Sunless Skies

A good successor to Sunless Sea, but, if you're new to the game's world, I highly recommend starting with Sunless Sea, as that game does a much better job explaining the basic lore of the world, its history, characters, commodities etc. Sunless Skies skipped a lot of that.

It lacks the grandeur and expansiveness of Sunless Seas. There, the narratives were constantly shifting, and even when you thought you had a grasp of what was going on there was a sense you might lose that grasp at any moment. Even if you repeated actions, new bits and morsels of narrative leaked through that expanded or twisted or just simply delighted you to read more about the world created.
Here, the different strands are modeled too closely after what Kennedy already did in Sunless Seas. Make no mistake the game is fun, the exploration exhilarating, but the patterns are there, and once revealed the entirety of the world becomes rather simplistic. It is worth a spin or three, certainly, but will have you appreciating Sunless Seas all the more.

Very, very weak recommend. Sunless Seas was able to carry me further and in better spirits. (Two of those spirits were crewmates we ate along the way.) Sunless Skies has some very nice writing, it has some engaging characters, it also really tries my patience with how it sets up story chains or even the basic grind of making money. For whatever reason, I found Sunless Seas managed to intrigue me into exploring the unknown in ways Sunless Skies has never done, although it would be very wrong not to mention there are a lot of improvements to this game over its predecessor.

I feel as though Ive made no progress in the game after 44 hours and without a frame of reference it feels disheartening. Ive explored and gotten used to the Reach, but once I reached Albion i felt like this was the peak that I reached. I found myself in a frustrating loop of dying and trying to build up to Albion all over again. Maybe my play style is inefficient or I just didnt learn how to best make use of all the port encounters along my journey. Hung up my train conductor cap when I found myself not enjoying the game mechanic of traveling the stars with my train. Which really fucking sucks because I love engaging with the games writing and all the cool encounters and characters found in it. I still think it was really fun so please give it a try at least.
Also not so hot take here but I think cannibalism is okay after running out of supplies numerous times in my playtime.

This a great game with some flaws.
The atmosphere and writing is superb, and the sense of adventure, exploration and dread is strong.
But, it has the same flaws as Sunless Sea (also excellent and very similar if harder and harsher), and that are also evident in Fallen London and Alexis Kennedy's Cult Simulator.
These flaws are: grind, and the wasting of time.
It adores making you trek back and forth gathering obscure ingredients to fulfil a goal.
It also likes making you trek back and forth to fulfil storylets by splitting them across many places, often places you just came from!
Also there are some storylets or portions of same that require you to come back after a period of time, which is quite annoying if you have nothing else of great import to do in the area. You have to kill time on fluff, or trek off to far parts and then trek back again.
In some cases the trekking itself is very dangerous and discourages completion of some material as it is just not worth it if you are e.g. near completing an ambition. I guess that encourages replay, but what discourages replay is the knowledge you will have to do more trekking!
I knocked off two ambitions (Wealth and Martyr King's Cup) and probably won't do another, though I would like to know 'The Truth'. Oh well. Two ambitions still gave me 100 hundred plus hours of enjoyment, and I saw probably 90% of the content across the two adventures, so hey, all good.
But I really wish we could have this delicious writing and atmosphere without the grind and time wasting!
It's worth the tedious side though, if you like great writing and original worlds.

BUY ON SALE
This review is to express some of my grievances towards this game whilst also warning people who haven't played this game about some things to look out for. In short - this game is fun and I definitely recommend it if you are into visual novel/story type games. I honestly do not recommend buying this game at its full price tag. I encourage you to buy it on sale.
Before completing my play through, I previously refunded this game 2 times. The third time I bought it, I finally sat down to play it to completion. If you are going into this game thinking it will be an exploration-sandbox game, you are wrong. That was my mistake the first 2 times. I'd say this game is 80-90% reading. That isn't to say it's a bad thing, just be aware of the experience you are getting.
The story is very captivating and it is told well. The sound and visuals also make the story much more immersive. The characters are all unique and provide a breath of fresh air from the main storyline with their own questlines.
While having a main story to follow I don't feel as though the game is forcing me to stick to a certain path as it is decently broad in the choices/things I want to do in world.
Now, because I love this game so much, I want to talk about some aspects which frustrated me and may frustrate you.
1. The Gameplay:
As I said before, this game's enjoyment factor is mostly reading. But is flying around on your locomotive fun? Well, no. I like the steampunk feel of your ship and the novelty of flying at the start is great, but when you need to fly around selling cargo or picking up quest items constantly, this loop gets really, really boring. The story is what saves this game. Even with the engine upgrades, journeys still feel like a chore (although upgrades certainly help a lot). Accumulating a lot of money also takes way too long. Flying from station to station completing prospects comprised a good portion of my playtime. Don't get me wrong though, I still like the idea of flying around (it just gets repetitive) - more so than the pure reading of Fallen London , where the Sunless games' idea came from.
Some other reviewers have also complained about the combat. To me the combat wasn't amazing, but it was OK . However, a common complaint is that it's too difficult to fight or outrun enemies. I did not find it as difficult as some people were saying it was. I think they're just exaggerating. If you keep getting killed or chased down, then you don't have good enough gear equipped - but I understand that equipping good gear may be difficult with my next point.
2. Levelling up and Stat points:
There are 4 main stats in this game. Iron, hearts, veils, and mirrors. Every time you level up, you pick a new facet which increases two of those stats by 5-3 points. However, the max player level is 20 (so 20 facets total). This means that stats are a bit scarce and you must choose wisely.
The problem with this is that facets are little snippets of your character's backstory, so instead of crafting my character's story the way I want to, I'm instead picking the most optimal stat paths. This is all to be able to equip better gear, which is annoying and diminishes the role-playing aspect. You can still increase your stats by trading EXP points after hitting level 20, but that process is also long and annoying.
I also noticed some inequality in the importance of some stats. I tried focusing on veils to be stealthy the first time I played. I then noticed that most of the time, many stat check events required your iron, hearts, or mirrors - making my veils stat kind of useless.
The game also uses PERMANENT STAT LOSSES , which is absolutely bullshit. There are some events (sometimes not even events with possibilities of failure) that will just yoink a point from one of your stats. Because of how scarce stat points are, this is extremely annoying if you're trying to equip some endgame gear. I can understand the purpose of having real meaningful consequences, but this is just not fun.
3. Saving:
All saving is automatic whenever you dock at a port - no manual saving or loading older saves. I guess it's convenient, but I really don't like it, I'd prefer just manual saving. I believe manual saving allows me to experience all choices and possibilities. Call it save scumming, but I want to see all dialogue options without having to play the game a second time - which I absolutely have no energy nor will to do so. This game is great once, not twice.
4. RNG:
I can understand the purpose of RNG in this kind of game that tries to depict consequences and also be more dynamic (not sure if that's the term I'm looking for). However, even though at times the RNG aspect can be fun, I would lying if I said it didn't irritate me when my crew and captain someway, somewhere, somehow, fucked up a 92% chance of success event. Of course I know why they stuffed up - it was that 8%, but fuck.
5. Special currency/resources:
The game has some special resources you can acquire that will help you complete certain goals - things such as moments of inspiration or cryptic benefactors .I think this is a really cool idea, but sometimes I found it limiting. Although it feels really cool to call upon some cryptic benefactor or the crown to help solve an issue, the special resources are scarce but vital for progressing in some areas. I can understand the reasoning behind making them scarce, otherwise the game would be trivial at certain points - but this limitation made me skip out on a large portion of the Blue Kingdom zone because of how often you need to burn those resources there. Takes a bit too much time to gather them.
6. Romance:
Yes this game has romance (not much). I found it kind of unnecessary and weird, especially the options on who you can be intimate with. I mean, it's funny to think about, but not my cup of tea. This is just a minor complaint - definitely not worth worrying about, but it was such a strange experience, I wanted to mention it.
7. Runs bad:
I don't have a very beefy PC, but even so, with a system requirement of 4GB, this game sometimes start chugging (low frame-rate and freezing) when it really shouldn't. Watching a YouTube review made me think this wasn't just a 'me' thing.
8. Supply/Fuel consumption:
I played this game with the fuel/supply consumption set to the lowest level difficulty. I wanted to fully experience the story without having to manage dwindling supplies. And after seeing how much fuel my ship can burn through using the higher tier engines while on the LOWEST consumption difficulty setting, I can't even imagine what it would be like to play the game with that setting on normal difficulty. Might just be me since a lot of Failbetter Games fans' opinions seem more accustomed to the harder difficulty from Sunless Sea.
9. The ending:
I really liked the ending (the ending I chose to pursue), but I found it kind of underwhelming in terms of the visual aspect. I know this game is all reading, but I wish there was some kind of final area to explore or a cool cutscene to tie up this cool story.
Anyway, That's all the grievances I had with Sunless Skies. I'm sure there are some things I'm forgetting, but those above were my main issues. All in all This game is fun but flawed .Yknow, I'm recommending this game, but now I don't know if I can recommend in good faith when thinking about the problems I dealt with and the time I wasted. I also played this game on merciful mode instead of legacy - I think if you're looking to have have a good story experience with no worries, you should play on merciful.I guess I'm recommending it based on my personal experience of fun to annoyance ratio. A great story experience but oh so many problems
I would say to BUY IT ON SALE ONLY

i can really only recommend this game if you either have 2 monitors (this game is so unreasonably boring outside of plot beats so its a lot of sighing and pressing C). theres a part of me that wishes they just wrote a book or something but that kind of defeats just how good the game is at letting you make your own decisions (even if those decisions are dog fucking shit). absolutely enchanting ideas going on in this game exclusively when it comes to the writing, dont think ive ever been more interested in What The Hell Is Going On in a game before this. dont think i ever will be again. basically this shit is straight gas but only if youre like, super unemployed