The Sea Eternal

This game is hard for me to describe. It is a long Choice of Games work, polished, descriptive, with a well-thought out underwater setting involving a complex relationship between merpeople, whales, giant squid, and humans. The majority of the game deals with navigating and adjusting this complex relationship through diplomacy and combat.

The combat is centered on strategic choices rather than rng's or blow by blow play. All of the aspects I have mentioned so far worked well for me.

But I struggled with the story. I kept having surprises where I realized that the game was not going where I thought it would as a result of me misunderstanding what I had read earlier. I think the best way to describe the plot structure is that there are several major threads that seem like the focus of the whole story, which then get buried and resurface later. Each one is interesting, and each one I wanted to see the end of, but I felt like none got the screen time they deserved. Only by playing 3 times was I able to get a satisfying resolution to threads like the mermaids' past, the squid-whale conflict, and gender issues.

That said, there were many moments of brilliance in this game, clever plot choices that made me want to play it through multiple times. Its treatment of the nature of reality resonated with me, and the mythology behind the merpeoples origin was very well done. I feel like I paid a very reasonable amount for a lot of excellent writing and gameplay, and I recommend this game.