Sailing Into Uncharted Waters: A Sagres Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: PC

Are you a gamer looking to relive the experience of old-school sailing RPGs like Sid Meier's Pirates or the Uncharted Waters series? I hope it's the latter as the game we're going to be looking at today, Sagres, bears some similarity to the 16-bit versions of that series. It's by no means an actual or official follow-up to those games, and it has more enough elements that are unique to itself. It's out now on Steam, and we're going to be giving it a thorough examination to see if it's a game you're going to want to bring ashore, or if it's best left to drift out to see. There's a lot to cover though, so let's set sail already!

What is this question?

Nicolau starts your quest.

Sagres puts you into the shoes of a soon-to-be graduate of the nautical School of Sagres in Portugal. Your name is Fernando and you can either go with the default character build, or go through a very Ultima-like series of questions that determine your starting stats. You're barely out of the school's doors when you run into your friend Lucia who mentions that her father, Sir Antonio, has disappeared and the court officials are being rather sketchy when it comes to details. After attempting to make inquiries as to his fate from the Crown itself, your old friend Nicolau suggests that you amass renown through sailing and exploring so that the Crown eventually comes to you. Nicolau grants you a ship, introduces you to the Guild who are always eager to recruit people interested in completing expeditions for them, and your journey begins. After completing several Guild expeditions, you are granted a title, and given a cursory monetary sum that denotes Sir Antonio's death. This is by no means the end of your quest for answers though, as everything still feels a bit off regarding the details. Nicolau joins you officially at this point, and things start to get interesting as your mission is no longer just to discover the secret behind what happened to Lucia's father, but to also travel the entire world in the name of exploration and discovery. There's a full line of story quests in Sagres that take place separate from whatever else you may be doing in the game. While completing them is optional for the most part, some of the world is gatekept to you until you reach a certain point in the questline. Sagres doesn't have the deepest of stories, but it works to drive the gameplay forward, and that's what this type of game usually does best anyway. Seeing as discussing the story further might take us into spoiler territory, let's switch our focus to gameplay.

I initially came into Sagres expecting it to be something like a spiritual successor to the Uncharted Waters series, specifically the 16-bit version of Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. It bears a striking resemblance to it in terms of visuals, but it barely resembles it at all gameplay-wise. Since I made the comparison a couple times already, and will make it again later, I have to clarify that at no point does Sagres itself state that it is even the least bit inspired by the Uncharted Waters games. That said, those familiar to with them will probably make the same comparisons I did before playing it. While Uncharted Waters was a true open world game where you could be a pirate, a trader, or an adventurer/explorer, Sagres instead opts to focus solely on the exploration aspect of a sailing RPG. Much of the game revolves around taking on expedition quests from the Guild and completing them for money, renown, or to simply advance the main plot. Things like sea battles and trading due occur, but they are relegated to such a small part of the game that they feel almost unnecessary. The standard gameplay loop consists of checking a Guild's library for possible quests, registering one of these quests with the Guild, collecting clues from specific taverns, "discovering" whatever it is you're looking for, and then reporting the results back to the Guild for your final reward. I'll go into more detail on the specifics in a bit, but the important thing to note is that this is what Sagres offers in terms of core gameplay. All other mechanics weave in and out of these central actions, but expect to be going on lots of expeditions for the Guild until you reach the end of the main storyline, or simply decide to stop playing. You can also choose to play Sagres like an open world title, sailing from port to port and just exploring for exploration's sake, but amassing money will eventually become so difficult that you'll pretty much be forced to go work within the Guild expedition system. This isn't exactly a bad thing by any means, but it should be emphasized to anyone who might still harbor the notion that Sagres might offer an experience more akin to an Uncharted Waters game.

Some calm sailing.

I'm pretty sure this was already there.

Let's talk about those expeditions in a bit more detail. Completing an expedition for the Guild can sometimes be rather difficult, but the things you'll be "discovering" will often be fairly questionable at best. Many of the game's starting quests will have you look for well-known statues or buildings throughout Europe, and I'm not sure why these would be included beyond simply offering a bit of historical context for the game. Then there are the quests that take you to places like the pyramids of Egypt, or the ruins of Knossos. These are far more exotic locations whose "discovery" makes a little more sense, but made me feel that the wording should've been changed to "explored". Locations aside, things get a little weird when the game throws in fantastical elements completely out of nowhere. Sagres itself actually points out at the start of the game that it's not trying to be totally accurate to historical fact, but going full fantasy took me out of the game more than once. For example, you encounter mermaids and sirens while sailing and even fight an actual Minotaur in the ruins of Knossos. While these encounters are rather fun, they do seem a bit out of place. Guild quests can also end in minigames that you'll only see there. These minigames can be fishing to find sunken treasure, excavating ruins, and so on. Expeditions aren't just taken by sea either, as some require overland travel. There's not much to discuss when it comes to this as it's not a very deep addition to the game, but it's worth noting that overland travel is the only way to reach certain inland cities. My biggest gripe about Guild quests, besides the fact that many of them are gatekept to you early on, is that you can't take on more than one at a time. Considering you're usually given a time limit measured in years to complete them, I found myself wishing I could take on several at once so I can complete them in a single long journey. Unfortunately you're stuck in a more tedious loop for the first half of the game. Though things do shift a bit once you progress the story a bit outside of Europe.

Even though I already said that the only stable source of income is taking on Guild expeditions, I bet you're wondering how else you can make money in Sagres. Seeing as this is a sailing RPG, it makes sense that trading and piracy would also be decent money making ventures. Let's cover trading first. Trading is very limited as it consists solely of buying a port's singular specialty item and taking it to another port where you can sell it for a (small) profit. The amount of the item you can carry, and the price you can buy and sell it for, is affected by both your skill levels and the type of ship you have. No matter how decked out you are though, the amount of money gained is extremely negligible. You can of course bring goods from one end of the world to the other for far better profit, but the sheer cost of the trip itself, and the time taken to undertake it, make this option pretty unfeasible. Piracy is also pretty much non-existent in this game as you only encounter other ship in random battles. You're not able to loot ships, take command of defeated fleets, or anything of the sort. Battles are more of a distraction, and take place using a very simple rocks/paper/scissors mechanic. And no, I'm not saying that it's a mechanic that uses a three factor system where each one is weak and strong against one of the others, but I'm saying that it literally uses rock/paper/scissors to decide who wins or loses a battle. It's a very RNG-heavy system that thankfully seems to always be in the player's favor. I've yet to lose a single battle, though some have brought me close to death. Oh, and the money earned from these battles is not even worth discussing. The only other way to get money in Sagres is by buying lottery tickets. I'll admit that I save scummed my way to a small fortune early on abusing saves, but this was mainly just to keep my crew a step above poverty. Even though you rarely win, lottery payouts are often higher than most of the early Guild expeditions, so abusing them is almost a no-brainer. You can only get lottery tickets in Europe though, so it doesn't last all too long. While I'm glad that the game offered more than just sailing around discovering things, I think that the game would've been far better if it offered more to the player. Seeing as this game originally launched in Early Access, and has been getting fairly regular updates, I guess we can all hope that we'll get more from the game at some point, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

I wish combat was more fun.

So there are sirens here?

While I enjoyed most of my time with Sagres, there were some things I want to point out that I found baffling. Just about all of them revolve around the skill system though, so I guess we'll start there. All characters have a set number of skills, with Fernando being able to level up most of them over time. If there's a way to level up Navigators you recruit at the Guild, I have yet to discover it. Skills are important though as they can literally unlock (or block off) entire sections of the game. The most important of these skills are the ones involving languages. If you do not speak a language of a specific country/region then all the dialogue there will be literal gibberish. While this seems like it would be a system that makes sense, the way languages are broken up leaves something to be desired. Nearly every European country has its own language skill, but places like Africa have one single skill to represent what would realistically be dozens of language. While I will admit it would be unrealistic to include them all, I then have to wonder why they bothered with the whole language thing in the first place. Another skill that became the bane of my existence was the Logistics skill. You don't know it early on, but this skill makes or breaks the game. By default Lucia handles all your logistical needs early on, though she only has one point in the skill. This means that it takes her eight days to organize leaving or arriving at a port. It can take a literal in-game month to complete quests that require you to go to a port and make a discovery outside of its walls simply due to this eight days logistics mechanic. Doing some simple math and you realize that it can take you a full in-game year to complete 4-5 early on. One can argue that this all makes sense from the point of realism, but I must remind you that this is also the game that has a literal Minotaur in it. Oh, and this isn't really a skill thing, but items and ships (Which are basically just more complex items as far as this game is concerned.) are very limited in-game as well. They usually only make numbers go up, and are rarely ever represented by visual changes. Also, buying or upgrading a ship can take literal months, and considering how long expeditions take, I'm starting to wonder if Sir Antonio wouldn't have just died from old age by the time Lucia and Fernando got to him.

My last point of contention has to be the countless historical inaccuracies, odd representation, and other small mistakes the game makes. I don't even know where to begin with all of these, but the first thing that stood out to me was that the game uses the term "pirate" and "privateer" as if they're interchangeable. For those that don't know, a privateer is a pirate who commits their acts in the name of a country and monarch. They are basically mercenaries and wouldn't really properly ever be referred to as simply "pirates", and the same is true the other way around. That was the first thing I noticed, but there's so much more. Early on you're tasked to enter the port of Alexandria in Egypt, but you have to be careful since Europeans aren't welcome in the city. You can either choose to sneak in, which adds another day to the process, or buy a turban to disguise yourself. Barring the fact that I'm not sure how that disguise would hide anything, I can't believe that the developers figured that would make any sort of sense and not feel at least a little offensive. Then there's the many little foibles in the descriptions of discoveries, more fantastical creatures I'll leave you to discover on your own, and the weird way natives seem totally fine to be colonized by the Europeans. I totally could shake off a few of these things in isolation, but they come at you almost rapid fire once the game starts going. Even the nautical School of Sagres that the game is named for isn't exactly in-line with historical fact. It's too big a topic for this review, but the School of Sagres is largely considered to be a myth today. Once again, Sagres never claims to be historically accurate, but the setting makes it hard to ignore the sheer amount of things I've mentioned.

Investigating for expeditions.

An example of one of the minigames.

Enough about gameplay, let's talk visuals a bit. I find Sagres graphics to be a bit hard to discuss as they were actually what drew me to the game in the first place, but they're not exactly going to turn heads for the average gamer. As I've said already, I was initially drawn to Sagres because of its resemblance to the 16-bit Uncharted Waters games, and that's most apparent in the graphics. The game goes for a 16/32-bit aesthetic that's colorful and impressive for what it is, but pretty simple and mobile game-y too. I obviously dug the graphics, and will rate them accordingly, but even I'll admit that this love might be a tad misplaced. Simpler graphics are probably to be expected though as this is a game that's made by a sole developer. With that in mind I have to say that it went for a specific art style, and executed it perfectly. I love the world map, the character designs and portraits, the minigame screens, and even the monochrome-looking pictures you get for making discoveries. What I'm not really a fan of is how little there is to the game's world. You'd think a game that involves sailing would have you entering a lot of ports and seeing a lot of exotic locations, but every single one is limited to a series of icons and text screens that are largely the same all over the game's world. I actually assumed that this was only going to be for the smaller ports, as surely the capitals would be fully traversable cities, but that never was the case. The only time you ever move a character is on the world map, be it at sea or over land, and you never once see a single building in game beyond the ones you "discover" for guild expeditions. I can't stress how disappointed I was by this, and that's not even all I have to say about it. While sailing looks cool at times with storms, clouds, and other weather phenomena, you never see anything else on screen. You get attacked by pirates of course, but this is done in a random encounter RPG-style fashion where you don't see them on-screen until you're in the battle. You also have random events that just happen with no warning before, and they don't even have a single illustration to accompany them. While what's actually present visually is great, there's so much that feels left out that I can't help but wonder if this game is actually complete.

Overland travels.

This Navigator looks... interesting...

I have similar thoughts to music as I had to the visuals, in that what's here works, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to it. Right off the bat I want to say that I don't think the soundtrack is anything to write home about in terms of individual tracks. There isn't any song that is going to live rent-free in your head after you're done playing, nor are there going to be ones you hope to hear again in a later port or event. The music is very low-key for the most part, and I actually find that to be a good thing. There's a certain chill, cozy vibe to the game that is helped along by the music. I know I complained about the lack of on-screen threats, or the lack of literally anything but your ship on the world map, but the fact that you're basically alone in a big open world can be a bit calming at times. Yes, your crew constantly complaining can take away from this after a while, but the vibes are there if you're looking for them. I found that I rarely let anything bother me too much in the game, as nothing ever seems to be truly dire. There are some weird story moments where the entire focus of the game shifts to another part of the world, but even then the familiar comfy vibes eventually come back once you're settled into the new gameplay loop. My only minor complaint about sound would have to be the lack of voice acting, but I say that only because the game felt rather silent at times and I'd occasionally wish for the game to deliver more on the audio front. Mind you I don't even mean voice acting in the fully traditional sense, but I think some quips or lines here and there might've helped things along. That's pretty much only a nitpick though, and I have very little to say about the audio that is truly negative. The music doesn't stand out by any means, and I do wish there was more to it, but you don't always need an overdone soundtrack to make a great game.

Despite all the problems I had with Sagres, I must admit that I had a lot of fun with it and think that there's a lot of replayability here. Seeing as my entire first playthrough was me getting used to the game's various quirks, and learning how to play in the "best" way possible, I see myself restarting for a better min/max run at some point in the future. While the game does technically have an ending, it's also highly replayable if you're looking to just play it as an open world game. With all this in mind, I think that its current $19.99 price tag is quite reasonable, and it seems to go on sale often. Also, seeing as they just put out a decent-sized update at the end of January, I hope that the game still has a bit of polishing to go. If not, I can hold out hope that a more refined sequel or follow-up may be coming at some point down the road. This may have not been quite the game I was hoping for when I started it, but it was fun enough that I eventually stopped comparing it to what it wasn't, and began to enjoy it for what it is.

Getting titles is important for progression.

Surprise! Minotaur!

Recommending Sagres is a bit more difficult. I can tell by the Steam community that I am not the only one who went into this thinking that it was going to essentially be an Uncharted Waters spiritual successor. If you go in with that mindset, you're bound to be just as disappointed as I was. If you instead go in expecting a fun, exploration heavy, sailing RPG that doesn't care too much about historical facts, then you're probably going to enjoy it. I also think that it's worth looking into if you're a fan of casual or cozy games as it definitely has some of those vibes throughout. It's not a bad game by any means, far from it even, it's just that it's not Uncharted Waters by any means. Grab it now if all that sounds good to you, and join me on the high seas! Happy sailing!

Check Out Sagres on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2120310/Sagres/

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Story: B-
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B+
Music/Sound: B-
Value: B

Overall: B-

Pros:
+ A different take on the sailing RPG formula that borrows from games that came before, while still feeling mostly unique.
+ While the fantastical elements might seem a little out of place at first (You fight a Minotaur!), they do add a lot of flavor and humor to the sometimes repetitive gameplay loop.
+ Graphics are very reminiscent of the 16-bit Uncharted Waters games, and that's what drew me (and others) to it in the first place.
+ There is a lot of content in this game, almost to the point of being a bit overwhelming at times.
+ You can choose to totally ignore the story after the tutorial sections and play Sagres as a mostly open world experience.
+ The fact that the game is still getting updates after release makes me hopeful that either more content is on the way, or a more polished follow-up down the road.

+/- Does not support taking screenshots for some reason, making getting them for this review needlessly difficult.

Cons:
- Though the game never really claims to be historically accurate, the many historical fumbles can be a bit distracting.
- Some elements of the game, like the language and trade systems, feel either overly-complicated or far too under-developed.
- While the soundtrack is mostly fine, it's largely forgettable and the entire game may have benefitted from a stronger soundtrack.
- Travelling to similar looking towns, using the same icons for each, can make the game feel hollow after a while.
- Some parts of the main story feel like they drag on for far too long. Oh, and the time system itself seems all sorts of wonky in general.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Okay, time to gamble!

#Sagres