Games Xtreme tries to escape the Bermuda Triangle in Lost Sea, and finds it's a lot harder than it seems!
Adventures in the Bermuda Triangle
Lost Sea is an isometric 3d action adventure game with rogue-like elements, such as permadeath, and starting over from near-scratch. In Lost Sea you choose one of several adventurers with which to explore the Bermuda Triangle in the hope of escaping, you're in the company of a mad professor, and you can recruit crew members as you go along. My issue with Lost Sea is that whilst the game's fun, cartoony, and has a procedurally generated hexagonal map system for the many islands you're going to explore during the tenure of your adventure - it's just a grind.
It feels like one big grind, and the costs for skills for your character, and upgrades for your ship are quite high. I felt that the Swindle had a similar issue, and the developer adjusted certain skill costs accordingly. You see, when you die in Lost Sea, you go right back to the start of the whole thing, and you get given a tiny portion of your earned XP and money. This is supposed to give you a leg up when you start the game again, except it barely scratches the surface of any kind of ability or upgrade you can buy.
I can understand that the game's meant to be challenging and I've got quite far in it, but that's a heavy price to pay for new players, and a hefty high barrier to expect a new player to jump over.
Getting Lost at Sea
So after you pick one of your adventurers, which is only a cosmetic thing, male or female, and various types of quirky looking character. You set off on the tutorial island, designed to teach you the basics of the game. The basics are pretty solid, how to move, how to find your required Tablets allowing you to sail to the next island, warning: the Tablets roll random distance on the Island map, and of course how to fight the many bad guys which will attempt to impede your explorations.
Combat is OK, it's nothing special, and you need to learn the attack patterns of your enemies - healing is limited, and there's death for you, and any crew you might have recruited to consider. You won't be coming back from death, unless you have the right crew member, and if they die, they're not coming back either.
Upgrading Stuff
There's always a shop on the island, and you can skill up, buy upgrades for your vessel. You can also recruit crew as long as you have the available slots (bought with money from the shop). Each crew member offers something to the team, some can build bridges, others are capable of Reviving you once after you die, picking locks, earning you more XP, and so on. If the costs for things, as previously mentioned, were lower the game would feel a lot friendlier - but I can understand it's probably built for the hardcore rogue-like crowd who totally adore that kind of gameplay.
Risk vs. Reward
There's just not enough reward in Lost Sea for the risk in my opinion, the amount you get refunded is minimal compared to the danger you can face. I prefer how Neon Chrome does it, yes you lose your character, your abilities, weapons, and everything else - but you keep your stats, and any money you might have made up to the point you die.
You have to buy abilities again, and weapons for the next run, but it works quite well like that.
I'm just not sure there's enough reason to keep on diving back into Lost Sea when you die, especially when you die to a trap or a creature and it feels cheap.
Then you have the Bosses, and they're basically tough as nails at times.
Pretty Cartoon Adventures
Lost Sea has a nice graphical aesthetic going for it, and each Island has their own unique biome. There's a decent spread of animations, and the characters are all designed to appear as 1930's/1940's adventurers. It runs well, and hasn't crashed once.
Sink or Swim?
Lost Sea is still a fun game, regardless of the high cost for skills and upgrades. I'm not sure of the longevity for players who're not fond of rogue-likes that punish them for dying, or games that have such a random way of determining the distance you can travel to the next island - still - it's worth a punt if you do like these kinds of games, and it does grow on you.