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Really, the only time I ended up building the expansion buildings were when campaign missions demanded so. Waterborne keeps its narrative focused around the sea. The storyline flirts references to the Pirate of the Caribbean films, has El Presidente actively working on worsening climate change, and ends with your island throwing down against a thematically-similar-but-legally-distinct Captain Planet stand-in.

I’ve long been a fan of the series’ approach to its campaign. It is rare for a city-builder to have a storyline, and rarer still for one to have a narrative so unapologetically weird. But Waterborne’s campaign didn’t grab me like the base game’s time-travelling romp did. It didn’t seem as coherent or inspired, more like different disparate elements that could have worked together if a little more care was put into them.

That’s really what it comes down to. Waterborne is missing the craftsmanship that we saw in the base game. In the review copy, the voiceover narration by your political advisors was largely missing, which makes for a strangely quiet experience and loses a lot of the character the game had. (The music dips when there should be narration, which makes me think it might just be missing from the review copy. The subtitles that replace it have their share of troubling typos.)

The game has too many bugs, which range from the slightly-hilarious to the absolutely infuriating. The worst made it impossible to pass the final map without restarting the mission a couple times. Nothing that is game-breaking, but something that should have been noticed and fixed long before this point.

In the end, there’s not a lot to say about Waterborne. It is the video game equivalent of dry toast. Yes, it is better than nothing. Yes, it is technically edible. But it is not the kind of thing you’d ever recommend to anyone. And you can’t help but think that couldn’t they have at least tried to put some jam on this?