Impressions : Dredge : The Pale Reach Expansion

One of my favorite games of the year, Dredge, is back with its first expansion, The Pale Reach. The base game really surprised me with not only its polished game play, but how well it was able to blend the unlikely duo of cozy fishing simulator and eldritch horror. While The Pale Reach is small enough at $5.99 to catch with a trawl net, is the catch worth the cast?

First things first, if you are someone who has already completed the base game of Dredge, and witnessed its great ending, you might be wondering how this new story element might fit in. The answer is, it doesn’t. The Pale Reach is not an epilogue to the main game, but instead, acts as a new zone you could venture to as early as when you get past the opening minutes of a new campaign.

To start The Pale Reach you simply speak with the Mayor of Greater Marrow, one of the first characters you meet when starting the game. He will mention there is a photographer who went adventuring to the south and has gone missing. When you set off to find her you will eventually notice the air chill as an ice draped plateau appears on the horizon. Immediately upon arriving you will encounter a friendly face by way of the Traveling Merchant and they will set you on your way to solving the mysteries of the Pale Reach.

The zone makes good use of its icy landscape by incorporating it into some new mechanics. One of the first things you will notice is that a lot of the winding paths that make up the Pale Reach have small icebergs scattered around every turn. These range from requiring deft maneuvering to pass, to straight-up impossible to get around, which is why one of your first tasks will be to find a way to convert your vessel into a pseudo icebreaker to just smash right through them. However, as with the rest of the game, solving one problem often births a new one that is significantly more problematic than simple blocks of ice. However, I’ll let you find out just what that problem may be.

Overall the Pale Reach as a zone is right in-line with all of the other ones in terms of quality, which makes it quite enjoyable. The puzzles are fun, and so are the obstacles introduced for you to overcome in order to solve them. The new fish, as well as how you catch them, add even more variety to the already large bestiary in the game.

However, the new character introduced in the Photographer is paper thin in contrast to the other denizens you encounter on your journey through Dredge. That said, the overall lore and story you uncover while exploring the Pale Reach kept me engaged. As always, though, with Dredge the atmosphere is king and they deliver that here just as well as the rest of the game.

Overall it took me around an hour to complete the zone’s main story, and another hour or so to complete all of the side content and catch every new species of fish. In closing I’d say that if you are setting sail for the first time in Dredge The Pale Reach comes with an absolute recommendation from me. It fleshes out an already spectacular experience and upon completing it, you will be rewarded with some fantastic tools that will help you on the rest of your journey.

If you are coming into it as a veteran sailor like myself, who upon setting course for the Pale Reach had a completely maxed out vessel, the rewards are somewhat meaningless. That being said as a massive fan of the game it was worth it for me just to experience more of it.