Oceanhorn follows in the footsteps of other role-playing titles where a young boy, ironically, will have to save the world from the monster that has plagued the land for ages…something the local folk have deemed too much effort to take on other than that of the father of said boy who never returned after he too attempted to become a hero. The boy protagonist, who sets out to find his father, is spurred on by the old hermit on his home island to take on the evil that covers Gaia.
From the outset the presentation of the game is exceptional, from the sound to art direction, there is little to find fault with the game. The title, which first appeared on iOS and PC platforms, has made its way to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. As for the gameplay style, some have likened it to the Zelda series. However, I cannot comment on that since I haven’t experienced a Zelda game to date. I know that’s shocking but limited funds are a fact of life.
I have a rather love-hate relationship with role-playing games, with the first several hours playing these types of games are spent running around like a headless chicken. Some missions being overly vague in what they expect from you that you will spend hours reading random books instead of taking on the main objective. Oceanhorn suffers from this too, however since the game lacks side missions of note, you’ll spend several hours running around looking for things to progress the story, even if you don’t know what those things are. I wish there was a little more structure to the beginning so we knew what we were doing and how it fit into the larger scheme of events.
The game is set mostly in an island-type setting, where you use your boat to travel to different islands to take on missions and discover secrets. When you are on the different islands, there are several different settings that await you. For instance there is the island of Tikarel where you will buy most of your supplies, the island of Gillfords where the water people live, who won’t realize who you are until you carry a massive pot of honey, and then there is the Sky Island inhabited by people who pretty much gave up on trying to get back to the ground, even though it took a probably twelve-year-old boy an hour to achieve.
Beyond that, the game has several encounters with computer-controlled units, but mostly the game will only give you some expositional information through these encounters, and they do change from time to time. The world feels quite alive, as if there is so much more to explore than what you can see on the surface. This is a great because recently we’ve played games like Agents of Mayhem which feel like you’re trapped in a dead world.
Combat is quite easy, yet it does offer some challenge when it comes to the final boss fight. The game was initially released on mobile, and I find it quite hard to understand how you would defeat some of these enemies when you have but a touch display at hand. I had fun taking on some of these strange creatures that lurk in the deep, armed with my trusty sword and a dozen bombs. The game gives you several ways to tackle each encounter, and some require specific skills. The game is mostly puzzle-based, with some easy, and some pretty unnerving ones that await you when you take on the experience. Expect to backtrack to islands where you’ve been to discover more secrets that might be hidden in the dark where you couldn’t reach before. You gain new abilities as the title goes on so make a mental note of where you found that save you couldn’t access before.
Summary
Oceanhorn offers role-playing-loving gamers something to sink their teeth into; a title that is something you can play for hours on end or just pick up and go whenever you have time. The game progress saves as you go along so it won’t require you to suspend your Xbox One or Nintendo Switch in limbo while you continue on with life. The game can become challenging, with some puzzles being anything but obvious. Other than that, I would highly recommend Oceanhorn to anyone who is a fan of the fantasy genre, or to someone just looking for something to play while you wait for that delayed title to finally launch! Oceanhorn 2 has already been confirmed, and I will be anxiously looking forward to the game when it launches.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.