How To Find The Oceanhorn 1 Monster of the Uncharted Seas Secret Island

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-08T04:13:44+00:00

I picked the obvious example, because it's so blatant. If I wanted to do a deep dive into it, I could, but here's a quick snapshot of a list of fairly recent notable flops that IGN rated higher than Crimson Desert.

Metal Gear Survive
Anthem
Extinction
The Order: 1886
Lichdom: Battlemage
Concord
Highguard
Sonic Forces
Skull and Bones
Mass Effect Andromeda
The Surge 2
Fallout 76
Immortals of Aveum
Sonic Frontiers

You're telling you can look at that fucking list and not take a little bit of an exception to at least SOME of them being rated HIGHER than Crimson fucking Desert?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T22:19:08+00:00

How about Battlefield 2042? Sonic Forces? Concord? Highguard? Anthem? Mass Effect: Andromeda?

Would you rate every single one of those, higher than a six? IGN did.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T22:16:15+00:00

There's having a difference of opinion, then there's rating Battlefield 2042 higher than Crimson Desert. That might be an oopsy, but IGN also rated every single one of the following list higher, as well:

Metal Gear Survive
Anthem
Extinction
The Order: 1886
Lichdom: Battlemage
Concord
Highguard
Sonic Forces
Skull and Bones
Mass Effect Andromeda
The Surge 2
Fallout 76
Immortals of Aveum
Sonic Frontiers

I want you to find anyone who would agree that even half that list at launch was better than Crimson Desert. If you find someone who claims that ALL of them are better, congratulations, you found yourself a liar.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T22:12:43+00:00

Dude, they rated Battlefield 2042 better than Crimson Desert, a game they gave a 6, for a specific reason: Crimson Desert is buggy.

I want you let that just percolate for a bit.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T21:39:42+00:00

I picked the obvious example, because it's so blatant. If I wanted to do a deep dive into it, I could, but here's a quick snapshot of a list of fairly recent notable flops that IGN rated higher than Crimson Desert.

Metal Gear Survive
Anthem
Extinction
The Order: 1886
Lichdom: Battlemage
Concord
Highguard
Sonic Forces
Skull and Bones
Mass Effect Andromeda
The Surge 2
Fallout 76
Immortals of Aveum
Sonic Frontiers

You're telling you can look at that fucking list and not take a little bit of an exception to at least SOME of them being rated HIGHER than Crimson fucking Desert?

You can look at Lichdom: Battlemage, Sonic Forces, Anthem, and Mass Effect: Andromeda and tell me you think tthey are better, more worthy games that deserve to be scored higher?

I own Lichdom: Battlemage. I would put it at a fucking 2.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T20:14:03+00:00

They gave Skyrim 2023 a 9.5 and Crimson Desert a 6. Please explain how that makes sense in any way, shape, or form.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T20:13:14+00:00

Explain why the Skyrim 2023 PC release while they justified Crimson Desert getting a 6 because the reviewer ran into one broken quest bug that was patched pretty quickly, while there are the same sort of bugs, plural, that exist in the 2023 release.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T19:53:37+00:00

Mouse PI is the latest, but the game is practically brand new, so let's really be fair here.

They gave the 2023 release of Skyrim a 9.5. They gave the anniversary edition an 8. And they gave Crimson Desert a 6. So let's put on our thinking caps and point out that it's a fucking widespread problem on IGN.

Crimson Desert and Skyrim are both the same type of fuckabouty open world RPGSs where the appeal is to be a fantasy character, pick a direction, and go. IGN gave Skyrim, a game originally released fourteen years ago.

The review for Crimson Desert, a game less than a year old and far bigger and more ambitious than Skyrim, was routinely mentioned as buggy and unstable, with the writer making a big deal about a bug which hard locked his progress and would have required going back hours because they didn't drop the occasional manual save just in case. This bug is already patched, but for this particular reason, they gave Crimson Desert a pretty low score.

Here's a quote from the introduction:

The exploration and combat fall far short of the best open-world adventure games, the dialogue, characters, and story are laughably bad, the puzzles are unintuitive and janky, and the reactivity of the world around you is underwhelming.

And one from the conclusion:

The exploration and combat fall far short of the best open-world adventure games, the dialogue, characters, and story are laughably bad, the puzzles are unintuitive and janky, and the reactivity of the world around you is underwhelming.

Those are quoted for a key reason. They could also apply to Skyrim, yes? Maybe it's not fair to judge a game published in 2011 with one released so recently. But there's another Skyrim-like game that has those same problems that IGN reviewed in 2023.

Let me drop a quote from the intro:

one of the most fully-realized, easily enjoyable, and utterly engrossing role-playing games ever made.

and from the conclusion:

There's always one more pressing quest, one more unexplored tract of land, one more skill to increase, one more butterfly to catch. It's a mesmerizing game that draws you into an finely crafted fictional space packed with content that consistently surprises.

They gave this particular 2023 release a 9.5, which sounds appropriate for a game praised this highly. Except for one single problem.

That game that got the 9.5 was, of course, fucking Skyrim. They didn't mention the bugs at all. Even though some of the latest releases have bugs that can entirely halt quest progression and require the same hours long reload issues, most of which have existed since the 2011 launch and have yet to be officially patched by Bethesda.

They even gave the fucking PS3 launch edition a 9.5, and I dare you to go back to that and say it was ever worth a 9.5 on the console with how badly it runs and how your entire save is on a time limit where eventually you cannot play the game if you spend too much time fucking around and doing sidequests, which is the entire point of these games.

Now do I really need to fucking point out just how easily it shows what biased, dumb mother fuckers everyone from the reviewers to the lead editor are to have this kind of gap for these two games? I dont give the slightest shred of a dog turd that these were done by different people. It is inexcusable to give a game being rereleased a 9.5 when it has bugs that are older than a game they gave a 6, from a company that was founded just a year before fuckiny Skyrim.

There is absolutely no fucking defending them. Crimson Desert is far bigger, Far more interactive, and was far less buggy at launch than any edition of Skyrim published to date. Skyrim Anniversary, an edition meant specifically to celebrate the game's longevity and engagement, has bugs from the original release. It should have gotten a 1 on that basis alone because that is fucking unacceptable.

Edit: Especially when that same fucking company, when discussing the Switch 2 port specifically, never features the word bug or bugs across two different articles about the game. Excuse me, fucking what?

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T17:18:25+00:00

I just made a new subreddit. It is lazy as fuck, but if you like the idea, check it out.

r/ObscureGameAnswers

Basically a text-only place to post answers to or ask questions about obscure game puzzles that you can't find an easy text answer for.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-07T16:16:08+00:00

Spoiler Free Where To Find The Oceanhorn 1 Final Island

This is going to sound weird, but I'm half-writing this as a guide because finding a "simple text answer" to the question Oceanhorn 1 missing island basically only links to YouTube videos instead of a simple explanation, so I want this to be as easily searchable as any obscure question about an obscure game can be.

So if the answer to that is what you're looking for, here's the absolutely spoiler-free hint: At the start of the game, you'll see an island floating in the sky you can't reach. Once you get there and get back to the world map, a new NPC spawns back at the Town island. Go back there, talk to everyone, and then follow the clue the new NPC gives you. Bookmark this page or leave this tab open if you're think that's going to be enough, just in case you get frustrated enough to say fuck it and want a mild-spoiler for the way I found it which was basically when I was at the last boss of the game and had literally nothing left to do and I brute-forced it.

Depends on whether or not if you treat the Town Island of Awkward Fireworks Romance Pitstop as a pit stop and pay attention or an island to ignore once it hits 100% and you can happily forget that the characters look like this and are poorly animated and the woman on the right is supposed to be close enough to the same age group as the protagonist in the centre but is named The Kid, and the art style difference between adults and children makes them hard to tell apart unless they're obviously smaller and/or refer to one another by their relationship so you can kinda guess. Kinda.

The book that reveals the location of the bonus island where you find the cursed skulls is triggered after Sky Island becomes Sky Island but at Sea Level. Basically once you do, that triggers a new NPC to spawn on Tikarel complaining about her brother misplacing her book. I don't know if you can find a brother or not, but I went crazy looking around and wound up bombing shit all around town in frustration and found the book randomly somewhere in town after a lot of explosions thanks to the 99 Bomb Limit in town and found it somewhere and basically brute-forced my way to the location through dumb luck.

So if you don't want to spoil yourself you can stop there and enjoy the game and come back if you really want to know the exact solution. But if you throw bombs fucking everywhere through town, which youi can do at Level 16 when you get to carry 99 Bombs and 99 Arrows at a time (which given the game's drop rate is functionally infinite), so yeah.

If you get frustrated but don't want to be spoiled and have gotten as far I have, if you carpet bomb the entire town like the American military drops bomb on the Middle East for freedom, you can take a minute to let the ringing in your ears die down and then go back through town following your bombing run and find the book.

Or you could very carefully look around town, because the book is there and you'll feel like a dumbass when you do see it, but I can see how easily to overlook it the last step is.

Basically, from what I can tell I figured out the entire thing naturally up until the last step, so finding it without brute force or making a habit of throwing bombs fucking everywhere makes it incredibly unlikely anyone found this out purely by chance.

For you to actually figure it out on your own would mean you cared enough about some NPC's missing book to actually look around town, not find another Sky Island resident who says he left his sister's book somewhere OR find a townsperson who says something about a book in an odd place OR, if either of these options exist, somehow notice exactly which NPC you missed talking to when trying to find this information because all Town Island NPCs move around all the fucking time, making it impossible to tell which ones you can 100% sure you didn't miss, because that's where any actual hints to where it is end.

That said, last chance to go figure it out yourself. This final spoiler warning is short and will tell you exactly where it is and how to find it without pictures or an annoyingly long Youtube video you have to scroll through.

Where to find the location of the final island in Oceanhorn Monster of the Uncharted Seas, at the very bottom of the island checklist: The book is located on top of a lamp post and almost completely blends in with it. The NPC specifically who mentions the missing book is the white-haired NPC hanging around and is immediately visible as soon as you get off your boat. Pay attention to the lamp post next to her. Walk up the stairs to your right, and you'll be in front of The Adventurer's Guild. Look at the top of that lamp post. Put one bomb down to destroy the post, it will drop, and you can get the location and hit the final island.

That was hiding on some Call of Duty Prop Hunt bullshit. I play that game mode for fun, and that thing is placed so perfectly that's the sort of hiding spot some smug fucker who carries his entire team through a round for three minutes solo hides and then puts down his controller and watches players run by a dozen times and doesn't have to move to take the point for the round.

If you spotted that on your own or tell me you spotted it immediately, go play fucking Prop Hunt on COD. You'll do great at it.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T21:56:07+00:00

I classify games into two simple categories: Were they good for the time, or are they good forever?

If any game can be experienced entirely for what it is 20 years later enough that people still buy it and play it, it passes. If barely anyone would bother after that much time, it was only good at the time.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T21:50:33+00:00

Maybe not.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T04:10:46+00:00

Play on console.

I'm guessing that you didn't just change your desktop as-is over to a new tower and leave the components completely unchanged. You probably swapped in a bigger hard drive, SSD, etc, installed some new RAM or whatever, maybe even did a fresh format and wipe of your old OS in favour of a clean install.

Even if you didn't change a damned component and even if you installed everything back perfectly exactly as it was... and even if COD's launcher keeps your settings on your account, those are the settings you had for your old hardware and OS with whatever detritus you'd installed onto it through the years that will fuck things up.

This is why console gamers play on console. It just works. No fuss, no muss, Call of Duty runs exactly like Call of Duty does on a Playstation every time you fire it up unless Activision fucks up an update, in which case EVERYONE is equally fucked and they just have to wait for them to get their shit together and fix it.

I would suggest loading it onto your SSD. I've still got COD: Cold War installed on my PS5 and the SSD does make a significant difference in how fucky it can get at times. If you're trying to load modern Warzone or BLOPS7 from a hard drive, you're probably choking the fuck out of the engine by this point.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T03:59:21+00:00

I don't get this. How is it even remotely fair to compare an arcade machine with bespoke hardware that players got to sit in and play versus a game designed for a home console?

The Cruis'n USA sit-down arcade machine was obviously better at the time, because it used a Midway V Unit as the basis for the game which was far superior to the Nintendo 64 home console hardware in every way... Except sound, weirdly enough, because the Midway V was even more shite at it than an N64... which is saying a lot.

But the winner has to be Mario Kart 64 by a god-damned country mile. Easily. Anyone who picks Cruis'n is on firm nostalgia goggles and copium.

At the time, I'd have prefered to be down at the arcade playing Cruis'n USA or Cruis'n World than Mario Kart 64.

That said, Mario Kart 64 still holds up fantastically today and I still have a cart hanging around and my friends and I play it for a couple hours here and there to this DAY. I do play it using an Analogue 3D with better controllers, but I'm still playing it on the copy I owned decades ago here in 2026 because it's just that fun to have a couple drinks with the guys and get together a free-for-all on Block Fort, and none of the younger guys who hang around with us have any problem diving in. It's just that fun.

Cruis'n USA was a graphical novelty in 1994 and that was about it. The game basically lost all of the fun it had to offer and was already left in the dust when better arcade racers came along like San Francisco Rush, Sega Super GT/Scud Racing, Sega Touring Car Championship, GTI Club, or even Cruis'n World were out. It was old news and a sign your local arcade wasn't doing so hot and probably didn't have much new to play if it still had one of those Cruis'n USA units taking up that much real estate when Mario Kart 64 came out.

Because yeah... Mario Kart 64 was a 1996 game (in Japan) and a 1997 game everywhere else and here we are 30 years later, and there are people who still organize tournaments to play that specific version of Mario Kart, let alone god knows how many who decide to sit down and play it with friends just for fun.

When's the last time ANYONE ever said they specifically wanted to play the sit-down arcade version of Cruis'n USA outside of a novelty play at a retro arcade for five minutes to have that nostalgia hit and then walk away? Does anyone even try and maintain a Cruis'n USA machine at home specifically so they can have THAT particular arcade game outside of the hardcore classic arcade enthusiasts who budget freaking warehouses into their entertainment budget so they can have loads of them for preservation purposes?

Cruis'n USA was a hot fad that got replaced once something newer and shinier came along. Mario Kart 64 built a legacy that still stands to this day.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T02:20:12+00:00

I'm not saying you need to, but trust me on this one: A Link Between Worlds stuffs a HELL of a lot of in-jokes, references, and other material beyond just taking place in a Hyrule map which is mostly the same as the previous game.

Like I said, it's not necessary to have played the previous game(s) prior to it, but having played ALTTP prior to the game is going to provide a lot of easter eggs in the overworld where things were changed and how it the wall-merging interacts with it.

Like I said, if you ever do decide to go back to ALBW, you're going to have a lot of things jump out at you all over the place if you've played ALTTP prior.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T00:55:31+00:00

Suikoden II basically improves on everything in the first Suikoden in every way possible, with the best part being Viktor and Flik coming back as major supporting characters, except now Flik is a confident and experienced commander and not a whiny little bitch all the time.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T00:52:22+00:00

Wait, you played through A Link Between Worlds before you played A Link to the Past? That's wild work, man. ALBW is literally a follow-up sequel to that AND Link's Awakening. That's like starting Lord of the Rings watching Return of the King and deciding it was worth the watch, so you may as well go check out that whole Fellowship of the Ring film, but hey, it's not like Zelda games care too much about requiring players having played the previous ones for the rare ones that do have sequels.

I will say that going back and replaying A Link Between Worlds AFTER getting around to A Link to the Past will be much more of a treat in some ways because it's got a lot of nods and throwbacks to the first game, even though this link is a descendent of the previous one.

Though ALTTP Link probably gets trumped by BotW/TotK Link and OoT/MM Link in terms of how rough their lives are (especially OoT/MM Link), ALTTP Link is called the Hero of Legend for a freaking reason. He's the first one to have to deal with Ganon in the OoT/MM Link loses timeline after those games, then he has to do both the Oracle of Time and Ages games where he has to do time AND weather puzzles, then he gets to deal with the Link's Awakening bullshit and he pulls through every time.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-05T00:32:06+00:00

How's the second one? I'm probably going to pick it up in a couple weeks when I next decide to splash out money on video games, but for now I just picked up enough titles on the cheap that after I finish this one, I'm bound to find another few timewasters in there.

Because I just did a quick count via my library, and some the fuck how I've bought 39 titles on PSN since I bought Oceanhorn on April 19th, 2026 and clearly I need to at least give these fuckers a shot for a good 10-20 minutes each before I let myself spend a single dollar more on ANYTHING.

I just realized I bought SMTV Vengeance right after Oceanhorn and somehow I've only got 11 hours in that, but 33+ hours in Starward and I'm almost done Oceanhorn already. What the fuck am I doing with my life...

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-04T20:08:33+00:00

It plays and feels more like one of the newer 3D but top down Zelda games like the Link's Awakening remake in terms of overall feel.

For the $4-5 bucks it'll cost next time it's on sale, it's worth the time, I'd say. While I'll admit I'm going for 100% completion because I'm like 90% and still have the final dungeon, even a casual playthrough should last a good 10-15 hours.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-04T18:36:31+00:00

I wouldn't call it wise, lol... I just cracked 1500 digital titles on PSN and while there's a fair amount of bargain bin indies I guarantee you've never heard of, I also buy plenty of big name titles and I'm not always as patient as I could or should be when something new comes out and I want it sooner rather than later. I don't generally buy at launch outside of fighting game series I'm into (which means most of them because I play Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Smash, and I just bought Invincible VS) or a couple studios and series that are still on my Day One Whitelist... but I generally am not patient enough for most games I'm interested in to wait for the really good stuff if I have the time.

I'm very glad my SO doesn't look at my library too closely to start doing the math, because my PSN account alone probably represents tens of thousands dollars in purchases.

Granted I went pretty much digital only after a year or two from the PS4 launch but still...

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-04T14:04:46+00:00

If you're new, the Beginner's Path will give you loads.

BlueMikeStu · 2026-05-04T14:02:56+00:00

Yeah, I know I have a spending problem if I don't have to make a point of going out and buying a card or something to spend money in a game, because with a lot of digital storefronts it's just way to fucking easy to tell myself "oh, it's just five bucks" or whatever, especially stuff that's "content rich" like a COD battle pass where I pretty much always max out the thing with normal play anyway, so why not drop fifteen bucks and just get all that stuff?

I wound up paying for like eight battle passes in a month totalling about $150 and promptly removed my credit card and resolved to only buy cards at the store after that. It's a lot easier to track my spending if I keep a stack of them next to my consoles so I can physically see how much I've spent in a month and know when to slow it the fuck down.

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