Windrose – PC Early Access Review

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Windrose brings me the same joy as Assassin’s Creed Black Flag did all those years ago, even if it isn’t as polished.

Developer Kraken Express may be new to the scene, but it entered with a bang. Windrose is an ambitious open-world game that lets players become pirates to craft their own story. Available on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, the game is out in early access and is already making waves.

Treasure Awaits!

For some reason, nailing a good pirate-themed game is much easier than it looks. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag made the genre look so easy, having players sail the seas in search of treasure, all the while singing sea shanties and sinking enemy ships. It’s also more than a decade old, and the only other large title to try its hand at making players pirates is Sea of Thieves. That is, until Windrose came onto the scene.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Windrose is very reminiscent of survival games such as Valheim. Crafting and gathering materials are huge parts of the overall gameplay loop, ensuring that you’re constantly hoarding wood that you get from trees or stones that you pick up from the floor.

I absolutely loved using the workbench and discovering that I could craft something new. Previous survival games, such as Enshrouded and Valheim, frankly didn’t click with me, but Windrose is the first game in the genre that made me genuinely want to keep playing.

Much of what sets Windrose apart in the survival department is its accessibility. The game is the perfect gateway to the genre for newcomers, whether it’s because of the shared storage aspect, where every player in the session can use materials from storage in the camp, or because of how easy it is to create spawn points on uncharted islands.

Trying to mine copper ore with an axe in Windrose

This directly leads to the base-building part of Windrose. From walls to floorings, the game gives you many ways to create the base of your pirate dreams. While crafting houses and huts is generally straightforward, especially because the game offers prebuilt options for those who aren’t confident in their construction abilities, there are some faults.

I found myself having to redo entire constructs just because there’s no way to adjust the sizes of certain walls and roofs. Because of this, small parts of roofs and walls were sometimes just sticking out of the edges of my houses. Then, there’s dropping items for friends. The first time a friend asked me to drop some wood for him, we spent a good five minutes just looking for where it was dropped. For some reason, the game has a tendency to basically toss thrown items in a random direction instead of just dropping them where you’re standing.

Combat, Cannons, and a Lot of Dying

Windrose highly markets its combat and exploration mechanics, and it doesn’t disappoint. While combat is fairly straightforward, the mix of perfectly-timed parries and enjoyable gun mechanics keeps things fresh. The only problem is that dying is very easy in this game.

Since Windrose seemingly assumes that most players will play alongside their friends, enemies hit hard enough to take you down in two or three hits, at least when you start the game. Recovering fallen items isn’t too tough, but dying to a charging boar gets annoying the fifth time. Or the tenth.

Speaking of fallen items, Windrose follows the Soulslike trend of dropping a backpack representing your fallen items wherever you die. Just interact with it to recover your lost inventory. However, not only can your friends grab your fallen items, but the backpacks don’t tell you who they belong to. Because of this, you sometimes have to do some guesswork if more than one player dies nearby.

Recovering fallen items gets even tougher when you die at sea. Windrose has an excellent naval system, letting you easily construct ships and equip them with your preferred number of cannons or armor. Controlling the ship and firing cannons simultaneously is easy, and you can comfortably do both alone or assign one task to a friend. The problem comes when you die during a naval battle and have to track down your fallen items. These battles usually have many casualties, so it’s very easy to accidentally pick up a friend’s lost inventory.

Of course, naval battles aren’t the highlights of a pirate’s life. Windrose has many unique islands that you can go to, with different areas having different biomes. You place camp directly after reaching uncharted land, before starting your exploration. Whether it’s finding new enemies to defeat or places of interest to clear, the game tries to keep things fresh. Mining ores is easily the most mundane part of an otherwise stacked exploration game.

Windrose also has many quests for you to complete. While the main quest is automatically assigned at the start, there’s also a healthy mix of faction quests and side quests to complete, with them all giving you valuable materials and even more valuable experience. Leveling up is a big deal in this game, since you can upgrade your character’s base stats while also unlocking new talents. It’s more than enough to push players to complete more quests.

Graphics & Audio

Windrose’s graphics are a sight to behold. Every time I turn the game on again after taking a short break, I can’t help but comment on how pretty it is. The water is shiny, the islands look glistening, and the sky is usually very pretty. This is especially true when the sun’s out, since the water perfectly reflects the light.

Unfortunately, I did notice occasional performance dips due to these visuals. While the game usually ran at a stable 60 FPS, that number would drop when I’d explore areas with more forestation. It wasn’t enough to ruin the experience for me, but the performance drops were definitely noticeable.

Another thing that’s extremely noticeable is the calming music that would play when I’d be exploring islands. My favorite ever soundtrack comes from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Windrose’s soothing music almost made me feel like that again. The combat music isn’t nearly as memorable, but it’s definitely serviceable.

It’s worth mentioning that the game’s characters are usually silent. It would be nice if enemies and NPCs had more varied dialogue, but that may change in the full release.

Longevity

Despite being in early access, Windrose has well over 60 hours worth of content. The game has three areas that have their own biomes and major areas, and the content in every area is enough to lose yourself in for tens of hours.

A fourth biome is already confirmed. It wouldn’t be surprising if the developer continues to expand the main story as long as players are willing to play more. That’s the best part about a game that’s in early access, because you can just revisit it after a couple of months to discover that the content has doubled.

Final Thoughts

Windrose definitely has its weak spots, but the developer’s seeming desire to improve the game gives me hope for its full release. As long as the game focuses on polishing what it already has instead of trying to be the next Black Flag, I have no doubt that I’ll keep coming back for more pirating adventures.

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

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