Brighter Shores Early Review – A Dim and Shallow Ocean

Brighter Shores is now available in early access, and it’s been a mixed bag so far. For the uninitiated, it’s made by one of the original creators of RuneScape, and it’s really similar in a lot of ways. In its current state, the game has a lot of neat ideas, but there are many questionable decisions that undermine them. But before we get to those, let’s talk about one thing that I liked.

[Updated 11/17/24] – I’ve continued playing the game on the side since originally posting this. My opinions haven’t really changed all that much, though I’ve added additional sections + a bit more clarification and reflection.

Clear Progression Paths

This somewhat ties in with something that I do dislike, but I’ll explain that later. Long story short, the way the game’s designed makes it really easy to figure out the next thing you have to do in order to level up.

In each region, or “episode” as they’re called, you can only level up a specific set of skills. For example, cooking and fishing can only be done in the first region, Hopeport. On the flip side, woodcutting and carpentry are leveled up in the next one.

For some skills, such as fishing, the stuff you catch will eventually upgrade after reaching certain levels. The mottled flounder that you can catch at the start, for instance, will turn into olive flounder after a few levels. This doesn’t mean that you can’t catch the inferior variant anymore, however, as you can manually flip between all of the versions you’ve unlocked.

In a way, this makes the game feel a lot more “focused” when you compare it with RuneScape. By that, I mean that you won’t need to search for new resource nodes halfway across the world. Instead, you just loop all around that certain profession’s region as you level it up.

Eventually, there are ways in which professions become relevant beyond their episode. The alchemy skill is a prominent example in the early game, as higher-level potions require materials obtained through the next episode’s gatherer profession.

The Unsatisfying “Fresh Starts”

Now, what irks me is that each time you transition to the next episode, it feels like all of your progress thus far has been pointless because you’re dropped back down to zero across the board. I don’t just mean the professions, but your gear as well.

For the first two episodes (I believe this trend continues in the others too), your combat styles and their respective gear pieces are exclusive to each area. So, the second you touch Hopeforest, you’re going to be punching your way back up with an entirely “new” combat profession.

All of your weapons and armor, though still equippable, are essentially useless here. You’ll have to work your way back up to a new set of gear by killing god knows how many mobs again. It doesn’t help that you might have to compete with other players, since your options are pretty limited at the lower levels and you can’t share mobs.

Maybe this expands into something later on where leveling up different combat styles—which are currently just the same in every aspect but name—actually matters, as they might link together in some capacity. Right now, though, it’s a fairly demoralizing system, which is further exacerbated by how slow and pointless the grind becomes the deeper you progress.

Unfortunately, I might not even be able to see if the system will expand once you get to the third episode, which supposedly comes with yet another combat style. The next part is the biggest pain point for me, and I’d imagine it’s going to be the same for a lot of other people…

Gated By The “Premium Pass”

As of writing this, Brighter Shores is completely free to play. However, it features a premium pass that’s really just a monthly subscription that locks episode three and beyond behind it. It’s pretty much like RuneScape‘s membership system, which… probably shouldn’t have been surprising, honestly.

The problem is, with how much content is currently in the game and how shallow and slow the grinds are at the moment, a $5.99 monthly subscription is such a hard sell, especially without regional pricing.

I get that it helps support the development, so I’m not going to sit here and lambast others for giving them money. The developers have actually been doing a fantastic job addressing UI/UX-related concerns, and while I’m a bit weirded out by the fanaticism within certain forums, the praise they’re getting isn’t unfounded.

As someone in a third world country, though, the pass is a steep price to pay for a game that’s not even anywhere close to finished. I already have a lot of other services to pay for, and even the developer acknowledges the subscription fatigue in an old interview, so I’m confused as to why they went with this model. But hey, I’m no business expert. I’m just some guy being frank with my thoughts here.

Maybe I’ll give it a shot after a few major content updates. For now, though, the game’s severe lack of content or any real goal to work towards makes it hard for me to justify paying a monthly fee.

What Are We Grinding For?

It’s high time I explain why the grinds have been slow and (currently) largely pointless. In its current state, there really isn’t any goal to work towards. Sure, there’s the profession capes, but those are just purely cosmetic items (ugly ones at that).

Basically, the entire gameplay loop is exactly what it’s called: a mere loop. Just run around the same nodes you’ve been grinding for hours on end purely to see a number go up. There’s no mega rare item drop to try and get, gameplay perks for reaching certain levels, or new challenges to overcome. There’s just… nothing.

To make matters worse, grinding any profession feels like a light jog for the first few hours until you hit level 20, which is the equivalent of suddenly slamming yourself into a brick wall. To put it into perspective, going from level 20 to 21 requires around half of the experience that you needed to get from level 0 to 20, and it only gets slower from there.

There’s a “knowledge” mechanic that can speed things up a bit, but it’s cold comfort when it takes literally almost two billion EXP to max out at level 500. No, I’m not exaggerating. That’s the grind you’re facing if you plan on racing for the leaderboards in this game (which they’re adding soon).

Even if you aren’t going for such absurd milestones, the leveling process is incredibly slow in general. It’ll get dull too, since, as much as I praised how you won’t have to travel far and wide to train a profession, there’s really no sugarcoating how you’ll be training on reskinned nodes/enemies for tens or even hundreds of hours. I don’t mind the reskins, but it’s a common complaint among players.

The side quests aren’t even a realistic goal to casually work for. One of the quests you will likely stumble into while exploring the very first episode is called “The Brannof Inheritance”. You wanna know what you’ll need to complete it? You’re going to need a 50 in alchemist and level 61 cooking. That means the lowest requirement is 750,000+ experience in a single profession.

It doesn’t help that training requires fairly active gameplay. Don’t fall for the “AFK” methods that most people describe, because they’re using the RuneScape definition of the term, which usually just means “you have to click once or a few times every 20-30 seconds”. There are truly passive methods, but they have extremely low EXP rates that only make them good for whenever you have to logout.

Overall, It’s Not All Bad

Setting aside my gripes with the premium pass and the slow, unsatisfying grind, the game at least runs very well and feels pretty damn alive, despite the lack of cooperative activities at the moment. Walking around and chatting with people as I level up any profession has been an amusing experience.

The developers are also quick to address feedback. One common complaint at launch was the lack of custom keybinds, which they added rather quickly. The latest dev posts also show that they are paying attention to suggestions, but it’s obviously too early to see if that will result in any major changes/additions.

Since it’s still in early access, the developers have all the time in the world to cook up new content and (hopefully) rethink or revamp the current progression system, especially for the combat professions. I don’t buy their reasoning that the way combat professions work makes it more enjoyable for people with limited playtime. If anything, that crowd would be even more bummed out if they make it to the next episode and realize that they need to grind for new gear again.

I didn’t even talk about the current “meta”, which is to go through the painfully slow level 32 carpentry grind ASAP to meet the requirements of a quest that rewards you with a massive QOL upgrade. The thing people glance over is that the quest also needs you to be around 30+ in the scout profession and/or have healing potions, because you need to fight some level 35 mobs at the end of it. (As pointed out in the comments, you can actually get the storage spell from that quest before the combat part, so it’s only 32 carpentry still!)

The Verdict

Brighter Shores feels like a game that I should’ve enjoyed a lot more, so I might check in from time to time whenever a major update drops. I do hope it improves over time, but either way, I won’t be experiencing the latter half of the game as the premium subscription is just not something that I can justify spending on right now.

I’ve played several more hours since I originally wrote this review, and my opinions largely remain the same. The substantial QOL changes that they’ve done within the following week have at least made certain activities much more bearable.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t really address the game’s lack of any real goals to strive for, though I don’t think it’d be fair to expect them to fix that issue within the first couple of weeks. The reality is, the game still needs a lot more time in the oven, and it really feels like it’s, ironically, too early for early access.

Since it’s free to some extent, there’s no harm in checking it out yourself. Just be realistic with your expectations, especially if you’re coming from similar and more established games.