Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm Reviews

Hey ChatGPT make a game like Zelda.

In my humble opinion, the Oceanhorn series is the BEST Legend of Zelda inspired game series out there. OH1 was an AMAZING 2D isometric Zelda-esque experience, and OH2 is an amazing follow up! Evolves from the 2D iso aesthetic to the 3D realm extremely nicely. I'm only about 6 hours in and I'm having a great time. Combat is pretty good. Item variety and progression rate is GREAT. Difficulty is a bit more casual, but that could be the settings I applied to start (can't quite remember), but that does NOT take away from the experience. Awesome fast travel mechanic that is starting to unfold. The party combat mechanics (directing to attack/follow/action) are pretty intuitive and applied really well (in the "zoom" screen). I'm really enjoying the RPG elements of OH2, beyond the strict LoZ inspiration... Application of shards for performance enhancements and evolutions... Also, a pretty "convenient" collection system. Instead of having to hunt down recipes to get anything useful, all pots, bushes, and enemies have pretty much everything you need. The surprise aspect is the cards of each enemy you can collect to play a simple card game against NPCs to earn more supplies. Typically, these aspects are tiresome, but this aspect is (seemingly - so far) optional and straightforward. If anything, there seems to be a lack of rewarding exploration. I mean, if you search every nook and cranny, as you would in most Zelda-esque games, you do build up a ton of capital and fill your inventory, but it seems that you're only feasible choice (at least at the 6 hour mark) is to just follow the story line. Not truly a negative, just an observation that I fear will water down the desire to explore and may inevitably open myself up to miss useful optional paths/quests in the future. All in all, this is a slightly more casual Zelda inspired 3D adventure game who clearly borrows the best of all the 3D Zelda's PRE-BotW. I'm looking forward to finishing this one and GENUINELY hope the team is in the process of making Oceanhorn a TRILOGY! It's absolutely deserving of one! TLDR; if you enjoy the 3D Zelda games (pre Breath of the Wild), this game will feel right at home and be an absolutely enjoyable experience!

Now, I DO recomend this game, but that isn't to say it's not without some serious problems. Now, the graphics are good, though things do tend to sometimes resemble plastic. Fairly photo realistic plastic 8/10. The music is nice, but somtimes overly repetative. I give that 6.5/10. The swordplay lacks depth, but it's fun enough. I just don't find anything to be a challenge. This game would have lent itself well to a combat style where memorizing different rhythms or combos would switch things up in combat. But no, you have your one two slash, dodge, and block. The block option is availiable after you get the shield, but I've found that the game only recognizes that you were pressing block about half the time. And you can't jump. So this game strongly mimmics Ocarina of time's movement mechanics. Again, being able to jump would have added more depth and options with the combat. Maybe he'd swing the sword differently when airborn, things like that. So we just have to live with the one two slash. I guess you have your charge up attack, but it drains you of stamina, and you have to time it perfectly for practical use. As it stands, you can "kinda" use bombs in concert with your sword (not really) and you can use your gun... which is usually a pea shooter (but it got me through quite a bit). I give the combat a 5/10 The catalyst of the story takes place when a small town town is occupied by a strong millitay force. But the story fell straight on it's face when I picked up a side quest, right at the begining of them game. Then after I went through all this effort to get out of this highly occupied town, full of military troops, I finished that side quest. Then the game just teleported me back into that town, and the occupying forces, were nowhere to be seen. Everything was just business as usual. Townsfolk going about their ordinary life. This isn't even a sequence break, but this immersion break deflated all the urgency to the story. But I kept playing. It continued to be a"good" story... up until the end. I'm left wondering what even happened. It seems like the story is leading to a grand climax and it even says you're gonna fight the final battle... but it's against an apponent that seems irrelivant to thestory, as the final boss... Then the end credits roll, and I'm asking "what was this story even about?" As a result, I give the story a 3/10. The various creatures in this world are heavily inspired by Zelda... in fact, the whole game is. This isn't a bad thing. The execution of it was rather well done. Although, I wish the world building had more things to tell us about the world we're touring through. The world is an interesting sci fi steam punk fantasy. I like it, but other than the visuals and the main plot, there's just no depth. So envionmental story telling doesn't go far enough. I give the world you'll explore a 7/10. As for the overal world map, layout, and design of the world you experience in general, I don't like it. Now I hate how every game out there is a giant open world, but this game would have benefited by it. It's hard to describe, because everything is split up into little open sandboxes. It gets a bit disorienting when you can't seem to understand how one geographic location connects with another. Just having one big sandbox, or far fewer sandboxes, would have made every location seem much more cohesive, and less immersion breaking. It's just difficult to be invested or intrigued in a world where you have no idea to get from one place to the next. The game has map markers, and thank god for that, otherwise you'd never figure out where to go. This over reliance on that map marker is a sign of bad game design, and it makes the game tedious to play at times. This is due to the fact that my attention is on this map marker rather than the environment I'm traversing. It's a cool looking world... but the map marker gets a decent amount of attention. So, the design of the world map and how you traverse within it gets a 3/10. This is my least favorite part. There's a card game you can play in the game. Evidently, collecting them gives you some kind of combat upgrades (though it's not pronounced enough for me to nottice a difference). It's a fun game, but it took me until I was in the white city to figure out how to play it. It's a fun card game. The issue is that each of the NPC's that you can play this card game with are interesting NOT because of what they have to say, but because they'll play the game with me. I have no idea what most NPC's have to say throughout the game. So seeing as I find the card game more interesting than reading NPC dialogue, I give that game an 8/10. But... seeing as it makes the card game the main attraction, when in towns... for overal game design the card game deminishes the dialogue and world building. When you start playing, your character already had most of his gear. It felt like the game skipped a bunch of early game content. You get companions that tend to speak up and ruine the puzzles, by spilling the beans. I hate that. I'd rather choose to look up a tutorial, by myself, if I can't figure something out. But it's not like the puzzles are that difficult to begin with. I think that if the developers can't seem to figure out how to make interesting puzzles, maybe they should borrow map designs from games that aren't Zelda. I mean, they opted to design this game with all these small open worlds, and the games that are doing the best work with small open world designs are immersive sims like Dishonored and Prey, by Arcane studio. Maybe they should have gone the route of immersive sim traversal. Maybe that would have made the world easier to understand how one location connects to another... Like, I know exactly where I am in Prey and how one part of the ship connects to another. But in Oceanhorn2, you go to these islands and you sometimes have no idea how one portion of that island connects to another part of it. And why not go with a light immersive sim route with this game? Look at Breath of the Wild. That game is pretty much Skyrim Zelda eddition. Oceanhorn2 feels derivative of Zelda rather than trying to innovate on the formula, and that's a shame. It'd be nice to see an imersive sim Zelda eddition with Oceanhorn2. You open a crap load of treasure chests, but hardly any of it is of any value. You get things like a peal necklace or a wooden owl and CONGRATS you got 300 coins. But the built in economy in the game is stupid. You can go the whole game without spending any of your money. The bosses are easy. And if the boss requires you need a particular ammo type, then you have to keep breaking respawning pottery until it finally gives you what you need to continue the fight. This makes boss battles drawn out an kinda boring. This is why a game with this design would be better served with imsim properties, multiple routes and such, and this game is in dire need of a different type of progression system. So, where does the whole game score at? Well... at the end of the day, I had fun with a game with a TERRIBLE story. I'm left wondering what any of it was even about. I'd also say that although the game has side quests... it's not worth any replay value. give it a 5/10. This game has some nice production value, but there's huge flaws with it's design. It doesn't HAVE to go tthe imsim route, but it'd be better than just being derivative of Zelda with a crappy story. The main villain... I don't even understand him. How and where did he get all these troops? How did he get all these resources? I honestly have no idea what I experienced. What a mess. A fun mess. But also an astonishingly stupid mess.

A solid Zelda-like that shines when it embraces its Secret of Mana companion roots. The Good Companion system feels like Secret of Mana - Trin, Gen, and Master Mayfair join you at various points, making the adventure feel genuinely cooperative rather than lonely Companion commentary echoes BioWare of old - Characters talk during combat and exploration, adding atmosphere to the journey Beautiful visuals that can be cranked to Pixar levels - PC version looks fantastic at 4K/120fps, and UE4 engine ini edits can push visuals to cinematic quality, its a shame these settings are hidden away in the ini file. Puzzles are appropriately easy - Like Zelda, they're more about clever thinking than frustration Straightforward collectibles - Typical Zelda players will find 85% of items naturally, tracking down the rest is pretty straightforward Quality of life improvements - Lock-on system, better objective tracking, and the addictive Arcadian Tarock card game The Not-So-Good Companion AI is pretty useless in combat - They'll help with puzzles but don't expect much in fights Bland characters - Only Gen (the robot companion) has any real personality Map isn't very intuitive - Navigation to track down the last collectables can be confusing at times Limited in-game PC settings - Graphics options are slim, but UE4 engine ini edits can overcome this Bare bones conversation system - There's a very basic dialogue system that really could have been expanded on Derivative gameplay - Wears its Zelda inspirations very obviously Bottom Line At $30, you're getting a competent 15-20 hour adventure (30 hours for completionists) that does Zelda better than most Zelda-likes, especially if you miss the cooperative spirit of Secret of Mana. The companion mechanics genuinely enhance both exploration and puzzle-solving, even if the story and characters won't blow you away. If you're craving a colorful, family-friendly adventure and don't mind some rough edges, Oceanhorn 2 delivers. Just don't expect it to revolutionize the genre (It did try to revolutionise the genre with companions but it was probably budget limits that held it back) Score: 8.5/10 - Really good with memorable companion mechanics