Dread Nautical Reviews
The many elements of Dread Nautical culminate in a formula that makes it enjoyable to chip away at the challenging campaign.
Dread Nautical is chock-full of charm and finds the perfect balance of difficulty to be accessible to someone who’s more interested in story than advanced tactics while still having appeal for genre veterans at harder settings.
With its engaging story and enjoyable combat mechanics, Dread Nautical has the potential to make a splash on the Nintendo handheld. Even after making it through the demonic ship, there’s enough variety and a strong enough combat system to encourage multiple playthrough.
Dread Nautical was simply amazing to sit down to. The turned based elements mesh perfectly with the Roguelike setting that has been presented through a cruise ship stuck somewhere out there in the high seas. With plenty of possible party members, tons of replayability, and simply just being fun to play, I can only hope to see more of this down the line and maybe a Dread Nautical inspired Pinball Machine.
With tons of character customization options and non-irritating procedurally-generated level design, Dread Nautical has enough meat on it to justify several playthroughs. Tactics fans shouldn't hesitate to pick this one up.
This game has been so much fun to play. Even when I am cursing at the screen during a boss fight, Dread Nautical has me coming back for more.
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!
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.
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.