True enough, a game I wholeheartedly consider to be a watertight little marvel was graced with a sequel that promises bigger and better - and in their attempt to deliver, it begins to burst at the seams. There was a certain elegance to the way the Okomotive, the main mode of transport in FAR: Lone Sails, was designed. In the context clarity for which every function and dial coexists with the rest of the machine and how breezy it felt to dart around its internals. Much of that game’s appeal was in the ease with which you could Zombie Mode it, stringing together repeated steam release speed boosts while spinning all the other managerial plates thrown your way, all with enough spare time to enjoy the journey you’re making.

FAR: Changing Tides trades the Benz for the boat, with an interesting inversion of the previous title’s control scheme, and a very different internal routine you’ll have to learn and adapt to as an increasing amount of plates demand to be spinned. I’m all for a spot of intentioned friction in my games, but it felt as though I was struggling with the control scheme more often than the barge itself. Changing Tides’ doesn’t let you hold on to the momentum you build for very long before you need to grind to a halt, it’s a very harsh stop-and-start routine you have to rigidly follow. My main source of disappointment is in how I felt as though I stared at my vehicle’s gauges and switches for far longer than the stunning environments rolling by, bumping around its cramped internals and trying to nurture any semblance of speed I built. All of this is a thorn in the side of a game that deserves to be absorbed into. It pains me to hear a wonderful piece of background score coming to an end before I can reach the finale of a setpiece or chapter. There's a lot of strained silence in stretches of Changing Tides that smack less of Muted Immersion and more that I’m Fucking Up Somewhere. This kind of lack of clarity tends to extend to the puzzle the segments that break up the boat trips, I’m somewhat in disbelief at how often they’d place items or levers behind obstructing pieces of geometry.

Not without its flashes of brilliance, don’t get me wrong. When the going gets going, and you hit the supercharge, carving your ship through the cerulean nebula, I felt like I was driving a carmine dagger and dealing the killing blow to God. In a stunningly good final act, Changing Tides is genuinely host to one of the biggest sentimental sequel popoffs I’ve had since Shadow Moses in MGS4. I can forgive all matter of ooo clunkiness when a game makes me loudly exclaim “No Fucking Way”.

Changing Tides expands on Lone Sails in almost every way - it's longer, there are more elements of your vehicle to control and it utilises the Y axis a lot more thanks to the addition of both your wanderer and vehicle being able to dive.

In ways it makes the journey feel more epic than before - you traverse more ground, fight larger storms while also dealing with being thrown around by rough waters. The puzzles you deal with feel more involved than in Lone Sails, and as such feel more satisfying to pass through.

In others it accentuates the negatives. Some of the longer traversal sections between locations go on for too long, and the eerie serenity of the first game is diluted a little as you need to multitask more often which has the knock on effect of physical hazards almost appearing out of nowhere with little chance to avoid collision. Thankfully the punishment for this isn't too extreme, perhaps more lenient this time round but it can disrupt your flow a touch.

But at the end of the day, it's more FAR. If you liked the firs one, I'm almost certain you'll enjoy this. It's the truest of video game sequels really - take the first game and do it again, but bigger. Is Changing Tides better than its predecessor? Not quite but it's definitely more and that's not a terrible thing.

A very meditative game that relies a whole lot on it's vibe to get by. Some of it works, some of the areas you'll be exploring around while sailing will be enchanting, especially when the music hits just right.

Unfortunately, there are many times when the vibe just doesn't hit. Then you're left with a dragged out boat maintenance game that just feels tedious and boring.

Mix in a few puzzles that are fairly boring and repetitive and it's really just a shame when one of the moments that has everything come together perfectly returns and you're back to being reminded of what the game could do.

I can definitely see this whole vibe working for others though and this being a personal taste thing so I'd still say give Far: Changing Tides a shot if you're into games that are more about vibes than its gameplay. It might be enough to get over some of the lulls and tedious gameplay that just didn't click for me.

Like its predecessor, you’ll spend much of Changing Tides trying to maintain an oversized piece of junk that serves as your vehicle, gradually adding new parts as you pass through obstacles along the way. Only this time it’s set entirely in water, which adds some cool new elements to traversal that keep it from feeling too similar.

That said, I think its somewhat bigger scope (particularly with having more of the ship to keep up with) was a detriment since it felt a bit more tedious to play through for me. And the ride between obstacles can be pretty lengthy, but the scenery and music were still pleasant to sit through. Wouldn’t say I liked it a lot less than Lone Sails, but it’s not really an improvement either.

It's pretty much like the first game, but slightly worse than the first game. In other words, there are newly added mechanics and a more complex gameplay, but it cannot provide the feeling of journey that the first game gave as successfully as the first game. Some mechanics undermined the flow of the game (such as the constantly breaking sail), and the use of much less fuel and limited repair tools than in the first game sometimes caused me to go back and start from an old save. So why was such a gameplay choice made? Why can't I move the ship manually when I'm in trouble like in the first game? The game generally prefers underwater cities and wide oceans as its settings, and there are very nicely designed levels with its unique art design, but it is a rather monotonous choice in terms of variety. As a story, we explore ancient civilizations (even though I don't understand it) and the story eventually connects to the first game. As a result, although I do not find it as successful as the first game, FAR: Changing Tides still offers a pleasant journey experience like the first game. The added mechanics are not bad and I liked the connection to the story, but my gaming experience was quite interrupted by the bad aspects I mentioned above. But it doesn't hurt to try, if you liked the first game, you may like this game too.

Lone Sails was an interesting puzzle adventure game that took place on a 2D plane. You micro-managed various things on your vessel while acquiring upgrades to pass new obstacles. Changing Tides is exactly the same thing but on a boat instead.

There is no store or character building at all and that really sucks. I can tell the world in Far is sad and clearly post-apocalyptic, but the game gives me no reason to care about it other than the puzzles. You start out swimming this time and learning the basics. Jumping, climbing ladders, moving objects, and picking them up. You then acquire your ship and learn how to manage your fuel, sails, filling with air or water for submarine controls, cool your engine, and use your boost power. You acquire these over the course of the game, but fuel management is key. Don't use fuel unless you don't have wind which was the mistake I made. I wound up with tons of fuel at one point without realizing that's the most I would ever get and that was 2/3 through the game.

Gathering fuel is done by collecting junk laying around. This isn't often and sometimes you will hit a buoy and below these are caches of fuel. Don't get lazy and skip them, but sadly the game never tells you to look out for these either. Each upgrade requires a giant puzzle of a level and they were never hard or complicated. Mostly it's pushing a lever to drop an object to place into a machine. They're fun, but not hard. While you're sailing there will be long stretches of nothing. Sometimes not even music. This can get quite boring as the micromanagement of the ship gets tiresome after a while. It was fun at first, but I felt like this was the main gameplay loop and not the puzzles. Overall there are only four upgrades to get so about 4-5 puzzles in total. You spend at least 2-3 hours just sailing and micromanaging your fuel and sails.

Once in a while, there are cinematic platforming moments in which you just follow a linear path which was neat because it's the only action in the game. I just can't care a lot about this series without some kind of back story or context. Games like Limbo, Inside, and Little Nightmares do this well with storytelling from your envirnment. There's not much to tell in open oceans with just wasted buildings. Even the puzzle areas had murals that supposedly told a story, but it really didn't mean anything. There's only one neat moment at the very end of the game before the credits roll and that was it.

The platforming itself is fine if not slippery. I constantly found myself wanting to twitch jump around the ship and I would constantly fall down holes, get stuck on ladders, or not get to where I wanted because of the slippery jumping and physics. It's also a bit too floaty. The puzzles are the most enjoyable part of the game and it's a shame the boating is so tedious and boring most of the time with nothing going on. If it were cinematic or more interesting of a management system I would really like this idea. I didn't care for it in Lone Sails and it was doubled down on here.

Overall, Changing Tides looks good for what it is and has a nice art style, but you will quickly forget this game. It's about 3-4 hours long and I can't stress enough that there's way too much boating and not enough puzzle-solving or platforming.

The ending of FAR: Lone Sails left the door open for a sequel but didn’t exactly beg for one. Having now finished part two, I have to wonder if FAR was always conceived as a series or if the sequel was created in response to the first game’s popularity.

The biggest change here is that the desert of Lone Sails has been replaced by endless sea. Brown and grey have given way to blue and green, sand dunes to cresting waves, decrepit factories to sunken monoliths. Though the world is as desolate as ever, now there is a sense that hope lies just over the horizon.

FAR: Changing Tides does improve on certain aspects of its predecessor. Controlling your craft is slightly more involved this time around, for one. You travel in a bigger machine, one with more buttons to push and mechanisms to manage. The new craft is also more capable of exploring its surroundings than the first game’s land crawler was. To say more would be to spoil the surprises that await.

Yet for all the mechanical improvements, this sequel fails the match the emotional impact of its older sibling. In Lone Sails, the land crawler was like my best friend – my only friend, in fact. I had to keep it in tip-top shape and full of fuel or else I’d end up stranded in a wasteland with no food and no future. By shifting from desert to ocean, Changing Tides quiets that nagging sense of dread. No fuel? You can still drift along, riding the currents wherever they may take you. No food? There’s plenty of fish in the sea – literally. You can even watch whales swim past in the background. Though the moment-to-moment gameplay has largely remained the same, the change in scenery completely recontextualizes it, and not for the better.

Don’t get me wrong. Games shouldn’t all be post-apocalyptic journeys of brown and grey – a lesson the early years of the seventh console generation taught us well. But in the original FAR, the visuals, gameplay, and theme all felt tightly aligned; in the sequel, the resonance between these elements is weaker. If there’s going to be a FAR: The Third, it’ll need to get more creative. Would co-op play do the trick? I'm not sure, but I’d be shocked if the developers haven’t at least considered it.

A strong sequel that iterates on the ideas of the first game. It’s hard to have the same impact, and some of the new mechanics can feel a bit too fiddly times, having to make minor adjustments to the sails, so frequently.

Some sections drag on slightly too long or repeat slightly too often, it’s odd when a short game can still feel too long, but it’s all worth it for the moments when you progress past a puzzle and a new “thing” is revealed and the feeling of triumph, and the beauty of the moment hits in such a special and unique way.

It pains me to rate this so low.

The first game was a cute little melancholy jaunt across a desolate wasteland. You managed your fun little vehicle and occasionally solved tiny puzzles that fed into the world and its lore. It reached a high point then a low point, then ended on a somber note with a tiny glimmer of hope.

The sequel... it's the same but worse.

The visuals have improved and the tech was expanded but the new visuals hurt the performance and the new tech leads to frustrating puzzles that didn't work properly during my playthrough.

I first bought this game on switch thinking 'the first one was so simple surely I can just play this on switch' but it ran so poorly I couldn't make basic jumps consistently which made it fundamentally unplayable.

On my PC I still had to run this game at medium settings.

The new mechanics are interesting at first but I constantly ran into puzzles that didn't trigger properly then got stuck for minutes before giving up to check a guide only to find out the puzzle just broke for me and I'd have to keep trying the same thing till it worked.

Everything in this game is made more tedious, it has all the same beats as the first game but many are repeated additional times, result in dead ends, and all of them take WAY longer on the ship.

The dead ends are the weirdest part, at least three times the game reached a sort of punctuation mark then shrugged at me and told me to keep going.

On top of that the achievements felt condescending. telling me 'what now' after one of the big false endings or congratulating itself on the real ending.

Worst of all the stellar soundtrack from the first game is toned down heavily in this one. There's still some incredible musical moments but they're fewer and further between.

I went into this game so wanting to love it but it dragged my patience to its limit then clapped for itself awkwardly.

I just couldn't like this game.

The best moment was a major spoiler that I won't mention here. it's also needlessly harsh but I suppose it was earned regardless.

Nothing offensively bad about the game, but it just never really grabbed me or made me want to see it through to the end. Its a left to right scroller where you do various puzzles to keep your boat moving past obstacles. The puzzles were fairly uninteresting and didn't really excite me. Game looks pretty nice, but the default distance is too far away, I had to change it in the options to close, and even then I was zooming in to see what the hell was happening on screen most of the time. A seemingly small thing like that can make a huge difference whether i want to keep playing or just uninstall and move on, which is what I did after a couple hours of FAR.

Bigger doesn’t always mean better. A cliché to kick off the review but it’s a fitting single line summary of how I feel when speaking about Lone Sails sequel.

FAR: Lone Sails was a special experience for me, both in just watching it streamed as mentioned in my review of that title and playing it for myself.
To this day I still play the OST while writing journals for my education, and occasionally depending on mood and my writing subject the music takes me to a place that I find myself getting very glassy eyed.

To hit that high again with a sequel was probably an impossibility and it pains me to say that in fact, it was.
Changing Tides is still a fantastic game in its own right, cleverly keeping the formula of controlling a vehicle, exploring an interesting unknown land and going on a journey, whilst changing up the types of scenery and the vehicular partner enough to be fresh.

Every review I write may be the first of mine that someone has read and I can only apologise if I lack the words for explaining this game, but rather than repeat myself I feel that as important as it is to play these games in order, it is to read my thoughts on them.

Changing Tides, rather than having a “car” like the first, you have more of a “boat”.
You’re still collecting junk which can be used for fuel or saved if you like, you still have nature as a pushing force as well as engineering and the places it goes in terms of travel are arguably more interesting and diverse.
However again, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.
I found this vehicle a lot more hassle, this not only gives some unwanted friction but doesn’t help build the bond I found myself having in the first FAR title.
What also doesn’t really help with this is I felt like I spent much more time away from my motorised-mate in this game than I did the first.
Swimming beneath the sea and doing some mild puzzles and platforming isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. Puzzles are predictable, some reveals are astounding and that scale is one place where Changing Tides does trump Lone Sails but the emotional connection to the journey feeling less didn’t help those moments stick.

Joel Schoch returns to play another beautiful, lonely, sometimes sad and sometimes uplifting OST and much like Lone Sails I can see myself listening to this when writing in the future.
An issue though, not of the music itself, is the weird lack of it in places.
There are points where silence is powerful but it felt too often, almost as if maybe the game was broken.

FAR: Changing Tides may not hold a place in my heart like Lone Sails did, but I had a lovely time and the ending, which I will not spoil, will at least be something that does stick with me. Powerful stuff.

Changing Tides is worth your time, but sadly it does almost everything worse than its predecessor, not terribly so but enough that it loses some magic.
I can only theorise that perhaps the four year gap between games gave the studio time to overthink what they wanted to do, what they wanted to say and what they were making.

I will take a FAR 3 though. Please and thank you.

With the exception of the fact that it is now fully set on water, FAR: Changing Tides is essentially more of the first game. That would sound condescending, but given how great the original game is, it's actually not a terrible thing. Despite this, however, Changing Tides isn't nearly as daring as Lone Sails was.

In fairness, the necessary changes were made to the sequel in regards to the puzzle designs and overall, they feel much more intricate and rewarding than they did before. On the flipside, though, traversing the waters, which, again, is the bulk of what you'll be doing in this game, isn't nearly as exciting or intriguing as riding across dunes and marshes was in Lone Sails.

It's bizarre that this is the case, given that you've got a lot more to do moment-to-moment in order to keep your boat's engine running than with the vehicle in the previous game. Like last time, you have to feed the engine, make sure it doesn't overheat, make necessary repairs, and now you have to keep watch of the sails and prevailing winds.

However, this starts to feel like busywork in a way that Lone Sails didn't, and the reason for that is two-fold. For one, during the second half of the game, you'll be doing a lot of transitioning between above-water and underwater, depending on the obstacles in your path. This does make sense and in theory, it shouldn't cause any frustration, but it does become incredibly tedious when that becomes the majority of what you'll be doing, particularly for the last segment of the game's story.

Speaking of story and world-building, the environments you travel through aren't nearly as interesting as they were in Lone Sails and as a result, your investment in the mystery of the story and world takes a backseat.

There's one moment early in the game where the tide lowers out of nowhere, only for a gargantuan tidal wave to come hurtling towards you and throw you way off course. These are the kinds of set pieces, like the volcano eruption, that made me enjoy Lone Sails so much. Here, however, apart from this one moment, there aren't really many at all. There are some heavy storms, sure, but they don't really disrupt the usual gameplay routine other than having to make a few quick repairs.

Overall, Changing Tides isn't a bad sequel. However, it feels like an experience more befitting of an expansion to the first game to bridge the gap until a bigger, more ambitious follow-up. Of course, ambition doesn't always equal better, but here there could have been a little bit more of it employed in certain parts. As it stands, though, it's a decent entry to this series, but perhaps not one that would make you wildly prefer it over its predecessor.

6.5/10

Just like Lone Sails, it tries to "wow" you with its presentation, but it's not doing much for me personally. It does add some depth to its predecessor's minimal story though, making both games in conjunction work better as an emotionally resonant adventure, but I'm not sure if it's still enough to rate them any higher. Enjoyed both games still, I just wish more from them.

If you did enjoy Lone Sails, go right ahead and try this one, because it's pretty much more of the same while also not feeling as repetitive with the addition of variety to your traversal and mechanics.

Joel Schoch pleeease make more video game soundtracks.

★★½ – Average ✅

Beaten: May 23, 2022
Time: 5 hrs
Platform: Xbox Series X

Changing tides is lesser than its predecessor for me, and I can point out exactly why: The game, as a whole, is less intuitive. The puzzle solutions, the whole drive contraption, even the mechanical design of your boat all feel a bit more complex than they should be, too hard to understand at a glance. Which sucks, because there's some cool things here too.

The new look is gorgeous, even a bit prettier than the first game (though without the sense of industry having killed the world), there's a bit more freedom in how you move, there's some cool automation for loading fuel? Hell, the change to smaller teal accents for interactables is a huge win for the visual cohesion. It's not like it's a lazy game, there's just a bit of a wall between me and what I want to happen. Instead of running up and down my ship loading fuel and pushing against buttons to make sure they're locked, I'm fiddling with the fire hose because if I'm not careful I'll shut off the engine instead of just cooling it.

I'd say go for the first one, and if you're coming from that one, it's worth a shot. Maybe it'll work for you better than it did for me.

Nesse jogo você tem que colocar uma locomotiva para funcionar. A máquina tem mecanismos próprios com botões, alavancas, controle de pressão e etc. É muito gostoso conduzir a locomotiva e ir descobrindo as novas mecânicas para progredir no caminho. Tudo isso acompanhado de uma trilha sonora de qualidade e imersiva. Esse é o tipo de jogo que só existiria numa equipe criativa independente, graças a Deus temos a indústria indie de games para nos proporcionar esse tipo de experiência.
O ponto fraco do jogo é o controle do personagem que parece desajeitado.