Sail Forth review

With visuals reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and aspirations for exploration right out of No Man’s Sky, Sail Forth has lofty aspirations. But too often, your trek descends into tedium.

Built around an expansive, procedurally-generated ocean, Sail Forth is an undeniably ambitious title. After the Northstar asks you to help save the Deepblue from imminent peril, you’re let loose in a broken-down dinghy with tattered sails. Here, Sail Forth makes an impressive first impression, with a simulation of the sea that feels astonishingly organic. Rhythmic waves toss about your tiny craft. But raise the mast and you’ll soon be skimming across the saltwater like a seasoned sailor. The seascape is indisputably gorgeous with cel-shaded clouds, cerulean-colored wave crests, as well as marine life that swims around just beneath the surface.

Pleasingly, your little vessel handles realistically. With your sail outstretched, you can rotate or “trim” your sails to harness the breeze, sending your boat speeding toward the next waypoint. When you face a strong headwind, you’ll have to adjust your sails, or “tack”, which involves snaking your way through the airstream.

Similarly, Sail Forth’s weaponry feels convincing. After mounting cannons onto your ship, preparing for a broadside barrage can be stirring. Although the game offers a perceptible zone of fire and crosshairs, hitting a target isn’t automatic. You’ll have to estimate the trajectory of your cannon fire to annihilate enemy forts, vessels, sea creatures, or the occasional colossal treasure box abandoned on a beach. Unfortunately, your mast can obscure the targeting of distant objects.

While Sail Forth offers an effective execution of seafaring fundamentals, other components aren’t as decisively realized. Yes, the game extends autonomy, so you can pursue mercantilism, militarism, fishing, photography, or just explore an enormous but rather barren sea. But many of these pursuits can feel monotonous. There are only so many delivery errands that a virtual seafarer can handle. Likewise, I found myself revisiting islands to ‘plank farm’ a bit too often.

Navigating across the Deepblue has its blemishes. You can either explore the huge sea, scouring the horizon for distant islands, fellow seafarers, or even sea creatures. But being an oceanic explorer is filled with long stretches of tedium. A far more efficient manner is to hunt down maps or speak to NPCs; both provide clues to uncharted territories. Yet, all too often the intel isn’t exactly noteworthy. While you might find a pirate fort that begs to be toppled, you’ll also find insignificant landmasses dotted with identical trees, which undermines in-game photography. Don’t expect to reconnoiter protracted coastlines or mighty coastal mountains but know that new regions do inject a bit of visual variety.

Sail Forth doesn’t really convey the sense of taking place in a single, vast open-world. Instead, as you approach an atoll, the game pauses for a brief load before placing you in a biome, blemishing the impression that you’re sailing on a wide-open sea. Sailing would have been more immersive if the game generated a more unified water world rather than an array of obscured nodes, even if visuals had to be sacrificed further. Another irksome issue is the game’s script. Sure, the bits of nautical nonsense are amusing at first, but after awhile, the gag gets tiresome as you have to parse out every NPC request.

On the upside, exploration does provide rewards. If you have enough space, you can bring additional crewmates about, who provide helpful stat bonuses like quicker cannon reloads or an increased top speed. Pleasingly, you don’t have to worry about feeding your crew or issues such as an outbreak of scurvy. That said, there are resources to collect. These fit into Sail Forth’s most absorbing activity: building an armada of ships.

With the blueprints you acquire and the resources you gather, Sail Forth lets you build a powerful fleet that can reign over the high seas. Crafting additional boats is easy too, assuming you have the materials and a spare crew member to assign. Certainly, the increased firepower and extra hull space are welcome. But the game also prohibits you from assembling a massive navy. When you have more than four ships, the repair cost begins to outstrip the benefits and your AI captains can run aground near Skull Clan bases, potentially wrecking a vessel.

Expectedly, the sense of autonomy wanes as you approach Sail Forth’s endgame. Here, the tempo picks up like the tides before a tempestuous storm, as you battle a quintet of bosses before an interdimensional portal opens up. Here, the game abandoned its relaxed approach for a series of showdowns that escalated the intensity. While the freedom to survey the high seas is remarkable, like any watercraft, Sail Forth works best when given direction.

Sail Forth was played on Switch with review code provided by the publisher.