What if Myst had a spoken story and a voiceover that held your hand through every puzzle while commenting on every random object scattered throughout the world?

Most of what pushed me through Call of the Sea was an interesting mystery I wanted to get to the bottom of as well as some occasionally neat puzzles.

The puzzles are a mix of "wait what am I supposed to do with this?" and "OK I get it you don't need to walk me through every step of putting this round thing in the round hole". It would've been nice if they had threaded that needle a bit better.

While the mystery was interesting, the moment-to-moment writing was pretty bad. The protagonist is constantly commenting on every single thing she finds throughout the world and it truly feels like they ran out of things for her to say. Voice acting left a bit to be desired as well.

I enjoyed the game for the most part but the ending was pretty bad and left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Not sure if I'd recommend it. I think there are better games like this.

+ Intriguing mystery
+ Some interesting puzzles

- Bad moment to moment writing
- Too much narrating
- Iffy voice talent
- Occasionally confusing puzzles
- Terrible ending