Oh and about the stories repeating, I agree the resetting of story elements is probably one of the weakest parts of the game, but if you pick a different character background or aspiration, many of the stories will have different outcomes and options.

Actually, all paths that ask for a Fluke Core except the Principles of Coral one have alternate ways to complete them that don’t involve killing a Fluke. The Venturer sometimes asks for a Fluke Core, but asks for Caskets of Sapphires at the same time. The Curator is looking for the color “Irrigo”, which the Fluke Core qualifies as – but so does an Eyeless Skull (of which there are three non-combat sources).

I digress though …

I agree – collecting all the pieces for the Principles of Coral or the Curator is really grindy. So don’t do them. My last few games I’ve turned in the 2 or 3 easiest pieces of each of those, and left the rest of the quest line unfinished. I’m not required to complete these quests to advance the areas of the game I’m more interested in – but I can do the easily accessible pieces to help cover my costs.

Sunless Sea isn’t a linear IF game where you need to go through all the steps of unlocking this door every time you restart, or else you can’t progress. It’s a game with 50 different mini-stories occurring in parallel, and you can explore the ones that suit you while ignoring or only partially progressing others.

Personally, I collect enough money to not be concerned about running out of fuel … and then go explore a new corner of the game that I didn’t get to last run. I focus my attention on different ports, I choose different options when talking to my characters, or I try to set up different combinations of events to see how the game handles archrivals next to each other. And I *still* haven’t completed Saviour’s Rocks in all my hours of play (maybe because those spiders are just so icky).

And replaying some of the IF isn’t grinding. Replaying *all* of the IF, however, is, since there’s so much back and forth involved as you shuttle things across the map. I wouldn’t mind doing something like Nuncio again, but if I had to get all the bits and pieces required for the Apocyan chess piece again I don’t think I could be bothered.

Lastly, I’d make the point that even 20 hours is a non-trivial investment of my free time these days (unless I’m having a binge-gaming weekend it would take me a couple of weeks to sink that much into a game), and if Sunless Sea isn’t going to be a bite-size experience I can complete in one sitting a la Spelunky I’m not very interested in repeating the same content several times. Do I want Sunless Sea to be more forgiving? Lord, no. Much of its atmosphere is generated by it being a rather unforgiving environment – it’s hard to project an atmosphere of oppressive terror if there’s nothing terrible to be afraid of, after all. I do think it’s a better game for being able to save it, however – only being able to save in port is a reasonable compromise, especially when you’re only going to save it if you’ve got enough fuel to make it back to London.

Now, all that being said, Sunless Sea putting the option in the hands of the player and allowing them to choose between permadeath and manual saving is a great thing to do – bitching about the grind aside, I can play the game in the way that I want, and you can play the game in the way that you want, and we both get a lot out of it. I’d still advise that the typical player turn saving on, at least to start with, but they can always fire up a permadeath game if that’s what floats their boat. I wish more games were that flexible.

There is nothing akin to that in Sunless Sea, thus I do not see “replaying some of the IF” as grinding. I see the ability to explore story branches I otherwise could not. I – also – see a chance to optimize the expenditure of resources to get myself into a better financial position.

If what you are after is the IF – you need a bigger ship for exactly two quests. You need to engage in combat for one quest your character might have to do. I understand you’re trying to see the game and find out more, but – what are you even looking to spend that money on if you’re focusing on the story?

I find a lot of new captains are making a mistake much like the one you’re describing in the later part of the review. So I wanted to come by and drop a line to share my opinion on what a lot of people are faltering on in their early game.

Sunless Sea is a game about exploration – and that exploration nets you a lot of information about how the game is designed. The prices of ports are set. The value of a quest is set. Some randomization of the islands occurs, but what they contain and where you can get money from quests is set – you know what the value of finding Polythreme, Nuncio, or Avid Horizon is.

With your first captain – you didn’t. You knew none of that stuff, and almost certainly bumbled around into the darkness: excited, scared, and bewildered by what you would find there. Every new island was a giant unknown of both story and economic return. You bought items that turned out to be useless, backtracked to get something you needed, and generally were pretty inefficient with time, fuel, crew and supplies.

Your second captain will not be the greenhorn that your first captain was. When your first captain dies, he passes along something that is not included in the Legacy screen: the player’s knowledge of the Unterzee. As you take on your second, third, fifth, tenth, or even twentieth captain, you do so with hopefully a finer-honed understanding of the mechanics of the game, of where profit can be found, of how to zail in a way that is efficient and profitable.

You will spend less time reading (because you’ve already read some of the story), you will spend less resources making mistakes, you will set out with an understanding in your head of what islands will give you useful rewards for even the poorest, humblest of captains. And you can turn that knowledge into 5000 echoes of profit within the first half hour, putting you within range of a wide variety of ship upgrades. You’ll know which ones are important to get early and which ones won’t matter much.

So, this above is why I do not think permadeath is a bad thing in Sunless Sea. I think in fact it does something valuable – it allows the player to show off how much they have learned of the Zee because they can revisit old locations and quests with a sense of mastery instead of constantly encountering new and unknown things. Some might say “this is a good thing” while others will scoff at the idea of playing the same content again. To each their own – but I know I have put many more hours than your predicted amount into the game and continue to love it – almost 20 captains later.