Windrose Preview: A Solid Pirate Game Laid Low by a Slow Beginning

There are a lot of games out there that seem to be mashups of various genres, and now adding to that is Windrose, a pirate-themed survival soulslite game. It's pretty much what it says on the tin: a game about being a pirate and dying a lot while becoming the legend you were meant to be.

I put a little over 15 hours into this game for the preview, and I've barely scratched the surface of what's on offer. It's an incredibly long game, like most survival games, but that's not always for the best reasons. More than that, this game is hard, especially solo. I struggled a lot the first few hours to sort of get the hang of things.

Once I did manage a solid grasp on the game's mechanics and general setup, I had a lot more freedom to do what I wanted to do, for better or worse. Since the game is coming out in Early Access soon, there's an opportunity for the devs to make some changes. Some things do need adjusting, but overall, I really enjoyed my time in Windrose and will probably keep playing it a good bit.

What Even is Windrose?

To put it in the simplest terms, Windrose is a pirate-themed survival game with elements taken from the Souls games, specifically for combat. You'll create a character and then spawn onto a map after watching an opening cutscene. There is a story here, and for the most part, it'll be what navigates you through the game while you play.

You'll gather resources, kill enemies, and clear objectives as you move from island to island. You can build up a base with the resources you gather to improve your gear and craft other kinds of equipment to help you find the people who killed you and stole your very clearly, cursed treasure.

There are a lot of weapon combinations available, so you don't have to play the one-handed sword and pistol style — although I did because that's just what pirates do. Maybe you prefer two-handed weapons or something blunt over something sharp? No matter your tastes, you can use whatever you like and build your character around your own style.

You do have character levels and points you can spend on stat increases, which works the same as Soulslike games in that weapons scale with certain attributes and will do more damage the higher that attribute. There's a lot going on in this game once you're able to head out into open water on a ship that's actually sea-worthy.

Transporting goods, ship-to-ship combat, and the very best one singing sea shanties. The map is massive, as you'd imagine, and you'll spend a lot of time just sailing from island to island. Although it isn't perfect, what's there is fascinating and makes you want to be a bit better at the game, so you can experience everything it has to offer, which will take a lot of hours.

A Survival Game in the Weirdest Ways

While I do like the game, it was super weird that this was sort of pitched as a survival game when it really doesn't use any survival mechanics at all. It does have resource gathering and refining, so that is probably more what they meant, but outside those mechanics, there aren't any survival mechanics beyond not dying.

You don't have to worry about temperature, food, or water, since none of those will ever bring you slowly to death. You can cook and make food, which you basically have to do, or every combat ends up with you needing to play perfectly. The food will boost your health and offer some bonuses to various stats based on the rarity of ingredients.

This came across as a very odd choice, but it still makes sense since the game does take a lot of other things from the survival genre. Though it is fundamentally different from something like Grounded 2, it still operates very similarly to a survival game in terms of gameplay loop. Basically, you'll go out and do some adventuring, gather resources and gear, then return to your main base.

The game isn't super punishing either, which is where it separates itself from the Souls game and earns its soulslite genre title. The mix of survival and Soulslike gameplay play into each other fairly well, even if I wish it played around with the survival aspects a bit more. They felt a little more tacked on than I would have liked.

An Excruciatingly Slow Beginning

The biggest gripe I can levy against this game right now is that the opening hours are just incredibly slow in every sense of the word. This can be a difficult thing to nail down, especially when mixing genres like this, but the problem becomes really apparent when you go to leave the island you spawn on for the first time.

All you have is a little dinghy, and you'll be sailing a good bit away in it. You don't move fast, which makes sense, but that never seemed to improve, even when I got an actual ship. It moves twice as fast as the dinghy, but all the locations you have to sail to end up being even farther away than before.

The worst, and arguably most frustrating part, is that you can't do anything when you're sailing. You can have your crew sing songs, an amazing addition and my favorite thing to do while I sail, but from the jump, you're sailing up to ten minutes away with literally nothing to kill time. You can stop off at other islands, but since completing quests grants the most XP, it's better to just hit the missions ASAP.

This is compounded by the fact that you can't even unlock fishing until you manage to get to the second area. They aren't on a separate map, but there's no point in going there because nothing will start unlocking until you kill the first area boss. It felt a little unnecessary to keep something that could've made sailing around a little more engaging, much like Sea of Thieves.

Combat That Only Gets Better

One thing that really stuck out to me was how interesting combat was, especially when I started unlocking traits and skill points. This was where I could really focus on a build idea I had around a playstyle and around some gear I'd collected. Pretty much all I wanted to do was keep playing to improve how I was doing in combat and die less. Plus, respecing is totally free, so testing out different builds and weapons was pretty fun, although I still went back to a pistol and sword, because, well, it's a pirate's life for me.

Combat is meant to be difficult. Every enemy can pretty much one-shot you if you don't have any buffs, and sometimes it feels a little cheesy. It also just makes you want to come back and show them who's boss. Luckily, enemies stay dead even after you end up biting the big one and respawning. This lets you chip away at them, so even if you're struggling, eventually you'll get them all.

Windrose has so many options for weapons and playstyles that they had to engineer combat to work for everyone. Enemies, and you, all have several guard shields. When those break, you get stunned and can get hit for a lot of damage. Strength-based weapons do this when they hit, and every other weapon type can perfect block to deplete the enemy guard.

The big difference maker here is obviously guns. Shooting a guy in the face is going to hurt him a good bit, and it'll deplete some guard. That being said, gunpowder in the early game is pretty limited, so don't overuse it too much. The more of the combat I played and understood, the less I died, except when four of them decided they wanted to surround me and shoot me.

A Pirate Ain't Nothin Without a Crew

The game is strictly a PvE game, but that doesn't mean you should go it alone out on the high seas. You can have up to eight people join your game, or you can host your own server, so everyone can have some fun even when you're not around. Progression works a little differently when you're with other people, but thankfully, the devs want the focus to be on fun.

Some quests can be completed by anyone and progress is shared, while other quests are strictly individual. This was awesome to see and means you and your crewmates don't need to be attached at the hip. Pirates live for freedom, and this game is no different. Your friends are welcome to sail wherever they like while you complete a quest they may not need.

It's great that the game is made with multiplayer in mind, but it almost feels like playing solo is just adding another layer of difficulty. You're taking all the aggro, all the hits, and there's no one to back you up if you need to heal. Even out on the seas in the early game, most of the enemy ships come in threes, which makes fighting them a bit more difficult when you're by yourself.

It's not impossible, but it was something I felt would matter less if I had another ship alongside me. It's pretty clear the game is meant for at least a few players. You spend a lot of your time with the survival mechanics in the early part of the game, rather than the sailing and combat, since you need a ton of resources to make most things.

All in all, Windrose is a great-looking game with a fantastic set of bones that really set the game up for success. I'm a big fan of pirates and always have been, so getting my hands on something that let me live out a good chunk of my pirate dreams was amazing. Nothing I've listed is impossible to fix or adjust, and I think, given some time, the devs will make the early game significantly more enjoyable.

If you're looking for an adventure on the high seas that will challenge you and a few of your friends, then Windrose is the pirate game for you. The more I played it, the more adamant I was to find success and understand the game on a deeper level. With more than 50 hours of content for an Early Access launch, you'll get more than your money's worth right out of the gate.