Stranded II is a sandbox style first person RPG in which you take the role of a sailor marooned on a tropical island. The game has a random island mode of play but I'm only gonna talk about Adventure Mode in this review.

Overall, I found Stranded II highly enjoyable. I feel that players that enjoy Harvest Moon type games(in fact, there's even a planting element to Stranded II) like me would really enjoy spending countless hours collecting the various items around the island, because the game is very peaceful. There is a hunting element to it, but it's very diminished in relation to the many others. The game has definite day and night cycles and you must spend a portion of each day finding food/water and eating/drinking. You must also sleep when you are too fatigued to do anything else, otherwise, you take damage at a constant rate.

The game's complex mechanics can be separated into three categories. First, there's the item collection/creation. You must scavenge anything you can find from the island and many things can be combined with each other to craft tools. For example, rock + branch = hammer. Second, there's the building element of the game. Accumulate certain resources such as leaves and timber to build structures like storage units for your items. Finally, there is a skill-building element to the game similar to many RPGs. While few in number, each time you level up a skill such as hunting, you get a significant advantage when using that skill.

All in all, I found the game quite fun, albeit repetitive. However, as many people would know, the Harvest Moon series is by definition repetitive but fun nonetheless. The graphics are sufficient, and some might even say good. I played it on low/medium settings, so chances are you will have an even better experience than I did. The environment is very bright and sunny which works well with the silly and lighthearted story, so I suppose there's no real need for intense pixel shading and dynamic lighting and who knows what else they incorporate into mainstream gore-and-graphics releases these days. The only qualm I have is that the animal models are a little too cute to want to kill for meat. The developers even got original voice acting for your character and the other sounds aren't too bad either.

All in all, I found Stranded II to be a lot of fun. I took my time to review this game due to the fact that I actually felt compelled to play the whole game through before writing it.