Dread Nautical Reviews
Dread Nautical offers minimalistic graphics and gameplay. The core gameplay loop is too repetitive to be interesting beyond a few hours. Survivors, combat, and looting all needed to be fleshed out more to create more engaging systems. Dread Nautical is a cruise I won't regret skipping.
Dread Nautical could be a good game if it had ... more. Basically, more of everything. The tasks are exciting, like rescuing people or collect resources, but somehow, I still don't find much delight in it. That's mainly because I'm doing the same over and over again. It's missing variety and deepness, which is sad, because I see greatness in there which just doesn't find its bloom.
Review in German | Read full review
Dread Nautical is an example of how a great concept can turn into an equally brilliant disappointment. The game boils down to collecting items, searching for survivors, destroying a boss or a cluster of opponents, and repeating the same thing. Add to this a crooked camera, average graphics, poor balance of characters and ammunition, completely non-scary world where there is a collection of Necronomicon pages, but there is no place for the sticky horror of Lovecraft, and you get a mediocre product that you dont need to play.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Performance issues could be (at least, partially) ironed over with likeable, interesting characters and a compelling mystery, but Dread Nautical just doesn't deliver one.
In a sea of mediocre, mobile-born, turn-based tactical RPGs, it's easy to find something even more lifeless than Dread Nautical, but that doesn't say much. Zen Studios' creation lacks the depth usually expected from the genre, is way too repetitive, and even seems uncertain of what kind of atmosphere it wants to have. The only dread players will feel here is from the lengthy loading times.
There will be games that make you feel like you don’t want to play them because they are so bad. Dread Nautical is that game for me. This game has many things that made me not like playing it, and I will be honest in that I have not beaten this game. I’ve had this game for a bit now, and whenever I start doing a session, I need to stop playing it 5-10 minutes at each time and at this point, I have grown tired. So why do I not like this game? Let’s find out.
Dread Nautical has a Lovecraftian horror theme, though it’s subtle it’s there. There certainly wasn’t anything in the game that I found to be scary as such, maybe a little bit more horror added to it would help in this area. The core gameplay goes round in a loop, start the day, roam the decks, find resources, and try to survive. After a few runs I found this got boring pretty quickly, there isn’t much variety in the style of the decks on the ship and after a while they all feel much the same. The tactical combat is nothing unusual that hasn’t been seen before and I recommend looking else where if that is the genre you’re looking to play.
All in all, Dread Nautical is a reasonably unremarkable game. It does well with the foundational ideas of the genres that it utilises and meets its objectives with a suitable story. However, it is more of a novelty than an advancement.
That said, if you don't have turn based games under your microscope, and like the look of Dread Nautical--this might be a good start for you. It's a good one to enjoy without the jaded lens that I seem to bear, and I even gave it to my ten year old to enjoy...which I'm happy to report they did (and learned it pretty quickly without any help). So, proceed with caution, get a few different viewpoints under your belt and best of luck to you sailor!