Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas Impressions

After my first hour of play my suspicions of Oceanhorn being a Zelda clone feel pretty validated. However the environment design is very voxel-ish, the landscape feels very much like Dragon Quest Builders or Minecraft; there are multiple layers of land that the main character can scale if they're close enough but must find stairs or ramps to ascend or descend otherwise. The camera is nearly fixed at an isometric angle, you can lean it to the left and right a little with the right analog stick but I haven't found that to be useful yet. The animation is a little choppy; the main character snaps to face any new direction you want to go in and the movement->combat transitions jitter just a bit. But I stopped paying attention once the puzzles were introduced because I began focusing more on the environment trying to visualize the solution. The controls are very responsive, I haven't felt any delay or muddiness during combat at all.

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The landscape is very rectilinear.

When you're on the sea you get free look and you can shoot at things.

Approaching an island is automatic, you actually softly crash into the pier before leaping onto the dock.

On one of the inhabited islands we have a Not-Zora living in a cave requesting rare collectibles.

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The story goes that during the prologue your father has a long-standing rivalry with a giant steam-powered crustacean automaton called Oceanhorn. Just before the title comes up he goes off on one stormy night to confront Oceanhorn and he disappears. Your mission, should you choose to accept it quest is to seek out the lost trinkets of mystical power that will surely defeat Oceanhorn once and for all. To do this you must explore the islands around where you woke up, fighting enemies, solving dungeons, learning new tricks, etc. As you explore each island and talk to people and read messages in bottles, you will learn of more islands that are in the area that you can sail to, the game even recommends that you go to each new island as soon as you learn of it. Sailing is much simpler than in Zelda WindWaker in that you merely need to navigate to the island and the boat just goes to it. There are boxes, mines, and knock-off Octorocks for you to shoot with your boat-mounted rifle while in transit, but so far they only provide XP and some gold.

Each island has a "percent complete" banner under its name on the world map so there are definitely reasons to go back and see them again once you have more equipment. For example I have so far discovered throwable bombs and a magic spell that allows me to press buttons remotely which may allow me to unlock new paths on the islands I've been to already, though I don't recall anything heavily hinting at what tool or magic I needed to surpass the barricades. That may be me unfairly comparing it to the Zelda series and their relative consistency of environmental hints across games.

The game definitely grows on you, the more comfortable you get with the control scheme and the more familiar the art style becomes, it's much easier to let your focus wander to see what's around you. The puzzles aren't mind-benders, and you should be able to visualize the solution to the block pushing puzzles before you have to push one. One thing though: near each block puzzle, there is a reset switch in-game you can step on to return the push blocks to their original positions. There is one particularly clever puzzle where you are in a narrow corridor and you need to get a push block behind you; in order to do this you push the block beyond where the reset switch is and reset its position so you can double back and take it to where you need it. I enjoyed figuring that one out.

I would definitely recommend this game. It's not a "get this now" title, I doubt any indie game on Steam is, but if you can find it on sale for 50% off there are certainly worse things you can spend $7.50 on. According to IsThereAnyDeal.com the historic low price on Steam has been $6 and other 3rd party sites have had it down to $4 and change. If you're looking for an adventure game that's like Zelda but not, this is a good option.