Blacksea Odyssey is a quirky twin stick/top down shooter hybrid with RPG elements thrown in for good measure. As if that wasn’t enough to offer at least a little intrigue it even offers rogue-like, or more commonly known as rogue-light, elements as well.
Story
Once every decade four of the greatest huntsmen will compete against each other to find out who is the greatest hunter amongst them. Armed with only a spear and a harpoon you are tasked with hunting down all the creatures in an area and then defeating the boss. The order in which you clear each area is completely up to you.
You start the game with the ability to chose one challenger and a single spear and, as you progress throughout the game, complete challenges, and defeat bosses, you will unlock more of each allowing you to more fully customize how you play the game.
The ultimate goal is to find and destroy a beast as mythical as Moby Dick himself, the Titan of the Stars.
As you take out larger creatures and bosses you’ll receive keys and currency. The keys unlock chests that are scattered all over the world giving you special abilities that you can use. These abilities include things such as replenishing your health or throwing grenade-like explosives as you fly through space.
You also collect runes along the way that you can equip your spear and ship with, making them even more powerful than they already were.
Controls
The controls are quite detailed considering how simple the premise is. While Blacksea Odyssey controls in some ways as a twin stick shooter – you move with the left stick and aim with the right – it also has the top down shooter elements that involve throwing spears with your right trigger and harpooning your foe with the left. This basically means you are doing at least four things at any given time.
Repeatedly hitting enemies with your spears will weaken their dastardly body parts, enabling you to strike fast with your harpoon and rip them off. This never stops being satisfying and every limb that you rip from the creatures will be just as rewarding as the one before. Swarms of enemies can come at you from all sides so mastering your spear and harpoon simultaneously is key. You also can slow down your prey by harpooning them and staying attached. This allows you to throw spear after spear without the fear of them escaping.
You also have a meter that, when full, allows you to have a temporary speed boost. There are multiple bars and the longer you hold them down the more you increase the power of your boost. This comes in handy when you need to escape from the clutches of a boss or need to crash through an obstacle that stands in your way.
Visuals
Blacksea Odyssey is a gorgeous game. The vivid colors and creative monster designs will continue to delight you playthrough after playthrough. Pay close attention to the character models as well because though they are small, they offer quite a bit of entertainment as well. You’ll crack a smile with each spear through that the old man heaves. Grunting and swinging his arms like they could go on forever as he takes out each monster in his path. The screen can get incredibly busy at times but, as a testament to the game, you never lose sight of your character or feel as though you aren’t in control.
Recommendation: Twin stick and top down shooters are becoming more and more popular. So with a plethora of choices in the genre, a game really must stand out to earn your hard-earned money and free time. Blacksea Odyssey does a great job of blending these two genres making the experience feel fresh. Though the controls can feel a little clunky at times and it takes a bit to get used to them, they aren’t impossible to master. With each play-through you’ll feel more and more confident in your abilities. Trophy hunters will find a lot to love here as well since there is a complete and challenging trophy list complete with a Platinum. With plenty of replayability, fans of both twin stick and top down shooters should give Blacksea odyssey a shot. Blacksea Odyssey releases digitally on July 17th in North America with a physical edition coming later exclusively to Play Asia and limited to 1,500 copies.
Update
A day on patch will be available when the game launches which will include the following changes:
– Improved bounty selection menu
– Improved visibility of descriptions within inventory / shop
– UI fix: objects in inventory shifted out of their corresponding positions
*Blacksea Odyssey was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games as well as our recent review of INK and Paranautical Activity, also from Digerati Distribution.
