Developer: eastasiasoft (Hong Kong)
Publisher: eastasiasoft (Hong Kong)
Reviewed on PlayStation 4
Ever wonder what it would be like to take a sea trip and suddenly your ship is stuck by debris, causing you and others to go over board and get lost in the unknown of the Bermuda Triangle?  Welcome to the eastasiasasoft’s Lost Sea. This is one trip that you wish you never boarded. Â
Lost Sea is an exploratory action-adventure game set inside the perilous environment of the Bermuda Triangle. You select your hero and recruit a ragtag crew of survivors who can help you navigate the hazardous island chain. You’ll scour each island for the mysterious tablets needed to navigate the waters of the Lost Sea and venture closer to the mysterious portal that you hope will transport you home.
Staring off you can choose from eight different characters. This sounds impressive but the problem is that each character are merely just skins. Every starting character from the selection screen has no special abilities or attributes. Choosing a character is just mainly for which ever character you think looks the coolest to you and that as far as it goes. Once your character is chosen, you’ll be warp to your first island where the game will quickly teach you how to explore the island and  search for crew members, treasure, items to help with your adventures, and the stone tablets that you’ll need to help you advance to the next island. Gathering the stone tablets is key in moving on as there’s always three stone tablets you can collect on a single island. The stone tablet act as a rolling die in order to see how many moves you can make along the chain of islands before getting to the boss island. The game breaks down the levels in zones and each one has four. There’s the desert, the jungle, the swamp, and snow areas. Within the zones are thirteen islands ranging from easy, medium, and hard. Every time you visit an island everything is procedurally generated which gives you a different challenge each time.
As you play Lost Sea, you’ll run into enemies big and small; eventually you’ll have to learn their attack patterns as they can become challenging if you’re not careful. While exploring you can find crew members that have special skills such as locking, building, mining,  adding more damage to your attack, raising you back from death, and other helpful skills that give you more incentive to find new crew members. You’ll also come across items such as weapons, health recovery items, potions that make you move faster, warp portals to get you back to the dock to exit level, and coins (or booty if you prefer) that will help you buy abilities for your characters.
One of the biggest problems that Lost Sea suffers with is that after exploring islands, finding crew members, and buying abilities for your character you would think it would carry over with you even after you die. Well that’s not the case in Lost Sea. Once you’re dead, that’s it: you lose everything and you start at the beginning of the zone. If you’re playing a long session and die suddenly, it becomes frustrating.The game then becomes a grind fest as you try to find more coins, find your crew mates again, and try to require items. This repetition takes away the game’s fun. Any accomplishment you felt the first time around discovering all those items or  the abilities you acquired is gone. This problem ultimately makes the game feel very repetitive. With thirteen island it would have been nice that the size of the islands of were smaller since it takes a while to get through all the zones. Combat in the game feel okay but sometimes you’ll find that some enemies get cheap hits off on you. Sometimes your crew members can get in the way of your attack and causes them damage. This is annoying because they don’t attack enemies back, causing your crew members to die quicker.
Lost Sea isn’t a terrible game but at the same time it’s not a great game either. It’s perfect if you’re bored, have money to burn, and are looking for something to tide you over until something better comes along. Â
