Sea of Remnants is an online pirate swashbuckler take on Honkai Star Rail that's had me rolling dice in turn-based duels and trading cannonfire with a gorilla

While some free-to-play online games might try to hook you with a bombastic opening, I actually appreciate how quiet and wordless my first foray into Sea of Remnants is. Going hands-on with a pretty early build of this open world pirate game, my mitts are immediately filled with oars – having me row a small boat towards a bright horizon on a ghostly sea. Presumably, I've copped it, quite possibly at sea.

Yet, before I can make it to the other side of that horizon, the water rises above me to block access to my cloaked character. Instead, a wooden, ramshackle ship emerges from behind, beckoning me to board. I really love how Sea of Remnants focuses on creating this intriguing atmosphere from the off, drawing me in to its mythological take on the sea and the pirates that seek to nab treasure from it.

Doll up, doll up

From there I'm woken up by Sigmund, a doll repairman, going over my wrecked body that seems to have drifted its way to the island community of Orbtopia. That's right, Sea of Remnant's gorgeous puppet character designs aren't just a visual choice, but worked into the storyline – the character creation that follows is literally you getting a new body made from new doll parts.

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Suffering from amnesia, you've no idea what happened to you, or the mysterious girl you woke up alongside (who Sigmund tells you is out for the count). Your only clues are the game's opening, and the lockbox that everyone who washes up seems to have. For you, that includes some mysterious torn flags and maps, and a handy dandy compass that – Pirates of the Caribbean-style – points you to your objective.

Meeting up with R.S., a young misfit who uncannily resembles the doll you washed up with, you join forces against Whitebeard and end up assembling a crew to hunt for treasure and find out more about your past. My hands-on only encompasses this single-player opening to the game, not the more fully open world online component that follows, but there's quite a lot for me to sink my teeth into adventuring through this introduction.

A turn-based RPG at heart, there's a lot about Sea of Remnants that'll be familiar to anyone who has played Honkai Star Rail. Your party members slash at enemies to initiate battles, during which you mix together basic attacks, skills, and ultimates, with a power-up meter that fills as turns progress.

But how you spend that power-up meter is one of the key differences. Revolving around dice, you can spin up to three to further boost an attack, which – when revealed – can be matched against an enemy's vulnerability number. Beating that number with your dice will then allow for a Rogue's Luck extra turn, meaning you can pile on bonus hits while also souping up damage. Likewise, getting the jump on enemies also takes the form of an initiative roll to see how much advantage you get.

Finding hidden treasures rewards poking around the islands you set out to visit, and there's lots to be found – rewarding all sorts of the usual currencies you'd expect from the genre that enable you to level up and boost your character. Piles of colorful gems can be used for upgrades. They're the sort of collectibles Honkai Star Rail and gacha players will be familiar with, though it's not entirely clear how much of a gacha game Sea of Remnants is.

While R.S., with her cannons and tricks (not unlike Arcane's Jinx), is certainly a named character, later crew members are suddenly foisted into my lineup by the handful. They all have skills and nodes to improve and level up as you'd expect from this kind of game, but it does seem like the way new characters will be deployed may be a bit different.

Quest for booty

With that said, getting my head around a whole host of new gems and coins a mere handful of hours into a new game is tough, and, as this is a very early development build, I'm told a lot of content and balancing is subject to change. At this point, I don't have a clear sense of the full structure of the game, other than the feeling that it plays quite similarly to Honkai Star Rail at this stage.

I do like Sea of Remnant's piratey tone, though – and how open the maps and sea at large feel. While nothing I've played has been fully open yet, sailing between mission objectives is a nice touch. I like that beyond being set-dressing, the sea factors in mechanically too. One of the earliest quests has us saving a trader from an attacking gorilla… who then ends up pursuing us on a pirate ship of its own, turning into a real-time exchange of cannon fire.

I also really love the cooking mechanic in the game that has you create a skewer of food on your sword and then barbecue it over a campfire in first-person. The art style is really appealing, and moments like this add to the immersion of feeling like you're in this strange world.

All I'm not sure about at the moment is whether I have room in my life for another online gacha game when I'm not only already invested in so many earlier releases – but where those releases have undergone years of content and quality-of-life updates already. Sea of Remnants is setting itself apart with its unique dice, crew, and ship mechanics, but until I see more I'm curious if it'll be seaworthy enough to catch up to the competition.

Fancy more piracy? We've been playing Assassin's Creed Rogue: Assassin's Creed Shadows can wait – I spent 40 hours mopping up the map in the one game in the series everyone skipped