Enthralling sailing adventure with dated-but-incredibly charming visuals, incredibly satisfying character progression through unique classes unlocking through gameplay, varied and intriguing world building with hand crafted locales. Plays as tactical JRPG combat punctuated throughout a sailing/pirate/merchanting overworld exploration, hopping between towns and caves and groves and dungeons.

For the first few hours - because this is an indie RPG, and it falls short of content quite quickly. You'll start to the see the patterns and see through the mystique pretty quickly, as great as they are. If only someone made hundreds of hours of additional handcrafted adventures that complemented all the existing systems and expanded the already great themes and tone.

Someone did - check out the "Prominence Mod Pack" - the full one, not the bare bones one. I don't know if I recommend it for the first play through, but you should definitely know that there is much more content available for this game, at same-or-better than developer quality. I played a quick playthrough at base game, then a much more indepth playthrough with the mod pack, and loved every minute of both. Huge shout out to Rad Codex for such a great game in terms of system and flavour and story and modding support - and huge shout out to Prominence for (freely!) expanding the content over tenfold to a fully realized RPG world.

SELL SELL SELL GET GET GET MONEY MONEY MONEY kill all neutral ships and steal their cogs

Horizon’s Gate masterfully combines the best of tactical combat, open-world exploration, trading, questing, ship collecting, and unlimited crew management into one cohesive and rewarding experience.

Pros:
Deep Customizable Class System: Endless possibilities for party builds and strategies.
Naval Battles: A rare and thrilling feature in modern games.
Rewarding World Exploration: Every corner of the map offers discovery and excitement.
Excellent Pixel Art and Music: Immersive visuals and soundtrack elevate the experience.

Cons:
Awkward Inventory System: Could use refinement for smoother gameplay.

Despite minor flaws, it’s an easy 10/10. If you love sea adventures and tactical RPGs, Horizon’s Gate is an absolute must-play!

A love letter to the genre

Incredibly happy I found this game. It's like a childhood dream for me.
- It's combat is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, as well as it's many classes and the ability to mix them together.
- Exploring is pretty fun and relaxing. Some things you can do like combining items to craft or mess with the environment, as well as some hidden secrets I didn't notice until coming back to that place.
- LOVED the music.

Only gripe I have is that the Corpryst material is literally just a worse Mythril, which thankfully there is a mod to fix that.
I've played without mods for my first playthrough, which did take around 30 hours, but every hour was very enjoyable.

Highly recommend this game. 9/10


PS: I was very surprised that when an NPC says something will take some time, it DOES take time and you don't need to rush anything

You ever play a game that does everything right, yet you still struggle to recommend? It's so remarkably competent that it makes you feel... nothing. This is one of those highly tame recommendations where I can absolutely thumbs up, but I don't want to build up hopes.

More than likely you're like me, a fan of new Uncharted Waters or other sailing/exploring/trading games. The devs here are 100% fans of the genre and understand it well. Every single system works like it should. Trading, exploring and especially combat feel the way they should. If you know the genre, you know what to expect, so instead I'll focus on the particularly good aspects.

The character building is exceptionally cool with several races to pick from, loads of equipment, and tons of classes with unique skills (Passive, weapon and active!) complete with multi-classing. Most sailing games take the approach of simplistic crew members, but Horizon's Gate embraces the options found in Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea. In theory, I loved this... its great.

The world map design is exceptional and did something that I don't often see in this genre. Rather than having large landmasses that you sail around, much of the land features waterways that cut through the middle. As you do side quests and explore you'll create new shortcuts and safer paths from city to city. Combine this with "Gusts" that let you turbo speed your ship or drop wind bouys that let you build your own speedways and it's a clever world.

So if everything is exceptional... why do I find it so hard to say nice things?

The problem I run into is that while everything works, none of it seems deep or important enough to satisfy. Each port has 1 trade item that sells for a profit based on distance. Combat is generally simplistic enough that I don't find myself deep diving into the class systems. The quests are simplistic, most of the hidden groves feel the same, enemies blend together, factions feel like little more than a flag.

There's even a workshop to add more stuff to compensate for relatively limited base content!

There's not even a little part of me that doesn't like this game. Every button I wanted pressed was hit, every hope I had was met and there really hasn't been any low points for me.

But I'd be lying if I said that there was any high points for me either.

I have played similar games in the 1990s which were much more polished. The map and overworld travelling are boring and brainless. There are no cool events, just random monster encounters. Trading is always succesful as it is based on distance, not on local demand. The only interesting mechanic is the combat and levelling system and that is not worth your time, as there are plenty of games with more rewarding levelling systems.

This game is a love letter to classic JRPGs, minus some of the old-school frustrations. Imagine Final Fantasy meets Fire Emblem, with a touch of Baldur's Gate 3's depth. The developer even reached out when I had a minor issue – a rare and welcome surprise these days.

If you miss the charm of SNES-era RPGs and need a nostalgia fix that isn't super linear, look no further. The naval gameplay is surprisingly engaging, adding new dimensions to the genre. With tons of build variety and rewarding exploration, there's always something new to discover. I'm just glad I was lucky enough to stumble across this title. Give it a shot. Excited to see more from this dev.

Incredible game, would love to play a sequel!