Sea of Remnants Preview: Plenty of potential that could be overshadowed by GaaS elements

In a world where Sea of Thieves still acts as the preeminent way to experience multiplayer swashbuckling gameplay, despite Skull and Bones and such recently attempting to challenge Rare's titan, you have to say that a developer is bold to take a stab at the king, if you will. But with the backing of the Chinese behemoth NetEase, Joker Studio is coming for the throne by serving up the challenger Sea of Remnants, a multiplayer RPG that is frankly dripping with charisma and potential. I first noticed this months ago during my first chance to preview the game, and over the past few days, I've returned to the project as part of the recent Wanderer Alpha Test to see how things have changed and evolved.

For one, that potential and personality I mentioned hasn't gone anywhere. It only takes a few moments to feel the charm of this game and see that Joker Studio has something promising on its hands, albeit with the caveat that there's familiarity to established alternatives. Then again, in the gaming world today, when isn't that case?

After a short and atmospheric opening sequence, we're let loose into a bustling city known as Orbtopia, a pirate haven that serves as a hub location and a main base of operations for doting buccaneers, a city that is colourful, memorable, and loaded with life. Already Sea of Remnants has its biggest challenger beat by offering a hub area that feels more lively than anything in Sea of Thieves, and this is without even mentioning the fact that Sea of Remnants isn't a regular pirate world... it's a land of swashbuckling puppetfolk.

This setup gives it an appearance and style that isn't offered elsewhere, and when you take this and the liveliness and colour of the world, match it up with voiced characters, animated cutscenes, tactile and more interactive menus, and even quite versatile gameplay depth that spans real-time ship combat and turn-based character action, it's quickly clear that Sea of Remnants has enough flair to make a big splash.

But here's the thing; unlike Sea of Thieves as an example, Sea of Remnants is overwhelmed by the typical pitfalls of the games-as-a-service model. In fact, it's so suffocating at times that it reminds me of a mobile game MMORPG, the sort of project where there are too many individual menus, currencies, tiered loot options, resources, the list goes on. There's only so many games like this one person can stomach at a time, and this to me was the biggest weakness and issue that Sea of Remnants is set to face. Battle passes, seasons, endless resources and items to gather, hundreds of individual characters to level up, it all comes together for a bit of a logistical nightmare that might push away more casual fans interested by the piracy promise and the appealing aesthetic.

This disappoints me a tad because there's a lot that Sea of Remnants seems to do right. The turn-based action, unlike the previous version I tested of the game, now feels much more balanced and fair, the character selection options make more sense, the flow of the story and narrative is more seamless and fluid. In general, this comes across as a good slate of improvements on where Sea of Remnants was eight months ago. And yet, if the game launched as it is today, I'm not sure how much time I could ultimately give it due to the tiring amount of live-service-like elements that are just sooooo exhausting today.

I'll let the odd localisation issue and graphical slip-up slide due to this being another pre-launch test, and likewise after seeing how Joker has simply improved the game over the last eight months, I'll remain optimistic that more enhancements are on the way. But I'd remiss not to say that I have concerns about the aggressive games-as-a-service nature of the game, which might see it falter and fail to challenge Sea of Thieves over the simple reason that it's not as fundamentally easy and fun to pick up and play every now and then. So yes, cautious optimism. That's where I'll remain with Sea of Remnants for the time being.