Sea of Solitude Reviews
Sea of Solitude tackles mental health issues through the medium of a video game.
Sea of Solitude manages to strike a chord with its relatable themes despite a rough start.
Sea of Solitude provides a detailed insight into the emotional world of a person who has to deal with losses and fears.
Review in German | Read full review
Sea of Solitude sins at times with superficiality and naivety, sinking due to a somewhat listless art direction and a script that draws on many, too many stereotypes.
Review in Italian | Read full review
On paper, Sea of Solitude is an interesting and introspective story about Kay, a young and lone girl in the throes of depression. But despite many efforts to make us feel for the poor girl, the EA Originals game suffers from way too many draft collisions, and a poor acting that do not tribune an obvious and tearful story.
Review in French | Read full review
I could go on and on about this game, but just know that games like Sea of Solitude are important. It personifies Kay's journey with mental health issues and brings to light different types of situations that people suffering from MHI might encounter. It also brings with it perspective that some people absolutely need should they know someone going through MHI and potentially a starting point when it comes to getting help for that individual.
Sea of Solitude is an emotional journey with the bones of a truly gripping story of self-reflection and relativley satisfying climax, marred by its often ham-fisted writing and lack of subtlety. Even with gameplay variety as a sacrifice, the story itself does lack some nuance but tackles heavy topics headstrong in ways few games have done before.
Sea of Solitude gives us a boat. And a light. And it accepts that we must sometimes think of ourselves as a contradiction of insignificance and grotesquery, as we wind our way through the path of recovery. That, monstrous though we may feel, we can still affect change in our lives, and the lives of others. Healing is possible, if complicated, non-linear, and often contradictory. Sea of Solitude wants us to see ourselves better than we do, but won't abandon us when we can't.
I wish I could say that Sea of Solitude excels in every way a game can. Though it offers an honest, raw depiction of how unfortunately disparate life can be and the toil that goes with that, it fires few shots as an interactive experience. A rather barren world and repetitive core loops only serve to mar what is an otherwise overwhelming sensory treat.
Despite this, Sea of Solitude is as unique as it is charming, and certainly a title to check out if you’re looking for a break from looter shooters and multiplayer.
Sea of Solitude: The Director's Cut brings a strikingly emotional tale to the Nintendo Switch. Set sail through a sunken city to confront the inner demons of Kay and her loved ones. Uncover the past and discover the hardships that they had to endure.
Sea of Solitude isn't a bad game, but it's one that could've been far more profound if it handled its delicate subject matter with more care. There's an engaging story to be told, but all of its compelling narrative ideas are constantly undermined by its cringe-inducing voice acting and bad dialogue. Meanwhile, gameplay suffers from a general lack of things to do or discover in its beautiful world, leaving players with a sense of fatigue as the game wears on.
Despite some shortcomings in the narrative, Sea of Solitude champions its storytelling. It lands solidly on its own two feet, for the most part, and presents a fairly cathartic look at loneliness and depression.
A clearly personal story told in a bland repetitive 3D platformer with padded gameplay, terrible voice acting, and no subtlety.
For those that have argued that videos games are not art, I would hold Sea of Solitude up as a shining example to the contrary. There is no easy way to summarize my experience with SOS, it was incredible, challenging, insightful and memorable. Instead, I leave you with the words of Henry Miller, an American author of the twentieth century, "One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."
Loneliness is a complex and difficult phenomenon to capture in any media, but Sea of Solitude does a commendable job despite some unfortunate shortcomings
Sea of Solitude tells a compelling story about depression, bullying and family problems. Nonetheless the game is too easy, guided and brief
Review in Italian | Read full review
The simplistic gameplay could have carried the sloppy story if it was more polished. Animation breaks and the bugginess of the collision happen far too frequently in such a short game. If Sea of Solitude: The Director’s Cut was marketed as a satire of pretentious, arty, non-engagement style indie games, it would probably fool everyone.
Sea of Solitude tackles a very sensitive subject matter and handles it beautifully. What it fails at is presenting it all in a package that offers satisfying gameplay.
If it isn’t obvious already, SOS may not have the challenges of wide open worlds like the Witcher series, but it does everything it set out to do and it did it with flying colors.