This game was really awesome. It looked very good and the game play was very good, though it was in some spots too easy to defeat some of the bosses.
There were a lot of nice puzzles and I really enjoyed the story telling and character design.

The only thing that left a sour taste in my mouth was the fishing part, It took me approximately 2 hours just to catch those fish. But I guess if you don't want all those achievements this does not really matter ;)

I would highly recommend picking this game up.

Since this game was originally designed for mobile, it's important to look at it two ways. both as just a game, and as a port. Before either of those, I'd like to say, as an indie developed game, and as a mobile developed game, there are definitely worse choices out there.

However, as a port, the controls are extremely frustrating as something on PC. The controls are remappable, but use, and run are mapped to the same button. This doesn't even make sense with the controller, as the game still leaves 3 buttons, all on the shoulder open. Eventually, I did get a controller, and that made this game a lot less frustrating. In other words, if you're going to play this game, do it with a controller. It's a lot less frustrating.

As a game on Steam, this is just awful. Sound and graphics are nice, barely above average, but gameplay and story wise, it's awful. It's obvious, if not immediately, as the game goes on that it was heavily inspired by Legend of Zelda:

You have a voiceless character who's father figure goes out to fight the big bad, and then fights using, among a sword and shield, which become sword and shield of legend, also fights with bombs, and a bow and arrow. He has a spin attack, and he shoots energy out of his sword when at full health. However, the game seems to miss the point of LoZ. The point was you had a world, and that you were growing in skill, along with your arsenal. You didn't just have a combo and a spin attack, your skills grew and you learned all these maneuvers, and the game rewarded you near the end for knowing these cool attacks.

In this game, you beat the final boss by using a flute you JUST got. No, I'm not joking. It doesn't matter how many cycles you go through in the final fight, you just do a little trick, that's really not hard, you just don't know you're supposed to do it, and the game doesn't even suggest that you should do it, but you do it because why not and it works, and you want to mash your face against the keyboard.

There were so many little things that I wanted to turn off the game for, but it made up for it with these little nuggets of fun: fighting is generally fun, and I honestly can't remember another time I had fun with this game. There are walls to blow up, like in LoZ, another similarity, but this time, you don't get any tips on when or where to do that, which seems to be a trend for this game. The sailing is totally worthless. The original point in LoZ: WW was for you to sail the seas, with only a map and compass to show where you have and haven't been. Here, they put you on a rail shooter, because god forbid they put something fun in this game.

Also, why, why, why did they put fishing in here. It's not fun. At all. And the worst perpetrator of this is the horrible robot fish that kills you if you don't hurry up and win.

Oh yeah, and the story is garbage. Doesn't make any sense, and the game doesn't try to make sense of it, except this huge info dump your dad(uncle?) drops on you after you beat the boss, in the stupidest way imaginable.

Honestly, i wanted to like this game. Originally, I couldn't run it that well, so when I upgraded my PC, I played the game again, and tried to have fun. But with the shallow, lifeless characters, and the convoluted, unexplained plot, it feels like a campy 60's movie turned into a video game. What is the Oceanhorn? Why didn't my dad go pick up all these weapons that I'm using? *Why did the flute he brought with him become the key in beating the Oceanhorn???* ***WHY??***

In short, don't buy this game for full price, it's not worth 15$, or even 7.50$, in my book. And try to avoid playing it without a controller.

Overall the game wasn't terrible, but not good enough for me to recommend to anyone unless you get it for 99 cents or in a Humble Bundle like I did. I had my eye on the game previously because of its clear inspiration from Legend of Zelda, and some of the game's odes to the classic series were enjoyable. As a mobile game ported to PC, the controls are kind of janky at times, especially spell targeting. The boat travel was extremely boring and tedious, and disabled any exploration on the open sea (which was my favorite part of Wind Waker).

The end boss might have been the most frustrating, janky mechanics I have ever seen. The first phase you are supposed to use your shield to deflect light beams onto its legs, but about 90% of the time it just bugged out and never registered. Either I wasn't able to block the beam for some reason, or it would hit the boss and wouldn't register it was hitting him. I finally figured out you can just use arrows+bombs instead, although much more difficult as you will always take damage from his beam trying to do so. This part alone took me a good part of an hour to finally beat. Then the second phase you have to somehow realize that a flute you picked up JUST BEFORE fighting the boss is necessary to just autowin after a short fight against the main antagonist. Talk about cruddy design. One of my least favorite boss fights in recent memory.

The story was extremely mediocre and pretty much did nothing for me. I ended up just skipping cutscenes because I found myself not caring at all what was going on in the story. Overall, it was a dissapointing venture. If it was a $0.99 mobile game on the app store, I would say sure give it a go. But the PC port for $15? Not worth the time or effort.

Action-Adventure RPGs are a dime-a-dozen these days, Is Oceanhorn a worthy addition to said genre ? The short answer would be "Yes and No"
Let's get into it.

This is not the original launch of the game, first being released on iPad where it got good reviews. So first things first, how well was it ported to PC ?
Please keep in mind that my time with the game was through a pre-release version, that being said :

-Frames locked at 60 max (Vsync on or off).
-Vsync off will result in screen tearing.
-Operates fine with mouse and Keyboard as-well with a controller.
-Most of the keys are rebindable but not all. You can rebind the movement and action keys which are most important, but you can not rebind generic commands such as "Pause" , "Menu", Numeric for items (1,2,3,4) and you can not assign keyboard commands for mouse actions (attack, use item and turn camera). Overall i found this to be acceptable but not ideal.
-No bugs, glitches, crashes or any issues from my time with the game
-Decent graphics options for quality / resolution etc.

The developer claims that this was a huge overhaul and from my time with the game i found this to be true. So overall it's ok technically speaking. My only issue is with the frame lock and tearing, hopefully the dev will have this sorted soon. OR RIOT!!! :D

Now that we are done with that on to the game!

The overall feel of Oceanhorn resembles the Zelda series, featuring a mute hero, a handful of magical artifacts that you will collect across very different environments in order to save the world!...what else ?... oh and find out what happened to your father!

The journey will take you from verdant landscapes to sun-scorched deserts to treacherous dungeons, all of these environments are beautifully crafted and never outstay their welcome.
The "I am on a adventure!" feeling is present throughout the game. A big part of that feeling is caused by the epic soundtrack which blends perfectly with your surroundings, never breaking the feeling and always adapting itself to the situation at hand.

The gameplay is rather stiff for a Action RPG and while it may be fine for ipad it's definitely sub-par for a PC title. This is a issue because from my point of view the actual combat-gameplay is the bread and butter for a game of this type. You start with a STICK for a weapon (yes a actual stick!) but you soon find your fathers sword and shield! You can block with said shield using shift and you can move around while holding block, but when you attack with your sword you are rooted in place, making for a bit of a frustrating experience when a enemy moves 5 pixels out of range you need to stop attacking, move and start attacking again.

While you traverse Oceanhors worlds you will level up and unlock new items and abilities which will allow you to solve previously impassable puzzles. So if you are a completionist there is plenty of backtracking for you in Oceanhorn.
Speaking of puzzles...these are for the most part no-brainers, with the occasional brain teaser, i did not mind this to much as i never enjoyed being stuck on a puzzle but if you want something more complex you will have a hard time finding it here.

What about the difficulty ?
Well there is no hand-holding and the game rarely points you in the right direction.
For example, if you chose not to talk to all of the towns folk or read all the messages scattered across the land you will not get access to all the locations you can explore. A location will only unlock for you if someone tells you about it or you read about it somewhere.
The actual combat is not that challenging and you will have no problems dispatching creatures or learning a bosses patterns so you can counter it.

Let's wrap this up...
If you are looking for a leisurely-paced enchanting adventure and you are not to fussy about combat then look no further.
Sure... it is not perfect and it may not be the embodiment of modern day ARPGs but it more then makes up for it in feel and style.
Overall a good game at a very attractive price which i am happy to recommend!
For a clearer view on the actual game you can watch my first impressions video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvJyt0Q7TWY&index=1&list=PLPu1MBLqtny7rnijEzJ3bPSEMepog_rOK

PC version of Zelda. Puzzles, secrets, sword and shield. If you were ever sad that they never put Zelda on the computer, this can be a very good substitute

9/10

eNjoy =^-^=

This was a very nice and fun homage to Majora's Mask/Wind Waker from what I could tell. You can see how much the devs loved Zelda, and how careful they were to honor that great franchise with a variation featuring their own vision with their own story. I'd say they succeeded with flying colors.

The game did crash every so often, but other than that, the gameplay was seamless, solid, and engaging. None of the puzzles were too difficult, and nothing in the game really did anything to bog down what ended up being a wonderful experience. As my many screenshots can corroborate, this game was also very pretty. The graphics were solid.

All told, I would give this an easy 8 out of 10.

A fine masterpiece!

TLDR ; Go buy it on Winter Sale, NOW!

This is a very similar game to The Legend of Zelda.

Lets start with technical aspects:

- excellent port from mobile
- very crisp and detailed graphics
- EPIC music
- good controls with gamepad or keyboard/mouse combo
- excellent 1440p support
- very responsive stable 60 fps

The story takes about 10 hours to finish, if You add sidequests, secrets and a bit of extra stuff to do, You can get about 15 hours of playtime from this game.

The world and story are very interesting and well made. Combat system is very responsive. There are lots of islands and dungeons to explore. What i like the most is backtracking with new abilities to gain access to hidden areas and treasure chests.

You will find combat, puzzle solving, some platform jumping and boss fights in this game.

What really deserves a mention is a great soundtrack. Music in this game is FABULOUS and i just can't stop listening to it even after completing the game.

What started as a random purchase during sale, turned out to be an amazing adventure that hooked me up to the screen for 20 hours and 100% the game.

Really recommended.

***This review was written using a key provided by the Developer for review purposes***

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas is a zelda-style RPG Adventure game currently available on Steam. In Oceanhorn you play as a boy who's father has left him a notebook and a mysterious necklace, you read the notebook and follow in your father's footsteps in attempting to slay the legendary Oceanhorn. In order to be able to defeat Oceanhorn you must travel the length and bredth of the Uncharted Seas to find ancient artifacts and powerful magic all while solving puzzles and fighting enemies.

Just to say I have actually played the game longer than Steam says but due to disconnecting it hasn't saved all of my progress.

+Nice graphics which are bright and colourful
+A large map filled with many large islands for you to explore
+The world itself and the stories behind the different locations are quite interesting
+Outstanding soundtrack
+Quite a lot of items to unlock as you progress through the game
+The three biomes as well as the islands that make them up are very different to the others
+The game's puzzles are challenging without being painfully difficult
+Nice variety of enemies
+Simple combat system which for the most part is good (I'll come back to this later)
+Very relaxing to play
+Appropriate for all ages
+Full controller support and I suggest you do play with a controller

+/-Voice acting is very hit and miss in Oceanhorn, some of the time I thought it was quite good other times it just falls flat

-The story isn't particularly interesting
-I experienced a lot of framerate slow downs to pretty much single digits, judging from other reviews this is a problem for more than just me
-Sailing between islands is pretty dull as you can't steer your ship, only shoot objects with a gun you unlock and these sections cannot be skipped

Worth a mention:
-Oceanhorn was originally an iOS game which has now been ported to PC which could explain some of the performance issues

Verdict:
8

A fun and relaxing RPG, Adventure game with nice graphics and an outstanding soundtrack that helps to prove that not all iOS ports are bad.

El K.

The comparisons to Zelda are clear and well founded, but that's purely a positive thing, if you like Zelda.
It's a fairly straight forward questline with collectibles and little-to-no sidequests, which is a shame. I enjoyed the art style and the voice acting, can be a little difficult to remember what to do if you take a long break. It could use a bit more signposting of where you're meant to go next, but perhaps I'm just spoiled in this sense from most modern games.

Hello review readers! The fact that you're reading this review means you're either potentially interested in this game or have played it & want to get another guy's opinion on the game you have been playing. I am currently still playing the game and have not finished it, about 5-6 hours in.

The game has full controller support (using xbox 360 controller for pc) and I would recommend playing it in this way. It is possible to play with mouse and keyboard, after testing both I decided to stick with he controller.

It's possible to change some graphical settings (shadows, screensize, etc.) up to a given point, I would have liked to have seen a little more options for this to make the game prettier/uglier depending on your hardware, but the basics are there.

What annoys me a little bit is that it seems to be poorly optimised for PC at this point. Meaning: even though you might have a high end gaming system, sometimes you will get the occasional FPS drop or screen tear here & there. Nothing major & gamebreaking though, but it did cause me to tone down the graphics a bit for more consistent FPS.
Nevertheless: the game has vibrant colours & is fun to look at, despite it not being "graphically advanced". The cartoony atmosphere grows on you, and I would not want to see this game with realisticly drawn characters & backgrounds, it feels fine the way it is.

I have not had any crashes yet & the game runs flawlessly, people on the community forums have reported otherwise and I did see dev responding to these topics regularly. If you are unsure if you can run this game, better ask people on the forums with similar specs what their experiences are.

The gameplay in my eyes, at first, was a bit "easy". Meaning: if you're looking for a "hard" game you will find little joy playing Oceanhorn. I'm not sure what age group i'd recommend this game for but i'd say something in the lines of 6+. If you (or your kid) can play games like Spyro the dragon or Skylanders/Disney Infinity, they can play this. It's not very hard, but to fully play the game they will need to understand the English language, be it to follow the story or just to read clues / where they should go next. The game starts off easy & keeps on making the puzzles more difficult, having you look around & go "hmm, what now" at regular intervals, keeping it interesting.

You get some freedom as in where to travel at any given point, yet, until you get some basic things handed to you by following the storyline (*minor spoilers, mouse over to show* bombs, a bow, a jump ability, stuff like that), there is little to do other than follow the main route. It's a fake sense of freedom, but a sense of freedom nevertheless. After gaining a certain item or ability, you will often backtrack on the map or take sidepaths to reach areas you could not reach before.

The music is catchy at some points, making me hum it in the background while inside a dungeon / traveling around the world. They chose to not give the main character a voice in this game, as is common in a lot of these games, which I still kind of miss - I get that this is done to make the hero more relatable to you, giving you the option to give him your voice, but having a totally mute main hero has been done countless times and I find it more enjoyable when this isn't the case. That being said: the voice actors from the other people around the world sound kind of bland and I'm under the impression some bad/good guys were all voiced by the same person. They could have spiced this up a bit.

The story feels a bit cliché to me, as an adult, but what more do you need than save princesses and find your family to go on an adventure right?

(I hate to say this, but the similarities with Zelda are at some a little too obvious, take this as a good or a bad thing, that's up to you)

PRO	CON
Non-gamer friendly	Sometimes too easy for frequent gamers
Full controller support	The way the game handles your hardware could be optimised
Music is very nice	Character voices are kind of bland

Conclusion: Don't regret being curious enough to buy this game, have been having a lot of fun with it, albeit making the game/puzzles a little bit harder would not hurt. Very good step in game for friends/family who are not that experienced with gaming. Consider it a stepping stone into adventure/puzzle games to later hook them on something more complicated like Zelda, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, ...

If you must have a score, I rate this game 67/100, it would have gotten 70/100 if the voice actors could loosen up a little :-)