Recent reviews by Dr Random

I have been following these devs since sometime around 2016 when I had played Salt 1, and have been looking forward to this game for a little under 5 years since they officially released Salt 1. I have looked for games like this, played Sea of Thieves in the meantime, but honestly nothing ever comes close to the feeling that Salt gives. Salt 2 is still in early access, but it definitely has the same feeling that the first game has given me, only a little rougher around some familiar edges.

I have a lot to say on this game, so as a quick TLDR:
Salt 2 is an adventure that blazes it's own trail in a similar way to Salt 1, and so far the devs seem to be working on the weaknesses of the original before really bringing forth it's strengths.


First off I have to say: Salt 2 is a Sailing Exploration game that just so happens to have a lot of pirates; you are not necessarily a pirate yourself, which is the biggest mistake people who get into Salt make.
This is not Sea of Thieves, it is not a Sea of Thieves ripoff (Salt 1 actually came out first), and it's not about plundering and looting everything thats not nailed down. There is looting, but it's in the same vein of skyrim of you find enemies to slay and dungeons to loot; just with a pirate theme instead.

With that out of the way, the biggest rework between Salt 1 and Salt 2 is the combat. The combat of Salt 1 was janky, and overall the combat of Salt 2 is nothing special; most of the fun with the combat comes from the possible randomized gear and perks you can obtain. In Salt 2 the combat has been drastically fleshed out, taking the lessons learned from working on Wild West and Wizards (also great game, but no boats). On the surface it's still very simple, and no doubt will evolve and become more fun in time as leveling perks are added and new bosses and things to fight start popping up, but it's still a simple combat loop without a lot of surface level mechanics.

The combat isn't all that the game is about however, and personally I think that's a very small part of the game in context. The main draw for Salt 2 is the world generation and exploration. A huge procedurally generated ocean with potentially hundred if not thousands of islands that all contain unique landmarks and dungeons await for you to explore and discover. Sailing on the waves you can find all sorts of things, usually including maps that give coordinates to even more interesting locations. The mapping system as it stands at the time of writing isn't as sophisticated as it was in Salt 1, but does have some very convenient quality of life changes to make sure you never accidentally chart an island in the wrong spot.

Boats are and always will be a major source of interest for me in this game, and in Salt 2 they're much fancier with more ship cosmetics to really give yourself a floating home. Unfortunately, possibly due to rebuilding the game from the ground up, some mechanics from Salt 1 havent been reimplemented quite yet; the most annoying for me being that respawning boats doesnt let you place them directly, instead insisting that you can only have 1 out at a time and that the game knows best for where to place it. Every single time a ship spawns I have to swim to it, which considering that swimming cost no resources, isn't that bad outside of the time wasted from having to swim to the middle of your ship every time you want to go somewhere new.

A bit of a scare I have for the game as a whole that I feel like I should address here is the idea of multiplayer. Salt 1 absolutely not not feel like it was ever intended to be a multiplayer game, and the devs did their best to deliver that regardless. Salt 2 however looks like there's some design choices that seem like they're more prepared to handle that task. Whatever the case, I really hope the devs don't burn themselves out to please the crowd begging for multiplayer and have a repeat of Salt 1; where, while unintentional, it felt like the devs had burnt out of the game after wrestling with networking code instead of brought the game to a natural conclusion.

Overall? I still love this game, and i'm looking forward to where it goes from here. For a small indie team, the devs are doing some amazing work and updates so far have been pumping out at an amazing pace. I absolutely recommend it at full price, and personally I was willing to spend twice the asking price for this game. There are some features I'm hoping come back from Salt 1, and I appreciate how the game feels already even though some of the main things I look for in the game are missing due to early access still, but this is absolutely a game I will be buying for friends to support the development.