand as you visit new islands and environments, so you'll get to use a bow and even magic attacks, not to mention bombs and other things. When in doubt, you can even pick up pots, barrels or rocks and throw at enemies.

The actual combat mechanics are a bit too simplistic and remind players that this was a mobile game at first. Even so, while only boss fights require a bit more thought than just mindlessly hacking and slashing, Oceanhorn is still pretty fun from a fighting standpoint.

Enemies are pretty varied and all employ a loveable design that makes it a bit tough to slash them down until they explode into coins and experience gems. Speaking of the experience system, you can level up your character and take them from lowly vagrant to legendary adventurer, while unlocking more skills and tasks.

Exploring is done by walking around the various islands scattered throughout the world, but also by employing your boat. Here, however, is one of the biggest downsides of the game. You can steer your boat, and using the map is atrocious. Traveling is relatively fast, and you can even shoot down aquatic foes and crates for extra cash and experience. Even so, it does kind of make it tedious to go from island to island.

What's more, new environments are portrayed on the map only after you heard or read about them. As such, if you miss a conversation or don't completely explore an island, you might not even be able to reach new areas.

Puzzles are pretty well designed, but unfortunately, some environments are maze-like in structure and make it very hard to orient yourself, especially since some also employ one-way paths, like bridges that collapse once you've walked on them once.

Explore the ocean in Oceanhorn

Visuals and sound

Oceanhorn: Master of Uncharted Seas looks quite good, using a cartoonish aesthetic in a great way, impacting not just the character design but also the whole world. Every environment, enemy, building, and piece of a level looks really good, and the isometric perspective manages to keep a good camera zoom level throughout the game.

The soundtrack is also perfectly whimsical when exploring but also fairly intense when entering combat. It does get a bit repetitive after a while, but if you don't binge on the game, you won't notice such a thing. The dialog is voiced just in cut scenes and works fairly well.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion