Sunless Skies

Sunless Skies is the definitive answer to the question "What game you like but not sure you can recommend?"

Imagine reading a VERY interesting book, but every chapter or so you have to throw the book across the room and go pick it up to continue read it, and sometime you throw it too hard or too far so have to read the book from the start again. But if you can stick to it, the book is worth it.

If you like reading, game atmosphere and don't mind A LOT of fetch quests, you can enjoy this game.

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.

A few steps forward gameplay wise compared to Sunless Sea. You get more resources and better chances to make money and there is more guidance on what to do.
However the lack of faster engines, autopilot and fast travel means you are still stuck doing money making fetch quests hours into the game. Very often you get a 'oh no, I haven't brought the right items, I'll have to go back to the main hub city and collect them before returning'.
It is recommended but the lack of things to do in this game and constant busy work/slow grind really hurts this game. Understand what you're getting into and you might have fun.
Start on merciful mode which autosaves at your last port!

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

It's a good game, although I personally prefer the predecessor "Sunless Sea". I got that for free on the Epic Games store though, so I can't write a separate review for that. But I'd say start with that one, and if you then want more afterwards, Sunless Skies is a great continuation in the same vein.

Just one word of caution: DON'T choose the roguelike gamemode where death is permanent. It isn't really optimised for that, and you'll just end up redoing the same things over and over again. It worked in Sunless Sea, and so I thought it would be the same in the second game, but it almost feels like a trap to have that option included.