Burly Men at Sea

 PlayStation 4
User Score
4.5

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 48 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 48
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 48
  3. Negative: 21 out of 48

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  1. JamesFrankel
    Jan 21, 2019
    5
    Total playtime: 1-2 hours (at max)

    It's basically a visual novel-like game, with the difference that instead of the typical VN-format with a fixed text box and choices as buttons, it's a more free form of story-telling and choices are selected by the way you interact with stuff on the screen. Controls: They aren't very good. You have to press one button to widen your limited    Total playtime: 1-2 hours (at max)

    It's basically a visual novel-like game, with the difference that instead of the typical VN-format with a fixed text box and choices as buttons, it's a more free form of story-telling and choices are selected by the way you interact with stuff on the screen.

    Controls:
    They aren't very good. You have to press one button to widen your limited viewfield in one direction, which after a time causes the characters to move in that direction. Feels little weird. Even worse is the click control, where you navigate a cursor to specific regions to click them. Probably works well on mobile phones and PC, but on PS4, it's quite a bad control. They should have added some snapping or something similar.

    Story & Gameplay:
    The story is fine, but nothing great. Bearded men go on an adventure and meet certain mythical creatures and other strange occurances. It sounds cool, and it is, but it is too short (one adventure, or playthrough takes about 10-15 minutes at max). What also sucks is that every adventure basically ends the same way with the travelers returning to the starting point. There are no bad ends in that sense, no deaths or other permanent consequences of the choices taken, since it always loops from the beginning. Some choices don't even really matter (except for trophies), since the outcome is basically the same in both cases. Also, when going for another playthrough to see the other missed choices, you always have to repeat the whole thing. So skipping, no in-between saves to speed up the consequent runs. You gotta do the whole thing again. Since a run is just 10-15 mins, this is kinda ok, but still a waste of time and I wish they added a better way for further runs. At least the dialogue changes a bit depending on what choices were taken the last time, but that doesn't really excuse anything.

    Music & Art:
    The best thing about the game is the soundtrack, imo, which has lots of acapella voice sounds (reminded me of Botanicula) and sounds really nice. The art is pretty minimalistic, but consistent, and fits really well with the soundtrack and the dialogue. This all gives a consistent look and feel and atmosphere to the game, which is probably why one could overlook the flaws of the game listed earlier.

    Conclusion:
    It's not a great game, but it has its charme. Very short playtime, but you get a very easy platin-trophy, in case you care. I wouldn't recommend paying money for it though. There's simply too less content for that. I personally got it from PS+.    … Expand
  2. DrFriendless
    Nov 18, 2018
    5
    It's very beautiful, but the game is determined to not tell me what's going on or what I'm trying to achieve. It seems there are mini games, but it's so hard to control the pointer that I apparently always fail them and die. That wears thin very quickly.
  3. varcorvio
    Nov 8, 2020
    5
    Very easy Platinum but the game is quite boring. Interesting the unusual commands of the game and the 'poor' graphic. Story is very approximate
  4. aaronnmp96
    Feb 1, 2023
    5
    I approve because I laughed a lot with the events, and the sound effects are wonderful

Critic Reviews

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Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. PSX Extreme
    Nov 2, 2017
    80
    Burly Men at Sea will definitely charm you though. And although it can get repetitive if you try to get all the endings for the game, the stories are all well written and it’s exciting to see what happens next. Lots of color, fun music and sound, and witty writing bring this to a very well rounded game that is likely to please most people.
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