Sea of Remnants | Gamescom Preview

Buttons and Particulars

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Genghis Husameddin

2 minutes ago

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We’re about a month past gamescom 2026 now, if you could tell, and I’ve not exactly been on-top of my preview game. Can you blame me? These some-seventy hour long JRPGs aren’t exactly being kind to me… But now that I have those outta the way, I can talk about some, no, all the cool games I got to play—and one of them is Joker Studio and NetEase Games’ up-and-coming turn-based role-playing game title ‘Sea of Remnants‘. Coming to PC, consoles, and mobile platforms, this game promises the Golden Age of Piracy with electrifying eccentricity permeating the various facets of it all.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Sea of Remnants is its wooden (maybe stone?) exterior of all the characters, swinging and singing in the setpieces that are wonderfully colourful and dull when danger is afoot. When I got to sit down at the desk of the demo, I was dropped right into a full party that was all decked out with gear and skills. Usually, this signifies that I’ll have a fantastic time figuring out who is doing what when I get into battle: and I wasn’t wrong as I get tossed into a two-phase boss battle against a very pretty mermaid in some sort of strange dreamscape.

Port Bout

As I prefaced, Sea of Remnants is a turn-based title that is heavily reliant on stacks and setups. My party of four were a bizarre group (never mind their personalities for the time being) whose damage output were completely reliant on one girl named… Butters. Or Buttons. I think it was Buttons.

Buttons was my MVP. Triggering her passive interjection attack was incredibly important in this fight against the mermaid as regular attacks—even my skills!—weren’t outputting the amount of damage I needed to end the battle. To figure out how Buttons worked, I dug deep into the battle menu, clicking through the highlighted status, passives, and buffs and quickly discovered what a true endgame build would look like in Sea of Remnants: it could get intense.

I’m reminded of the original ‘Granblue Fantasy’ in how setups works. The traditional turn meter will get you through the motions of a battle, but if you want to exact heavy damage even when it isn’t your turn to call, you will want to learn your characters and that will certainly take a while. Though I didn’t get to build my own team to take on the mermaid (games with such heavy emphasis on background mechanics can take me hours to figure out), I can safely say that there is quite a bit of depth at play here even if it doesn’t make for the best of first impressions for newcomers.

As Buttons tore apart the mermaid and her back up fishies, we inevitably pushed the pretty fish lady to unveil her true self: a monstrous sea creature that is ready to craft you into tuna. Here, the once calming sea melodies that dynamically changed based on the mermaid’s state in the fight instead became a heavy metal rock concert and our party was shoved straight into the mosh pit—with no shoulder guards provided to boot, the nerve.

The fight changes here, but the idea is the same: our she-devil’s protected and that protection is linked to these two statues (forgive me, it’s been a month) that must be destroyed. Tear them down, you get to beat up the mermaid. After all is said and done, she collapses and quickly our main character is given flashbacks to her past—and it isn’t a pretty one.

Interestingly, we have the choice to put the slumbering mermaid out of her misery or walk away. I’m no murderer, especially one that stumbled their way into the lair of this creature to begin with, so I chose to walk away and claimed my loot. Whether this action leads to any sort of change with impact, we may only know later next year.

Sea-ing Stars

After beating up the mermaid in her dreams, we get to explore! Sea of Remnants is a open-worldish game where you can take on the high seas on your own boat and hop off available islands to explore them. There weren’t any quests I could realistically take on, so I mucked about and took on some enemy ships out. Because I’m a pirate. At least, I think I should be.

Ship combat is… I’m not particularly fond of it and I can’t pinpoint why. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t quite know the mechanics of battle ahead of time, but shooting off the ports didn’t feel great to do. You have multiple shot types you can use, such as the mast-destroying grapeshot, but when I fired at the other’s sails the grapeshot didn’t make an impact. Literally, the shots just flew past the bugger. And after a bit of trading back ‘n forth, the provoked jerk sunk me. Charmed, I was.

Back on land, I took on foes of all sorts. There is wildlife to fight as well as other pirates, but I think I enjoyed taking in the sights of the game most of all. Sea of Remnants is very beautiful, very crude but draped in modern amenities like rock ‘n roll and a light dose of purple. It’s part of the perfect pirate setting, complete with minigames that make you feel like one such as Russian Roulette with rocks for bullets. I’ll need to place more than an hour’s worth of game time before I can really give any sort of verdict, but I love complicated turn-based battle systems and I love the Golden Age of Pirates.

If Sea of Remnants can make sail just right when it heads for release next year, I think it’ll find itself slotted right into my carousal of live service video games. For now, I return to scribbling away the rest of my gamescom for the gaping jaws of Sam Altman and Jensen Huang. ∎

More information on Sea of Remnants can be found over on the game’s official site, where you can also pre-register to get rewards and more info delivered into your e-mailbox.