Far: Changing Tides – A Beautiful Voyage That Occasionally Runs Aground

Far: Changing Tides is the kind of game that wants you to feel something. The sequel to Far: Lone Sails, this atmospheric side-scrolling adventure from Okomotive puts you at the helm of a massive ship as you traverse a flooded, post-apocalyptic world. It's meditative, it's gorgeous in concept, and it asks you to simply push forward through a drowned civilization. Playing this on the Nintendo Switch 2 via backward compatibility, however, reveals some cracks in the hull that are hard to ignore.

Wokeness: 0.0

There's nothing here remotely resembling an agenda. Far: Changing Tides is a wordless, solitary journey about a lone traveler and their ship. No dialogue, no characters spouting ideology, no ham-fisted messaging. It's a game about sailing, solving mechanical puzzles, and surviving. Pure gameplay-driven experience. Nothing to report.

Gameplay: 7.0

The core loop of managing your vessel — adjusting sails, diving underwater to clear obstacles, fueling your engine, and solving environmental puzzles — is satisfying in a zen-like way. There's a genuine sense of accomplishment when you figure out how to navigate a particularly tricky section. However, the pacing can be uneven. Some stretches feel like you're just holding a direction with nothing meaningful happening, and certain puzzle sections overstay their welcome. The underwater segments add variety but can feel sluggish. It's engaging enough to keep you moving forward, but it never quite reaches the tightness of its predecessor or other games in the genre like Inside.

Story: 5.0

Here's the thing — the world is genuinely intriguing. You sail past submerged buildings, collapsed infrastructure, and remnants of a civilization that clearly met a catastrophic end. You want to know what happened. But the game never really tells you. Your character leaves their starting area and sails left to right, and that's essentially the narrative. There's no dialogue, no text logs, no real revelation. Environmental storytelling can be powerful when done right, but Far: Changing Tides leaves you with more questions than answers and not in a satisfying, thought-provoking way. It's not bad — it's just not much of anything.

Graphics: 5.5

This is where things get disappointing on the Switch 2. Far: Changing Tides has a lovely art direction with its muted color palette and atmospheric lighting, but running the original Switch version on the Switch 2 via backward compatibility produces noticeably muddy visuals. Textures lack sharpness, environmental details blur together, and the overall presentation feels significantly worse than what you'd see on other platforms. It doesn't appear the game received any patch or enhancement for the new hardware. The artistic vision is still apparent, but the technical execution here is rough. If you have access to another platform, that's where this game's visuals will actually shine.

Audio: 7.5

The sound design is one of the game's stronger suits. The ambient audio — waves lapping against your hull, the creak of your ship's mechanisms, wind filling the sails — creates a genuinely immersive atmosphere. The sparse musical score swells at the right moments, punctuating key discoveries and transitions beautifully. It's understated and effective, though it won't stick with you the way a more memorable soundtrack might.

Replayability: 3.0

Once you've made the voyage, there's very little reason to set sail again. The puzzles have fixed solutions, there are no branching paths, no collectibles of consequence, and no alternate endings. It's a one-and-done experience that clocks in at around five to six hours. That's not inherently a problem for a narrative-driven indie title, but with the story being as thin as it is, there's simply no pull to return.

Far: Changing Tides is a competent, atmospheric journey that succeeds in creating a mood but struggles to justify the full voyage. The gameplay loop is pleasant if occasionally tedious, the world is fascinating yet frustratingly unexplained, and the Switch 2 backward compatibility presentation leaves a lot to be desired visually. It's a fine experience for a quiet afternoon, but it won't linger in your memory the way the best indie adventures do. If you're craving a meditative side-scroller, there are better options — but this one still has enough wind in its sails to be worth a discounted pickup.