Raft The Final Chapter Review — A Rift Between Survival And Crafting

As the name suggests, the game overall revolves around the concept of being stranded on a raft. The raft is your home, base, identity, story, glory, and everything. All you have to do is upgrade it, keep it from harm surrounding it in the ocean, and survive while stranded on it.

“The Final Chapter” refers to the game’s newly released version, which includes many new gameplay features.

Gameplay

Raft is a survival crafting game, but most of its gameplay involves only crafting. Survival is undoubtedly an essential aspect, but it is kept at a very basic level, which caused my main focus to remain on gathering resources and crafting.

The abundance of resources around you makes sense since your raft will face the constant danger of a shark lurking around it.

You will begin the game on a raft, which is a 2×2 block in size, surrounded by the ocean, where collectibles will be floating around you for the gathering. To collect them, you will be given a Hook that works like a fishing rod to pull the far objects toward you. As for the nearest objects, you can gather them by standing on the edge of your raft and interacting with them once they get in the range.

The abundance of resources around you makes sense since your raft will face the constant danger of a shark lurking around it. That wild creature cannot be avoided or killed, but you can craft a weapon to fend it off whenever it starts biting your raft.

Now, you are required to repair your raft every time a shark incident occurs, and this occurs frequently. This mechanic has remained the most frustrating one to me in the entire game.

Surviving on a raft and simultaneously taking care of multiple tasks is a great game design for the multiplayer feature.

Apart from that, the surviving aspect has also proven to be no less than an exhausting loop of a dull feature to me. Hunger and thirst are the only two conditions for survival, but even satisfying those needs efficiently requires you to upgrade your raft through crafting.

The only time when you can stray far from your raft is when you are on an island. But staying on islands for long is pointless as you cannot craft anything on the land surface, and the ocean provides better resources.

On the contrary, I consider the multiplayer feature an excellent addition to the game. Surviving on a raft and simultaneously taking care of multiple tasks is a great game design for the multiplayer feature.

Exploring Is Made Pointless And Tiresome

The world follows the procedural world-generating feature to create random islands after some time interval. You can get near these islands and explore them to collect some resources. However, you must be aware of your raft because you cannot craft a new one if it is gone. To avoid this situation, craft an Anchor.

Since you are bound to craft items strictly on your raft, you cannot spend much time roaming around lands.

You can expand your raft and completely shift it into a ship with all the necessities for survival. The ocean goes endless, and the water flow will constantly drag you in one forward direction. 

The crafting only focuses on the raft, meaning you cannot lay foundations and walls anywhere other than your raft. This factor annihilates the point of exploring and restricts the player’s movement.

Moreover, most islands are small-scale, so exploring makes no sense there. Since you are bound to craft items strictly on your raft, you cannot spend much time roaming around lands.

My overall perspective about the game is that it was not an ideal open-world design when it was meant to be one. Crafting is gratifying in the game, but the rest of the mechanics appear rough and unfinished.

Visuals And Performance

The game features stylized art with low-poly graphics, which align perfectly with the world’s comical, bright-colored theme. The game might be missing a few particle effects, but that is a minor setback since the game also lacks good physics implementation.

The game features stylized art with low-poly graphics, which align perfectly with the world’s comical, bright-coloured theme.

The animation is also not an appealing factor here, making most of the player’s actions seem ineffective. Following that, I had a dreadful experience in hunting because the weapon animation frames were so dull that swinging a weapon would make enough space for the prey to move far away.

There are no issues regarding the game’s performance to point out. Despite being a procedural world generator, the gameplay delivers a smooth experience even while playing on maximum graphics.

All in all, the game’s visuals are appealing, and the performance factor is flawless. My only critique is the clunky animation, which negatively impacts the gameplay.

Verdict

The game is a relishing experience when viewed from an indie game perspective. However, many features appear unfinished, obscuring its true potential as a top-notch survival game.

Raft The Final Chapter is an incredible survival craft game, but Its only flaw is that despite being open-world, it restricts player movement.

These were all the factors I wanted to present in my Raft The Final Chapter’s review. Consider checking out more of our coverages.

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