Rating of
3/5
Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay… Wastin’ Time
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/26/17
“Windward” is the inaugural effort by Tasharen Entertainment, a Canadian Indie developer that has gone on to create “Starlink”… but has mainly spent all of its efforts working on “Windward.” Initially released as a prototype MOBA in 2012, the original plans for “Windward” were scrapped, only to be resurrected two years later on Steam Early Access in its current form, where it spent a year before its ‘official’ release in May, 2015. With all of their eggs in one basket, Tasharen needed a big win with “Windward.” Unfortunately, while they did manage to create a fairly unique mashup of extant genres, they spent so much time working on the mechanics that they forgot to put in an actual ‘game.’
Presentation
Despite being a Unity Engine game, “Windward” looks quite fantastic. Being a ship-based game set during the Age of Sail, the vast majority of the game’s visuals are dominated by water, which looks nearly as good as the water in much more ambitious, graphically intensive games. Likewise, the ground, vegetation, and the ships themselves are all quite appealing, despite no real stand-out attempts by Tasharen to create an artistic ‘style.’ “Windward’s” quality visuals are even more stunning when one considers the fact that the entire game takes up less than 150 MB of space. Yes! MegaBytes! The game is tiny, and could easily fit on an old, single-layer CD-ROM with room to spare.
For me, though, the audio is the real stand-out point of “Windward’s” presentation. The instrumental soundtrack features plenty of high-seas and piratical tunes that are both pleasant to listen to and reinforce the game’s setting and themes to a T.
Technically, “Windward” is reasonably solid. It does have a few inconsequential glitches, where it’s possible for ships to become beached on sandbars (the AI tends to do this more than real players). The game supports Xinput natively, but the controls take a bit of getting used to. Perhaps the worst thing about “Windward” from a technical standpoint is how big a pain in the ass it is to connect to friends online, requiring Port Forwarding (in 2015?!), and direct IP address connection (in 2015?!) in order to make things work, instead of simply using the Steamworks API.
Story
The single thing that most limits my enjoyment of “Windward” is the fact that it doesn’t have a story. It doesn’t have a campaign, or a set of missions, or even a sense of direction. It’s just a 100% pure make-your-own-fun type of Sandbox where you never really know when you’re done with it… except that you’ve gotten bored by the repetition.
“Windward” definitely would have benefitted from a cooperative campaign of some sort. It has all the necessary framework built right in: Towns, Missions, Objectives – but they’re all just procedurally-generated aimlessness that all feel the same. People have complained about the sub-par quality of the stories in Hack ‘n Slash RPGs for years: The ‘Diablo’ series, the ‘Torchlight’ series, the ‘Dungeon Hunter’ series… all of them have bland, samey, hackneyed plots, but at least they have plots with a beginning, middle, and end. “Windward” foregoes even a token plot in favor of pure gameplay, and suffers greatly for it.
Gameplay
“Windward” combines two of PC gaming’s most beloved sub-genres along with the more modern “Terraria” inspired procedurally-generated world in order to create engaging gameplay that still ultimately wears thin far before hitting the 50 hour mark.
At its core, “Windward” is a consummate Hack ‘n Slash RPG. Players each start with a small, crappy ship, but can upgrade it by defeating pirates who have better ships and acquiring schematics (schematics drop at a stacking 10% chance per pirate sunk, and the ships built with new schematics still cost gold). Players also gain experience as they go, allowing them to gain levels, each of which grants a Talent Point, which can be spent on a perk that adds some form of (typically) percentage-based bonus. Aside from leveling up and building new ships, players will also experience the tried-and-true random loot system popularized by ‘Diablo,’ with defeated enemy ships dropping a wide variety of cannons, sails, hulls, and other ship parts that equate to equipment slots, all of which fall on the traditional color-based rarity/quality scale (white, green, blue, purple, orange).
In addition to being a ship-based Hack ‘n Slash, “Windward” incorporates a simplified version of the town-building expansionist gameplay found in the 4X variety of Strategy/Sim games. Doing quests for towns or trading commodities between towns causes them to grow, which in turn causes them to offer better loot for sale (yes, players can buy loot with gold instead of finding it after battles), and allow for the building of bigger, better ships. Finding quests that allow the player to build a new settlement allows players to expand beyond their starting region on the sprawling world map (which is procedurally generated based on a seed number) to new regions with higher challenge ratings, more vicious pirates, and – naturally – better loot.
And that’s where “Windward” trips over itself and falls flat. Ship battles vs. pirates are fun. Building-up towns and expanding to new regions is fun. But doing so with no direction or ultimate goal is NOT fun. Playing “Windward” just devolves into doing these same activities over and over, making numbers bigger, until ultimately hitting the level cap (100), then trying to do Heroic (read: super impossible) end game content to make numbers bigger still.
Overall
An enjoyable mix of genres, “Windward” ultimately gets the wind taken out of its sails by its complete lack of direction. Fans of Hack ‘n Slash RPGs who hate ‘wasting time’ on the story and just want to get to the end game grinding should love “Windward,” because that’s basically all it is. While I didn’t dislike “Windward,” it’s not the type of thing I would recommend to anyone but the most obsessed grinding fans.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 0/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
