If you’ve read my previous reviews you’ll know that I love adorable games, I also find nothing more satisfying and enjoyable than exploring a beautiful deep and enchanted ocean. In Mythic Ocean, a game which came out earlier this year, you not only get to experience the majestic underwater world it creates, but there are also multiple colourful creatures available which you can befriend. This was more than enough reason for me to give this game a try.
To be honest, I’ve never heard of this game before I was offered a chance to review it, and thus, I was even more curious about what it has to offer. However, after going through a playthrough I feel quite a bit mixed about this game. Whilst it is indeed beautiful, it has its shortcomings as well.
Create A New World…
Mythic Ocean opens with the protagonist wandering around in a strange place. After a while, he stumbles upon a mysterious talking fish who explains to him that there are multiple Gods available within the sea. The main character dives right into his journey as he explores the different areas and seeks out these Godly beings.
You see, the world has ended and there can only be one God who can create a new world, so it’s up to you to interact, befriend, and guide the Gods to create a better world. However, it’s highly possible that the world doesn’t turn out the way the player wants it to…
Befriend Creatures Along Your Journey
As with many games these days, the main character remains mysterious throughout. They don’t remember anything about their life or who or what they are. This way, the player can immerse themselves in the game as it never shows your appearance and you’re basically learning things at the same time as they are. However, even though their origin is completely unknown and not even the age or gender is advised, the player can still form the personality of the main character due to the choices made whilst talking to the creatures.
The Godly creatures themselves are all very different from one another. There’s a pair of twins available that are always up for a prank, a mad scientist, a caterpillar who never seems to be full, and an otter who loves to party; At least I think it’s supposed to be an otter… So, with so many different characters, it was a joy to get to know each of them better. When interacting more with them, and completing their quests, the player can also get to know their origins and background story.
Although you have multiple replies to the conversations you have, all of the creatures have a prefered answer and they dislike it when the player isn’t on their side. All in all, I found it quite obvious which answer is the more positive one and tried to make all of them happy, but you could technically choose whatever answers you want and see how it affects the narrative going forward. There is no death, failure, or combat within the game, it’s all about exploring the ocean and interacting, moulding the world based on who you talk to and how you respond. As such, replayability is guaranteed if you wish to experiment with the various outcomes.
The Execution of the Story
If I’m being honest, I didn’t care a lot about the main story. Whilst I had a lot of fun going through the side-stories, it didn’t matter to me who became the ultimate creator in the end. This game offers a lot of replayability with different endings, however, as I only wanted to befriend all of the creatures, I didn’t want to go through the same process again to reach a different end. I suspect there are different outcomes if you favour a certain one, or respond negatively in every conversation, but that’s not how I personally play games like this, so I was more than happy with pleasing everyone and seeing how that played out.
There is a skip function available for those who do wish to replay the game for the ‘what if’ experience, however, it skips everything so it’ll be tough if the player wants the unread text to not be skipped. Although the game isn’t technically a Visual Novel, it’s more of a 3D adventure with Visual Novel-like conversational interactions, I’d still expect Visual Novel mechanics to be used.
Another downside is that the game clearly has different branches in the background, determining what ‘path’ the player has taken, but there is no way to look them up in-game so you never know which branch you’ve taken or if it’s different to last time.
What about the Gameplay?
Each God resides in a specific area which has multiple NPCs you can talk to and some pages for you to collect. Talking to the NPCs is optional yet finding a certain amount of pages is necessary for the game to proceed. I found some of them quite tricky to find as they were well hidden, although each area is quite small so you should be able to find them if you check every nook and cranny. Each of the pages, which are stored within a mystical library you access via a small white portal, isn’t simply a collectable, it’s a small piece of text which further explains the story and events which are happening – it reminded me of a journal.
With ten pages collected, the player can create a crown and give it to their favoured God so they can become the creator of the next world. However, there are other ways which you can use the pages that completely changes the ending.
After finding all the NPCs and pages, there isn’t much the player has to do anymore besides talking to the Gods. There is a fast travel feature that transports the player to the desired God and as the quests now only involve talking to them, I didn’t bother with swimming around anymore and, therefore, the game turned into a pure Visual Novel. I was slightly bothered by this as Mythic Ocean implimented such a beautiful world yet the player only has to interact with it for a short period before fast travel steps in and removed the need to swim around and explore.
Aside from exploring and talking to the Gods, there’s not much else to do – there’s no combat or fighting. Personally, I liked the relaxing vibe of this game, although it’s quite short, not all games have to include combat to stay engaging. The fact that it’s impossible to die meant I could play it at my own pace and not worry about saying the wrong thing to someone or ticking someone off!
Graphics and the Immersion
As aforementioned, Mythic Ocean creates a wonderful world which was a joy to look and swim through. Each time I visited a new area I was impressed with the visuals, level design, and care that went into creating each location – All of the characters, especially the Gods, were also great to interact with and look at. The whole game looks adorable and whilst there are colourful parts of the game with cheerful soundtracks, there are dark areas that suitably give off a rather depressing vibe.
Every moment of exploring was precious in Mythic Ocean, so I was greatly disappointed that besides the first time visiting an area, there wasn’t much left to do or explore once I’d found the pages and talked to the God.
Official trailer
Final Conclusion:
Mythic Ocean contains an interesting premise but, ultimately, didn’t use its full potential. While it creates a stunning world, the gameplay is rather lacking and nonexistent after finding all the pages as all that’s left to do is talking. I genuinely felt like this game turned into a pure Visual Novel and it doesn’t help that that game ‘fast travelled’ me right to the Gods, removing the need to manually swim to them. However, I loved interacting with each God and getting to know them better, although that was sadly the only thing I truly enjoyed about this game as I didn’t care much for the main story.
That being said, the execution of Mythic Ocean makes it tough for me to recommend this game, however, it might be worth a try for those who enjoy very text-heavy games.
If you wish to try out Mythic Ocean for yourself before you buy it, you can download and play the free prologue on Steam HERE
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
Mythic Ocean
£11.39
The Good:
- - Stunning graphics
- - Excellent character writing
The Bad:
- - Turns into a pure visual novel after exploring every area
- - Not a lot of interaction with the environment
- - Uninteresting main story
- - No way to look up the branches in-game
