Review | Diluvion

This be a tale about a sea beasts! Underwater terrors that lie in waiting for unsuspecting sailors. Creatures that only the mad dream and brave dare ever to see. Aye, this be my tale of how I lost my crew over and over.

Talk like a pirate day aside, the tale starts with a simple quest to reach a depth of five hundred meters and retrieve a prize. Plot twist, the item required is inside an ancient warship that some sort of giant spider/crab thing has decided to call home. Apparently this sea creature also can access the vessels weaponry. Its a fantasy game so sure why not. BOOM I am dead, reload from checkpoint. Initial thoughts, “Cool, didn’t see that one coming but I am ready now!”

Second attempt, BOOM! Dead. I have twenty five hit points and one torpedo strike later, its over.

Third attempt, Unload like a psycho on targets? Keeping my distance. BOOM! Dead. I don’t know if damage was done and the game gives me no indication

Fourth attempt, Positioning tactics. BOOM! Dead. At this point my eyebrow begins to twitch a bit. At least I see one of the cannons finally explode, indicating some damage was dealt. So I get wiser, I decide to maybe upgrade my weapons a bit and see if I am just doing this wrong.

Fifth attempt, new guns, battled plenty of pirates, got better. BOOM! Dead. I manage to see where I need to go finally.

Sixth attempt, Forget the guns, get the prize and run. BOOM! Dead. Time doesn’t freeze when your inside looting a ship.

I could go on with how many attempts at this particular sea beast was attempted, but I never got the prize to wrap this story up. Now, I feel like I should prefix my review of Diluvion by saying that most of the frustrations I had with the game can be fixed with a patch. Diluvion as a whole is a well made game, that is beautiful, intriguing, and has a great many ideas. It’s the small things that begin to add up that become increasingly frustrating and take away from the experience.

Kind of like going fishing in real life, Diluvion starts out strong and exciting.

The water is rushing along the sides of your submarine and curiosities await around every corner. Then the reality of fishing sets in and you end up drinking a few beers and waiting for a stick to shake. In Diluvions case, you end up going from fetch quest to fetch quest. Gathering loot that you quickly begin to ignore and not care that it exists at all.

Diluvion is 3d underwater open world action/RPG. A very bold mixture of genres, gameplay, and overall design to say the least. When you break it down, you can compare Diluvion to most space games like Rebel Galaxy, Voidexpanse, or recently featured here at B3, 3030 Deathwar Redux. These types of games tend to have grand scopes in the amount of freedom they want to give you.

Diluvion is no different, it wants you to craft your own adventure and approach things at your own pace. There is a story to the game that involves, gods, a rise and fall of humanity and a quest for redemption. It’s interesting but fed to you in bread crumbs. I would’ve loved to been more involved in the lore of the universe. The goal is to reach some sort of promise land that would see man rise from their watery confines. Your submarine is hardly outfitted to go anywhere near the depth it needs to reach this place, thus adventure begins.

Gameplay is from a third person perspective and controlling the ship from a side back view. This is where I hit my first snag. I found myself having quite a bit of motion sickness. Thankfully, there is an FOV slider in the options, but still found myself nauseated after a couple hours of gameplay. There is lots of spinning the camera, going up and down in the heat of combat. The tutorial does, for the most part, explain the basic controls but it does take some getting acquainted with. I found it easier to play with my controller then my keyboard. Diluvion does feature full controller support with rebindable keys. Much love to the developer for that.

Combat is simple but has its nuances. You have a basic gun turret that draws from scrap, a random loot currency, and torpedoes which are your heavy hitters. Torpedoes are bit more complicated with a lock on system and are extremely finicky, At least I found them to be. Depending on your ship, you may have a torpedo bay or you may upgrade into one. There are nine total submarines that break down into light, medium, heavy. These ship types don’t really effect the use of weapons, but are more about speed, inventory, and hit points one ship has.

Combat at first feels like a chaotic mashing of ships together.

I felt like a kid mashing my toys together in the bath tub. There is quite a bit of spray and pray at first as you learn the finer points of combat. As you get more of a handle on the controls of speed shifting and acceleration, it does become more graceful. At first, maneuvering my vessel frustrated me, but eventually I found that I loved just driving my sub around. It’s smooth and you feel the ocean in the controls.

Once you do defeat an enemy, you can latch onto enemies subs and raid them for your hard earned loot. Looting at first is very fun and exciting, there is occasionally a random event that involves a door and a bit of text that can lead to death of a crew member or rarer loot. After about six hours into the game though the looting becomes a slog and really slows you down. Why? The Rope Tension is very frustrating! In the game you have to latch onto an enemy and flip them like a fish for the game to find the appropriate ‘sweet spot’ to finally load the innards and give you access to loot. This ‘sweet spot’ can be a pain to find and you end up pressing the hook button several times because the cord tension breaks. It comes off silly and when you are looting constantly or under stress it becomes a massive headache.

Given that there are pirates everywhere at some point in the game, a much more streamlined looting system would really alleviate this frustration. I understand the want for random FTL like events but it just breaks things up way to much for me. Difficulty spikes are also common place as you may find yourself constantly under attack. Enemies seem to respawn randomly and have infinite torpedos and rounds. Did I mention that sea creature?

There is crew management in the game as well, and it is one area that is done perfectly. Crew members all have their own stats and some contribute more to certain areas of the ship then others. They can all be seen hanging around your ship. The only wish I had was customization of names and maybe color scheme. Customization is something that Diluvion could really ramp up on, and from what I understand the developer plans to in the future.

On the flip side, you got base building, which allows access to rarer guns, and unique crew members. It was awesome to see how your base would expand after a sizable price was paid. Aside from the obvious buying of guns, supplies, upgrading your sub, the base adds a great gold sink that feels rewarding. Just like all the inside areas of the game there is plenty of neat detail and cool art. This is the same for your base and most cities you come across.

As a whole Diluvion is a gorgeous game.

Despite the fact you’re in an infinite vast dark ocean, there is illumination everywhere. The cities flicker with lights and huge spires of ice all around. The humongous sea monster was awesome looking despite being a pain. The explosions of torpedoes send ripples through the water that distort your vision and look utterly amazing. You can see the flashes of explosions if you find yourself in a dark part of the ocean. It is vast, and it is gorgeous.

Finding your way around this ocean is done through landmarks. You are given a map but your location isn’t pinpointed on that map, which means you have to do a bit of guesswork. Once you discover the City of Ice in the middle of the map you have to determine which way to go by compass. While I adapted to the navigation system, I found it to be needlessly complicated. Making some of the quests just longer for little reason beyond getting lost. There are also little golden fish to guide you, but this definitely needs fixing, as these sometimes would just lead me straight into a mountain. I understand the developer wants you to feel the sense of discovery and wonder, but I felt like I was swimming blind sometimes.

Unlike the aforementioned space games, Diluvion is a bit more straight forward with its goals. You don’t have mining or heavy amounts of trading to do. It’s explore, fight, shop, and do quests for your choices of activities. There is nothing wrong with that, but something I did notice as went from city to city.

Musically, this game is wonderful. The music is orchestral and haunting and does exactly what it needs to add to the ambiance. The sound effects when the combat does kick into high gear all have the proper oomph and power behind them.

In conclusion, Diluvion is a game with plenty of promise. The ideas it has are unique and games of this nature are rare. It brings innovative ideas while mixing in some of what you already know. There are cracks in the game, but these are easily patched out. Replay value may be the only thing that I think Diluvion will truly lack, as the experience is the same no matter what ship/playthrough.

The game does have Steam achievements but no Steam cards quite yet. Coming  in at £14.99/$19.99 I would recommend researching before you buy. Doubly if you are prone to motion sickness.