Horizon's Gate Reviews

Game that went well beyond what I expected. Lot of fun details and love put into this.

fun game to explore. only gripe is that i found leveling up a bit too slow. Although having all those classes and mixing them up is still a fun system!

Very unique game, I really enjoyed the amount of archetypes each character could fit, mixing and matching is rewarded!

Technically works on the steamdeck, but the text is very very small, making certain parts of the game next to impossible. Also the game just about requires a mouse.

Absolute banger of sandbox tactical rpg. Want to sail the seas and discover interesting places with enemies and loot? Check Want to be a merchant, buy goods from one shore and resell them for higher price elsewhere? You got it Wanna assemble a fleet of powerful warships, wreck pirate fleets and steal their ships? Go at it Wanna do all of the above along with doing quests for guilds, challenging dojos and unlocking new classes for any character among a bunch of other things? Buy this game!

Amazing game. It's FF tactics with a true open world. There's also naval combat that's rudimentary but solid. Tons of content for the price. I just beat it. [spoiler] I don't know if I'll go back and try ng+ or new races or the endgame dungeon bc I feel like I got everything out of it that I wanted. The game lets you do what you want. There are 3 factions, or you can just go pirate. Character customization is really good as the skills are simple but compelling. By the end of the game my self insert was teleporting around the battlefield stabbing everyone (Krakenslayer/Berserker with teleport from warpblade and ice armour from enchanter made it feel like my own unique build) while my crew each excelled at their own speciality. I made Reeve a nigh unkillable heavy tank. [/spoiler] There's alot to explore and even if I don't go back I know I'll be thinking about this game for a long time.

This game was a real surprise, the character customization and sheer amount of class combinations makes it very unique. Exploration was a ton of fun, and ship battles/boarding also kept me wanting to see more and more. Highly recommend!

Horizon's gate is game that has good bones, given it inherited them from the strides made and refined by Voidspire and Alvora before it, but ultimately suffers in its vanilla state from a lack of focus that leaves several systems, from trading to ship management, feeling a bit undercooked. The tactical combat system feel as good as ever once you learn them, but even here it feels like Horizon takes a step back by actively locking many advanced classes behind finding and paying for specialized trainers. Said trainers do not instantly make the class available for use by your units either, unlike the similar system in Alvora Tactics (where the classes weren't even locked behind a paywall, you could unlock them via natural progression or skip the grind by paying the trainer/give them the class' mask to instantly unlock it for use on all units). I understand why this was done, to help give a reason to scour every port in the world and fill out the map, but coming from my experience with the first two games in this anthology of sorts, the change feels very... frustrating. I would've much preferred the Alvora style where the classes could be unlocked on individual units via natural progression, but finding and paying for the trainers would instantly make them available for use on your entire crew. Also, for some reason known only to the dev and god himself, enemies now always move before your entire team in combat. ALWAYS. You will always be fighting on the backfoot, reacting to their opening assault instead of proacting by setting up your own. The other games used a dynamic initiative, and honestly this design change baffles me the most. The story here is somehow even lighter than both Voidspire and Alvora despite showing some promise in the initial setup. I spent my first 50 hour playthrough thinking that at set points or entering certain ports, I would be fed more story beats to follow and weave a bigger picture as to what was going on. Instead I basically fell into the skyrim sidequest syndrome where the entirety of my playthrough was spent doing side content. Not because I suffer from rampant ADHD, that's a whole separate issue, but instead because there is actually only two major segments to the main quest here: the beginning, which you are put through during the intro, and the ending... which is where literally ALL of the narrative reveals and major call backs to past events in other titles are made. But you won't be strong enough to survive the ending without first doing 50 hrs worth of self-directed side activities to strengthen your crew and fleet. I commend the game on the amount of player freedom, I do, but a bit more structure to help guide us from the beginning of the story to the end would've been nice. The admiral as an antagonist honestly falls pretty short compared to Ekrast from Voidspire, or even Alvora, and thats considering the great worm Alvora was more of a looming force of nature rather than an actual character. By the time I got to the end and finally got answers from him, I felt nothing aside from mild annoyance and a sense of 'is that really it, mate?'. Like there was so much more that could've been done here, with the whole premise of every major nation vying to control the legacy of Ekrast and the Voidspire. It feels like you wasted a really interesting story idea with an antagonist who is literally content to just let us live after we prove ourselves to be a credible threat to their plans. Anyways, for all the flaws of some of the base game's narrative and design choices, it is still a good game worth playing. Not as good as the OG voidspire or even Alvora, but still worth it. Mods help to address some of the pain points, like the combat this series has thus far excelled at taking a back seat to the rather shallow secondary systems of the port building, sea travel, and trading. My advice is give the vanilla version a good few hours to see what its like and then go browse the steam workshop. Lot of great QoL and dungeon expansions there. Planning to do a fully modded playthrough from start to end sometime in the future. 7.8 politicking naval officer fish men pulling a rushed feeling Boss betrayal on us like this is one of Hideo Kojima's scrapped Metal Gear lore drafts out of 10.

Really enjoyed this game. The blend of exploration, minor economics, tactical combat and extensive classes to explore was really awesome. Couldn't put the game down once I started getting past the basics. I am looking forward to playing this developers other games, and eagerly await a potential sequel to this game. Tons of features can be expanded on or added, but rest assured this game has enough meat on it to keep ya going.

Singularly the most enjoyable indie RPG I've played in a long time. Combining the sensibilities of Suikoden, Final Fantasy Tactics, Ultima 7 and Sid Meier's PIRATES!, Horizon's Gate delivers a relaxing, methodical and surprising gameplay experience with formidable granularity of details and impressive amounts of player freedom to indulge whatever style of play they might like. The turn based on-foot combat has the most depth to it of course, with its FFT-esque class system and impressive prop interactivity giving the player many ways to win fights as cleverly or as simplistically as they like. (The character progression system is however hampered by the Trainer dependency for classes, which means that you have to basically luck into finding the right trainer for the classes you want to develop your character with. The fact that the game lacks a Morrowind style conversation system means you likely won't find clues to exactly what you need or rumours as to where important things like Trainers might be. If you're thorough in exploring each village in the game world you should find all you need, but otherwise will need to consult a guide, which is a little disappointing considering just how much of the game is self-explanatory.) Its wide open world will reward you for simply travelling, talking and trading, with few scenarios where combat interrupts your antics without you looking for it. You can look at this tone and pacing as being like an anti-Underrail; the setting may have its sharp edges, but so long as you're clever and pick your battles the game won't punish you too harshly for miscalculations. Just keep the crew fed and trade a little everywhere you go, and the simple act of filling out the map will reward you in time. (One issue to keep in mind is that despite looking very much like a console RPG or contemporary simple pixel-art games like Stardew Valley, Horizon's Gate is not ideally enjoyed with a controller on the couch. The UI is very small in certain elements, and while controller options are baked in the game's inventory management is too fiddly to be done without a mouse, much like with Ultima 7. This is a real shame as the game's generally cozy, low stress pacing would really benefit the player who wants to crash on the sofa with their head leaned back rather than leaning over a desk. On that subject the game's greater Stash inventory would really benefit from more tabbed indexing, because you acquire A LOT of loot in this game and sorting through all of them even with the Tile-based UI would be much simpler if the stacks of stuff you find could be auto-sorted by item type with clearer labels. You can tell Sean understands this too, as your Stash is effectively unlimited and doesn't require management, with the game letting you instantly chuck things in your Stash from any location. A great anti-frustration feature.) For fans of the Metroid Prime games, the Look feature will likely scratch a seldom accomodated itch. Near every item in the game can be Looked at, providing a short, practical description of what it is and a clue as to what can be done with it. From enemies to mundane objects to obscure artifacts, the game incentvises investigateing them all and will pay off the player for their intrigue once the player finds out how. This motivates the player to keep an eye out and try to remember to check every new things, developing a stronger sense of awareness around every set of pixels. On that note, the journal also has a dedicated Note keeping page, which is a vital feature for open world games that expect the player to take an interest and yet is so seldom provided. Keeping note of any detail, any lead that could be returned to later with more resources and combat prowess, makes the player feel rewarded for their attention to detail in a way open world slop often fears allowing the player to do so. HG goes there and provides that, and its wonderful. The steady drip-feed of mechanics, surprises and charming writing means that Horizon's Gate will likely enamour you with its confident ideosyncracies. If you happen to be sick of what passes for RPGs coming out of the AAA space, with their inane box ticking boredom, agendas and bloat, Horizon's Gate could be your perfect antidote. Its helped me in a time of profound personal strife, so please take it from me that any criticism I have for it is with deep respect and enthusiasm for the developer's future projects. I am now really looking forward to trying out Kingsvein (HG's successor), which I had initially bounced off but now am much more confident to try out. Sean Hayden is a developer to watch and support if you enjoy the RPG genre