Blacksea Odyssey Reviews

Blacksea Odyssey is an amazing concept for a game. You fly around space on a rocket surfboard, tethering beasts the size of planets, wielding spears and runes that allow for a host of amazing builds to facilitate a combination of tactical combat and twitch reflexes. Utterly unique from start to finish and bursting with original ideas like Willy Wonka playing Asteroids: Monster Hunter Edition while listening to Glory Hammer in the background. There is just one problem: everything I just described is so shaky that it measures on the Richter scale. Don't get me wrong - it is a decent game and I'm going to give it a recommend for just how many unique ideas it has. But keep in mind that unique ideas are often unique for a reason. And just as a pogo-stick made of ice cream or an airplane made of banana bread sound both unique and awesome - they are not structurally sound. Let's talk about what the game gets right: I enjoy combat. Very fun to fly around fighting a wide cast of imaginative enemies. Going up against some of the big bosses in particular and pulling chunks off of them until they look like they have suffered explosive bouts of leprosy. And I don't know why, but there is nothing like chasing down prey many hundreds of times your size and stabbing it to death with sewing needles that makes me feel like a legendary deep space hunter. This game is 90% combat, 10% prep. But prep can completely alter how a fight goes. Maybe a particular set of runes are not doing the trick against the monster of the hour, but hey, swap in some water runes and the monster gets mashed. Which is important as a lot of the monsters you face are fairly beefy, with the kind of health bars that are used in gyms to rack weights for power lifters and small to medium sized forklifts. The problem - by which I mean the problem around which all the game's problems revolve - is that the game is very clearly about luck, the runes you get dictate the kind of enemies you can handle, and yet the game is designed with the idea that skill is the deciding factor. I'm sorry, but there is no answer to certain enemies if you don't have the equipment to fight them. The most glaring example of this is when the game throws something like a berserk reefgoblin at you. How do you handle an enemy that is invulnerable to the front, can't be killed through raw damage, and can survive its body being ripped from its head - and STILL get faster? The answer is that you don't. Even if you boost, you run into the problem where your charged spear is slower than your character's movement - meaning that you've sunken time and resources into an enemy that just isn't worth the effort put into killing it. As the only way to kill it is to get a near impossible shot on a tiny fin going mach twelve and you'll suffer far more damage than any reward that creature can provide. Even when an enemy is not impossible to kill, there are many cases where they are just tedious to deal with. Puffers, Angels, Starbait, Goblins, Sandchewers, and several other enemies are just not fun to fight and are usually not worth the trouble to kill. It gets even worse when most enemies in the later stages need to have their heads ripped off to have the common decency to stay down. And while fighting any one of these enemies is usually doable, every enemy comes in a group - often making dispatching them dangerous and tedious as you can't even position yourself to do damage without the right rune set up. And that's really the killing blow. Later enemies just are not worth it. There is a strong argument to be made that if you're lucky enough to have your build sorted out you should skip killing enemies in the last couple rounds and just head straight for the boss of the zone, as engaging with the game at that point will always be a net loss. But even then, it goes back to the idea that even if you have your build sorted out, that doesn't mean you have the resources to beat the boss - as once again, some of the charging enemies are so fast that unless you are geared for boosting, you have no chance of outrunning them. It's to the point that playing against an elite charger boss is a flip of the coin. Sometimes they get mildly annoying enchantments like poison, or fire, or ice. But then you land on that 1 out of 4 chance that the boss whose entire gimmick is hitting fast and hard - you land on the berserk enchantment when makes the boss hit *faster and harder*. I don't think I'm selling this correctly, so let me expand. There are multiple *normal* bosses that rely on use of your radar to have a chance against. You run along side them for a bit chucking sowing needles at them like an abusive spinster before they tear out of there like speed racer. But Berserk on elite bosses seems to increase their speed by some unknown percentage - and just as 50% faster on a tortoise just turns it into slightly faster tortoise, 50% faster on a formula 1 race car turns it into a interstellar warp missile powered by hate instead of blood. So by the time the monster shows up on your radar he is already helping himself to a space cowboy sandwich. I know at least one has an attacks that... well it isn't an instakill. It's more like an attack that does massive damage and can proc multiple times back to back that it is practically an instakill. It is the "I'm not touching you" of instakills. But these are all extreme examples. If you play the game right, prioritize keys and drop rates over everything else, and keep runes based on their future utility against certain monsters, then you're going to make it. But here is the problem with that: most of the rewards suck. The best character in the game is Emerald Jones - he is unlocked by killing one of the easiest bosses. The worst character is Xexemoth, and he is unlocked by killing one of the hardest. Even beating the game only rewards a mediocre spear. You know what the funny part is? One of the best spears in the game is supposed to be unlocked after completing the bestiary - this would require multiple runs beating the same bosses multiple times along with all the worst enemy types until you collect all 60+ entries. But by the grace of God, the programmers had a fit of good sense and didn't introduce the change - as such, the weapon Judgment is unlocked after only 20 entries. Far more doable and actually makes the early game fun past the first few runs. The wildest part is that Judgment isn't even *that* great a weapon and it would have taken one of the most tedious challenges to complete *AND* you would have no new challenges to test it on. I mean, maybe Elite mode - but you seriously have a better chance of beating Elite mode before filling out the Bestiary. And that's still not the craziest part of this game. In the weirdest of weird moves, legendary runes are almost never seen in this game. Oh they exist and in the hands of a player that knows their business they can be very useful, but I know for a fact there are multiple players that beat the final boss and never seen one. Again, this is the dev trying to make the player feel like they have earned it, but i'm gonna be honest: unless that rune has the power to one-shot a boss, it is a little excessive to put 10 hours between every rune a player sees. I myself had only seen 1 or 2 in the 40 hrs I put in before I got the key spear and both of them, while powerful, were by no means game changers. So with all these petty grievances aside, why should you play it if the rewards suck and the gameplay is generally unpolished, often breaking its own rules? To be honest, the biggest reward this game has to offer are the hunts themselves. Just the sheer spectacle of the 4 tent pole bosses justify the asking price. And just like I said at the start, it is a unique concept I haven't seen anywhere else. Just goes to show: flying in a hurricane with an airplane made of banana bread is a terrible idea, but what a story to tell!

Bunch of cool enemies, bosses and different possible builds. Not endless, you can get around 15-30 hours of content.

Blacksea Odyssey is a highly enjoyable game. [b]You should get it.[/b] If you need further encouragement: Blacksea Odyssey feels like [i]Risk of Rain[/i] meets [i]Worms[/i]. It's a top-down Roguelike-like, with many unique weapon mods and destructible terrain. The emphasis of the game is on boss battles: the end of each of the rounds is a boss that you select at the Bounty Select screen, so you know what to expect. The stages between bosses are incredibly fluid, relying completely on your focus to advance and defeat the boss. But even more than that, each mob fight feels like a mini-boss fight. To defeat enemies, you have to focus their weak spots, then rip them off with a secondary-fire (a harpoon shot). [b]This harpoon mechanic is extremely gratifying.[/b] To me, this feels like what many Roguelikes (or Roquelites, or Roquelite-likes, you know what I mean) have been missing over the years. I don't want to just beat shit up, [i]I want to make it feel like my shots matter.[/i] I want to feel like a Master, more than just a Badass. And Blacksea Odyssey does that for me. In all fairness, I did encounter a bug that resulted in me dying. But was that enough to make me want to stop playing? [b]No.[/b] (The Krakhammer boss became invulnerable, getting stuck at 100% health, more than halfway through the battle. But I'm almost positive that the bug was a result of me pausing the game during combat, which was due to me jotting down a note of how awesome that boss battle was.) It is likely that you will encounter bugs, but very few (if any) of these will be game-affecting. Most are graphical or text bugs (I unlocked 135,000 chests!?), and the ones that do affect the game are forgivable. And on to the polish. The polish on this game is fantastic. It's more than I've come to expect in most indie studios. It's more than I've come to expect in games beyond indie studios. You can feel the love the developers put into this game. Background layers in stages, boss reveals, music tracks, character animations, destructible terrain, lighting effects on walls, character sheets, stage types, itemization, their spin on character creation, harpoon ripping physics... I could have a list a hundred items long, and still miss things that I appreciate. Blacksea Odyssey is a great game. I enjoyed it more than Everspace, and that's saying a lot. You should buy it. [I played this game using a mouse and keyboard.]

-First up, Console review- So I bought the Switch release which just came out about a week ago and while it's fun there, the JoyCons are not ideal. The Pro Controller alleviates some of the twitchy/precise aiming needed. I would imagine the other console releases suffer the same fate. I've gotten as far as round 5 with amazing early runes only to be demolished by enemies that are putting a clinic around you because half the time your battle is with the controls. 2 bugs I've noticed on the Switch release: SLOW. SLOW. SLOW inventory managing and the occasional UI text pop up that does not go away if your pointer was hovering over an item when you back out of inventory/shop. -PC- Just get the PC version and call it a day. -Cons- *More music wouldn't hurt. *Enemies are huge damage sponge.

If i had to sum this game up in short it would be something like this: Easy life up to about the time you hit the yellow zones, then it turns into "Holy shit everything turns on a dime faster then i can move" you just end up in very much dumb looking marry go arounds while trying to figure out what part of the creature is actually hittable but most of the time you get get killed before you figure anything out and have to restart since all you hear is the *think* sound of not damaging something. A lot of the longer enemies seem to have the "center" of them on the head, meaning the head is the part that just mostly spins around and the tail flies at beyond undogable speeds in the marry go around. Don't get me wrong, im not hating on the game for it being hard, an easy dame tends to be boring. But i dont think its hard cus of the right reasons. My complaints are this: - The jump from blue to yellow is far to drastic - Creature turning should be adjusted to be a bit slower ( or at least dont have them turn on a dime if their front is armored...) - Have it a bit more clear where to hit some creatures, specially things like the worms in yellow - Have the shop actually be useful, the amount of times i have over a thousand or even 2 thousand gold simply cus there was nothing good in the shop is almost every run. I might sound like a crybaby to some of you but games are meant to be challanging for the right reasons.

While this game is incredibly hard, That does not mean anything as you feel awesome every second you play it, It only took me fifteen minutes to fall in love with this game. A large array of creatures and monsters to fight, Large, amazing biomes And amazing boss battles are everything I look for in a game and this has it all. I love this game and I cant wait to see everything new that is added to it

This is a great game, its like a cross between Galak-Z and Binding of Issac but with more fight and dodging, great cast of monsters to kill and maim, random loot and powerups to find. I really like the banter between the hunters and the music is excellent. Well Done.

The controller support is so messed up that I can't recommend this. If you're a keyboard and mouse player, it's fine.

Blacksea Odyssey is a game that, while an interesting and initially fun concept, fails at being a fun game. One of the biggest points against this game is that it is abandoned in what can only be described as an unfinished state. There are items that literally do nothing (unintentionally), attacks that have inaccurate hit boxes relative to their sprites, and a truly severe lack of balance. The controls of the game are just bad. Movement is slippery and turning 180 requires taking wider turns than Euro Truck Sim; your spear attacks have very slow projectiles, making aiming annoying, and the boost mechanic is terrible. You use 1-3 of your 3 boost based on how long you hold it. 1 boost is so small as to be almost useless, 2 is usable but the cooldown is atrocious, and 3 is way too fast, to the point where your turn speed is not sufficient to stop you from careening away or directly into whatever you were fighting. The enemies in the game have interesting designs, usually a mash of two existing creatures, but sometimes angry flesh triangles. Unfortunately they're almost all spastic bastards who either fire endless projectiles, or are covered in armor and just try to rub on you, or both. Enemies also have a lot of health, so every fight drags on. And, finally, the upgrades you get, the whole roguelike part, is complete and utter bullshit. You can get a legendary rune that carries the whole run from your first chest, or get literally nothing useful after taking down 5 of the 9 regions. Consumable items also suck, most last only 10 sec (a boss fight could last 10 minutes) since the bosses are so different, you might want a different build for different bosses, but it's so rare to get anything useful you almost never have a cohesive build, much less multiple. Unlike most rogue-likes, you have almost no interesting decisions to make; most of the time you have a bad choice and worse choices. Overall, a frustrating and unfinished experience.

A solid game with an original idea that still has a few technical hiccups. The game is divided into 9 stages, under the premise that you're engaging in a galactic space whaling hunt. During and between stages, you customize your loadout through spear runes and ship runes. Think Galak-Z meets Isaac. PROS: - Crazy boss fights - Music (for the most part) - Multiple characters, weapons, and upgrades - Challenging! CONS: - No resolution about 1920 x 1080 yet. - Spotty art in places (looking at you, loading screen!) - Music looping is rough on some tracks The premise and execution alone have me hooked, but I do hope the post-launch support is strong.