More and more games are inspired by historical events, such as the history of the Three Kingdoms in Dynasty Warriors or the historical wars of Japan in Touken Ranbu. And today, we will travel back in time to the Age of Discovery of South America with the Sailing Era.
Sailing Era begins with the introduction of four characters from four countries: Portugal, China, Arabia, and Japan. Despite their different backgrounds, they both aspired to explore lands that were still far away and strange in the world. Everyone has their own reasons, some are simply curious, but there are also those who have a strong desire for revenge.
The game is designed in an isometric perspective format, a perspective that allows players to easily observe multi-dimensionally from 2 sides and top. The main characters will never seem to meet face to face, even when controlled by the player to the same location. However, the opening can be shocking because there will be a long “textbook history” page waiting for you.
Getting more resources in Sailing Era is quite random and unpredictable. Commodities are subject to irregular changes in price, not to mention unexpected events such as suddenly catching fire, all of which can happen in an instant. Black number players are forced to restart the previously saved process.
Moreover, the longer you stay at sea, just a little inattentive, the faster your reserves will “evaporate”. Despite the assigned tasks, the direction in the game is very vague. Most games don’t mark where you need to go. Players only have to trust their intuition and learn from each try, downloading and re-downloading the save until you know exactly what to do. Not only that, the English translation was judged to be unnatural, with many mistranslation errors and poor expression.
A commendable point that many gamers appreciate in Sailing Era is the historical element that the game brings. Depending on your location, there will be NPCs in different shops and all have voices in the same intonation that matches the language spoken by that country. The characters all have extremely fluent pronunciation, not sounding awkward at all. However, the main characters are only partially voiced with sighs or short sentences.
With Sailing Era, players can use either a handheld controller or a keyboard and mouse. However, the keyboard will be the option chosen by more gamers. With a handheld controller, the user interface is not only cluttered, but you can’t re-enable any buttons. With a keyboard, on the other hand, you can practically rearrange most of the buttons and create a custom layout you’re most comfortable with.
However, no matter which method you choose, controlling the ship is quite difficult. Battles seem to be randomly triggered as soon as you’re at sea. Several battles are required for the story to progress. Especially at the beginning of the game, it will take you quite a while to finish a battle.
Sailing Era is a game with fascinating historical elements and beautiful graphics. Unfortunately, however, the gameplay part of this game is constantly being ‘buying time’ due to the annoying and tiring gameplay loop, combined with confusing translation. Unless you have a tutorial on hand or have a lot of patience to go through the process of trial and error, and learn from experience, you’ll probably want to spend your time on another game.