Explore and fight on open seas; Similar locations, Identical enemies.
Do you have a fantasy to set sail into the mighty blue ocean in the hopes of finding new lands, slaying notorious pirates, drinking some rum and most importantly finding treasures and booty? Did you just think of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag when you read that? You are mistaken, because the game being reviewed is Windward, a naval action exploration sandbox game that puts you in control of a single ship sailing the high seas of a large procedurally-generated world. This new entrant into the starved genre is a very proficiently built game with many features, a charming art style with a relaxed tone and nice music. Its slow pace and repetitiveness however, sucks the fun right out and makes for a boring grindy experience that makes you quickly lose interest in the game.
You start off in a randomly generated map after picking one of 4 factions, each one with its own specialization, combat, trading, exploration and diplomacy. However the choice of faction does not alter the gameplay at all, since any faction you pick will end up doing the exact same activities. Most of the tutorial is presented as hint boxes near the top of the screen. As the hints are randomly cycled though, it took me far longer to learn some important game mechanics, such as hiring another allied ship, than it should have.
[pullquote]Windward is built with the Unity engine and does look rather pretty.[/pullquote]Windward is built with the Unity engine and does look rather pretty. The art pallet is colourful and bright. The shading effect on the water makes it look great. There are plenty of visual effects that make the game look beautiful like sails blowing against the wind, snow falling near cold areas of the map. As you start the game, exploring and understanding the game mechanics is made enjoyable thanks to Windward’s beautiful art and light effects, backed up by uplifting happy adventure tunes.
While the game starts out positively, it soon falls down, because it fails to offer anything new once you have played through its initial offerings. You and your town progress level by level; but the same missions are repeated throughout the game, irrespective of your current level or specialization. The economy is very simple, making trade rather easy. The main tasks in Windward are exploring the map, finding new towns, trading, completing quests and fighting pirates. The game promises to be a maritime RPG that offers freedom in the choice to explore, trade, barter and battle, but even when all these elements are combined, this slow paced game can get repetitive very quickly.
[pullquote]Windward offers both single and multiplayer modes.[/pullquote] You can team up with your friends or play with strangers in online player hosted servers that share a common world, with each player doing their own tasks. One thing to note is that your personal progress is shared across all game modes. You can customize your ship in single player and join in the multiplayer with the customization following through. Managing a single ship and watching it grow more powerful and speedy is a joyous feeling.
Exploration
[pullquote]Fully functional with either a keyboard and mouse or Gamepad[/pullquote]As you sail about completing tasks, you will collect a few different resources. Wood is used for repairing your ship, Stone to build and repair structures, gunpowder is ammunition for your abilities and gold is used to buy upgrades and trade items. You will constantly encounter new low level towns which you will have to complete quests for, so that the towns will grow, offering more quests, more resources and better items. Resources can also be gathered from barrels floating around in the open sea. The navigation involves holding down the left click to speed up and right click to slow down. The game is also fully functional with the keyboard as well as a gamepad, but I found it particularly hard to aim using anything other than the mouse.
The Exploration in the game is non-existent. Windward has you navigating empty seas and oceans with tiny island nations thrown in, with hardly any interaction. Besides the towns, guard towers and lighthouses, there is nothing else to do on the entire map. No random events, no hidden locations, no special locations or secret shops.
[pullquote]As you explore the world and get farther away from your starting area, the game will become progressively more difficult[/pullquote]The world map is divided into smaller more manageable square grids, each of which acts as a single map similar to RTS games. As you explore the world and get farther away from your starting area, the game will become progressively more difficult. I was not sure whether it was my poor navigational skills or poor skill choices, but the difficulty changes in two different zones felt extreme. While I was crushing two ships in the starter area, moving to the next zone had me getting shot down again and again.
Questing
As you explore, just landing your ship on the port of a nearby town will let you engage in any of the few activities it offers. They range from trading resources between towns based on item demands which can be known using the rumour tab, taking on quests, buying or equipping your ship’s gear and selling off excess loot. The quests on offer include transporting items or ferrying passengers to different towns, hunting pirates, building new towers, defending towns against attacks and so on. Most missions take just a couple of minutes and since you are always close by to a town when a mission ends, you can grab another immediately. The questing is the weakest part of Wiindward. This is where the game starts to give off an endless grind vibe that stays with you for the rest of the game. The same few missions are repeated over and over, irrespective of the level of your ship or town, which will quickly cause you to lose interest.
The biggest annoyance with the way the questing system works is the cargo slots. You start off with a tiny ship with only 2 cargo slots. Anything related to gameplay such as Quest contracts, Items for trading, items to transport takes up a single cargo slot. Thus you are limited to only two tasks at any moment. This makes making money quickly very difficult. It is severely restricting as most of these quests themselves offer low pay. Even the ones with a longer chain, where you end up traveling to 4-5 different towns, have a poor payout. This leads to frustration as the entire pace of the game is stifled. You can upgrade your ship, but the grind to own even a 3 cargo slot ship is long and tedious thanks to the repetitive quests.
Each map has about 10 towns that start at level one. You need to upgrade them for better items and gear. It takes about 10 quests to level a town up, but as you only have 2 cargo slots 90% of that time will be wasted between traveling in between towns dropping off or picking up quest items. You do have a separate 25 space inventory to pick up loot like ship upgrades, ship colour packs, new sigils etc.
Trading
You do have a choice between choosing questing or trading when you enter a town. The simplistic economy of Windward has you pick excess stock from one town and sell it for a profit to another that has a need for it. The items you trade will also take up your cargo slot. Yes, the same slot reserved for quests. So deciding to trade is not done in addition to questing, but rather as a replacement for it. You read the rumor tab in a city, pick two items and sell them to other town, one item at a time as they don’t even stack.
Ships
As you gain more money, you will eventually leave your tiny starting ship for something bigger, faster and with more cargo space. Ships are expensive though, and you will have to put in several hours of work to gather the money for minor improvements. There are a few choices you will have to make when upgrading your ship such as picking either a slow ship with more combat power or a faster one that is less powerful or a ship with better turning time or one with more armour. You can eventually get a bigger ship with three cargo slots, but that comes too late and is too slow considering its ridiculous price. It took me about 4 hours to get a 3 slot cargo ship, which still feels limiting, though a little less so.
Combat
Often times in Windward, pirates will try to knock down your ship and take over its loot or other factions will try to capture your towns. This is where you engage in combat and unlock new talents and abilities to help with the fighting. Combat is deeply integrated into the gameplay, While the combat looks optional at first, as you start to move out of your zone into others, it will become more and more important.
You fire a cannons broadside from the sides of your ship. The challenge of combat comes from manoeuvring your ship to take minimum damage while dishing out everything you can to your enemy. The ship’s gunners will fire automatically when in range. Special abilities need to be manually cast. These special attacks start off as damaging volleys and chain shots with additional options unlocking as you progress in level and ship. These special attacks include unleash fire, smoke or poison gas filled barrels. This core mechanic functions well and is enjoyable, but fails to evolve with the game and remains unchanged throughout the game, thus eventually becoming boring. The AI is bound to the same rules as the player and doesn’t seem to cheat. The game has a reputation system where if you sink enough ships without dying, the AI will try to avoid you when possible.
As you progress in more difficult zones, there is a constant struggle between factions to maintain dominance amongst the local towns. Their tug of war gets longer and longer with each new zone as constantly spawning enemies continue to seize back the control of recently won towns, forcing you to constantly engage them. This never finishes until the entire map is under your control, only to restart in the next zone.
Final Thoughts
Multiplayer solves most of the single player gripes I have with Windward. Engaging in war against human factions with a team to back you up is satisfying. Or just questing with human players around has a sense of calm and makes you slightly ignore the grindiness of it.
Due to the micro nature of quests there is a sense of constant progress in Windward. Whether you play for a quick 10 minute burst or engage in hours long sessions, you will accomplish something. Perhaps that is as insignificant as paint and a new sigil for your ship, or leveling up a town all the way to a new powerful ship with more sails and a bigger size. It is in these small rewards that the game finds its addictiveness. I only wish there was more variety and unpredictability to make Windward a better experience as the game fails to entertain. The game has charm and heart but they fade away really fast, once the grind sets in.
