Brighter Shores is a Grindy Throwback to Browser MMOs

Point-and-click RPGs like Runescape don't have much in the way of competition, and one can argue that they've gone the way of the dodo in light of the more complex MMO experiences out there. Not everyone is quite as ready to give up on this niche genre, though, and I'll tell you all about it in my Brighter Shores preview.

Brighter Shores puts players in the shoes of a new recruit to the Hopeport Guard. Though you may be seeking a simple life protecting the town, you'll soon be thrust into a world of adventure. There's a lot to love about this game, but there's also a few rather worrying problems lurking under the surface.

Setting the Stage

Your adventure in Brighter Shores begins in the headquarters of the Hopeport Guard. Your character has decided to join up and you'll immediately begin your training. As narrative devices go, this is as good a start as any.

Players will get a tutorial for some basic mechanics including foraging, potion crafting, and eventually combat. The entire tutorial can be completed in under an hour, and then you're free to explore the town of Hopeport and the wilderness beyond.

Every little section of the map will have one or two things you can fight, gather, or collect, with the sole exception of NPC-specific locations such as shops and houses.

There are a fair few named characters spread throughout the town and some fairly basic dialogue trees. It's not on the scale of what you'd expect for a port town in most MMOs, but it's a good start for a game of this scale and scope. The world feels fairly fleshed out in terms of characters.

You won't see much of an overarching narrative just yet, but the world of Brighter Shores doesn't quite feel like any other RPG. It occasionally leans towards the generic — goblins and bandits in a fantasy setting are nothing new — but there are plenty of unique design choices that make it feel like its own thing.

Plenty of Professions

As you explore the map of Hopeport, it becomes increasingly evident that the entire area is essentially a vehicle for you to level your professions. Every little section of the map will have one or two things you can fight, gather, or collect, with the sole exception of NPC-specific locations such as shops and houses.

There are a total of 5 professions at the start of the game: Guard (which is a measure of your combat ability), Forager, Fishing, Chef, and Alchemist. The second Episode introduces another four professions: Scout, Gatherer, Woodcutter, and Carpenter. Each of these professions has its own experience bars and specialized tools.

Some of the professions will directly aid you in combat and adventuring. For example, you'll gather plants with Forager and Gatherer and convert them into potions with the Alchemist profession. Others are simply a vehicle for making money and don't yet serve any real gameplay purpose beyond that, save for the occasional quest requirement to catch a strange fish.

One of the interesting mechanics is the notion of "Passive Activities" — a system that allows you to level up a single profession while you're not actively playing. You can use Passive Activities to gain a level or two overnight, but it's much slower than actively grinding out the experience in your profession of choice.

Back to the Grind

Play Brighter Shores for long enough and you'll eventually encounter one of the worst things about this game: the grind. Grinding in a game like this isn't anything new, but some of the requirements are frankly absurd for a game with a handful of quests and not much else to do yet.

Leveling up a profession goes fairly quickly up until around Level 20; that's right about when your progress slows to a crawl. The quests for advancing to the next episode will require you to get a reasonable level of combat experience (through the Guard and Scout professions, respectively), but it's the side quests that get truly absurd with these requirements.

Nearly every side quest has some requirement to get one or more professions to a certain level, and those profession level requirements are far too high for a game that is early in its development and somewhat devoid of meaningful content.

For example, the "Forgotten Things" side quest in Episode 2 requires you to cut down a specific tree, and you can't cut that tree down until you reach Level 45 of the Woodcutter profession. I actually ran a stopwatch and estimated that it would take me 28 minutes to get from Level 22 to 23, and it only gets worse from there.

Think about it — you would have to move around the map clicking on trees every few seconds (and doing nothing else) for 10+ hours, just to meet an absurdly high skill requirement for a side quest. And it's not as if there is an abundance of side quests, either; I only encountered three or so side quests in each Episode.

I'm not one to shy away from grinding — I spent two years mining asteroids in EVE Online —but this feels like a bit much. Nearly every side quest has some requirement to get one or more professions to a certain level, and those level requirements are far too high for a game that is early in its development and somewhat devoid of meaningful content.

Brighter Shores Preview | Final Thoughts

At its core, Brighter Shores has an intriguing world and serviceable gameplay mechanics for the genre. However, meaningful quests and activities are few and far between in the Early Access launch version of the game, and most of your success is measured by reaching a new level in a profession that ultimately isn't useful for much beyond making a few coins.

I can see Brighter Shores evolving into the kind of game that has a dozen great quests per Episode, a complex economy, and rewarding activities. It's not there yet, though. If you try it, you should explore all of the quests in Episode 1 — you'll quickly get a good understanding of whether or not Brighter Shores is the game for you.

Brighter Shores was previewed over 70 hours of gameplay on PC via Steam with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the preview process.