26.6 hours played
Written 1 month and 16 days ago
Seabed is yuri VN about split personality disorder. It definitely has its own charm and atmosphere.To begin with this game is pretty long for a VN , i have wast experience playing Vns and its the longest Vn i ever played.It took around 27 hours to complete with all extras (they called "Tips" here), and well its pretty long for a VN yeah? Was it worth it ? probably yes ,this game left actually very deep impression after completing it , but while i was playing it i had no such feeling until last few hours , and its the problem with all stories written in "you dont understand whats and why something is happening until the very end".. I also do not recommend you to speedrun it and skip something , yeah certain episodes can be boring but they all necessary for understanding game. Ok let me write about certain part of game more detailed.
1.Perfomance and technical side . I had 0 crashes bugs or ETC during my very long play through.The only complain is 5 save slots only , but Chapter and epizode selector mitigate that issue .This game is actually pretty old and run exceptionally good for its age. i will rate "Perfomance and technical side" as perfect 10/10
2.Art and overall style . This game has pretty unique art style ,character's sprites are simplistic but with their very own charm , the background here is a combination of art , 3d renders but mostly its just edited real photos, it looks good enough so i dont really care about it , The other important thing is actually a Cgs amount , it exeeds 100 which is actually very impressive since now we see 10-15 per game and it is considered as a normal now, i could give it 10/10 just for that , but there is more to it than sheer amount , a lot of CGs have variants too. i rate "Art and overall style"10/10
3 Music and sound. This game has impressive amount of musical compositions , its above 50 but they are just ok , not something that you will remember game for , unfortunately this game has no Voice acting , but with such lenght its not something that should impress you. But there is one thing which make up for that , and its insane amount of various sounds you will hear during the play through which will be accompanying you , its really impressive how many effort devs put in this part of a game , devs really wanted to immerse player as deep as they could in the ocean of this game. i give "Music and sound" 8/10
4.Translation.It is flawless and i saw 0 typos or awkward sentences, this game also does have some fan translations to some less popular languages but i dont know about their quality. 10/10
5.Story.!spoilers below! This game has very unique and quite sad story, steam description doesnt tell us much information about it. To begin with i really like stories about love through entire life, from childhood to adulthood together and ETC, from being friends in kindergarten to well established grown couple. This is simultaneously it but actually not , The game begin with sweet slice of live moments where Takako and Sachiko just living working . traveling and having fun together. But lately we find out that all Sachi see is actually an illusion she created , real Takako died few years ago and now she need to cure herself from that hallucinations and other symptoms of this condition. To help herself deal with it Sachi ask her old friend Narasaki for help. Sachi's POV is only half of the game tho. We also got Takako's POV as other half of the story when she stays in the special sanatorium for people with nameless disease with same symptoms as Sachi but she instead forget everything about her life before and all about Sachiko too. And story consists from small episodes from both POVs with some small Narasaki's POV eventually. The issuse that with such jumping between POV me who already got troubles following whats happening had only more issues. Also some chaprers are just slice of live in different POVs which actually do not affect story at all , and some descriptions of not necessary things are to detailed for no reason. Well i am not goind to tell entire story here but will tell ending how ! i (me as a player)! understood it and will ask some questions .Turns out that Takako died from disease on Sachi's hands which understandably left long lasting psychological trauma on her. Ok thats clear but why we got Takakos POV if she is dead, and why sanatorium she is staying is looks like Inn if Sachi's friend (and also new romance interest i guess) Well here the mystery thing from steam description comes to play . Turns out that Takako is staying in some world created in Sachi's mind for her , while other people in Sanatorium are created to make Takakos life interesting and not dull , while Mayuko is replacement for Sachiko in that world , who looks basically same and acts same as her but in that world , Takako ends up being romantically involved with her. well thats clear but the other question emerge, Who is Narasaki? in some memories she is just a doll ,but in most part of the game she is a childhood friend of Sachiko , She also is capable of traveling between 2 worlds and affect them to help cure Sachi and help Takako remember everything, and after searching even steam community notes the best answer i found is " there's a lot of room for interpretation, and few definitive answers." i am not blaming author for this tho. and since its mystery you dont need to reveal everything. Well to the other things i want to mention. During one of last chapters Sachiko ends up dreaming and in the dream she find herself in dark cave with Narasaki , And Narasaki tells here that on the other side of a tunnel there is a world with Takako there , and if she wants to reunite with her she can go but she will never return to her old world, her body will become a soulles , it will act same , do same things but her soul will never be in that world more, i still have no idea how Narasaki know this but it doesnt matter, in the game Sachi decided against that idea because of work and "other people". i think that player should be given a choice here , do we want to face problem face to face and deal with it or we want to run away in a fantasy world.As someone said in steam community discussions "In the ending the Narasaki personality decides to leave in order for Sachiko to get better and stop going insane. Sachiko gets better and forgets everything, but Takako, Narasaki and the other personalities continue to "live" deep inside Sachiko's subconsciousness.".Maybe that she was a hallucination too since none else could remember her .Well here we come to the ending. The game end at Takako are going on ship cruise with Mayuko in dream world while Sachi is going on a cruise with Nanae her new love interest who is also an inn owner she now is "cured" and finally accepted the life as it is. Well its a actually ending which left a deep impression on me but still, i wanted to have option to abandon real world and completely move to "Fantasy one". When Sachi was talking her "Last phone call" with Takako i hoped that the reunion will be next but it was actually goodbye. is it Finished at this? yes but no. most extras or "Tips" how game call them are not necessary for understanding a story but the last ones are . At first we have Narasaki in a "Dream" world which means that she is there now and supports theory that she was not real too, BUT the MAIN thing that Takako sees Sachi's silhouette and says that she will come here (in imaginary world) and it just create a lot of questions, IF Sachiko will get at this imaginary world as she die what will happen with Mayuko and Nanae , I belive that Takako will wait for her as long as it will be needed in that imaginary world but what with Sachiko ? She could be invested in relationships with Nanae,she could lose all feelings toward Takako? it will be pretty awkward.In the end the story itself is pretty sad actually. it will be 9/10 just because there is too many unanswered questions.
Overall rate will be 9.5/10
