I'd been looking forward to playing this since I saw the trailer for the game at E3 2018. This was developed by a small German team, Jo-Mei, for EA. I bought this the day it was released and played through it in one 3.5 hour session.
Visuals: I really like how the game looks. The Monsters, characters, and world have a consistent art-style. It reminds me of a Studio Ghibli film in a way. I couldn't take any screenshots because neither GForce experience nor Afterburner detected the game. I didn't want to screw around with trying to capture it.
Story (no spoilers): Sea of Solitude is a story of loneliness. It's centered around Kay and her dealing with her past and present. I won't go into details as anything I write will be spoilers. Be prepared to deal with various aspects of loneliness, isolation, sadness, and depression. The game does an excellent job of depicting and differentiating between these conditions. I was concerned that the game would confuse sadness with depression as is common but the developers clearly understand the difference. The English voice acting was a bit all over the place. It could've been much better in my opinion. When I replay it, I may select German with English subtitles to see if it's better.
Gameplay and Controls: This is unfortunately the weakest part. I played with a keyboard and mouse and I regret my decision. I plan to play again using a controller to see if I have a better experience. One of the game mechanics is to swim from rooftop to rooftop while avoiding a monster that will eat you if it sees you in the water. The prompt given to follow the monster was the up arrow. When I pressed the arrow, nothing happened. I remapped the button to middle mouse button and it worked fine. The next painful sections involve "focusing" a beam of light on a monster. To move the light, you have to drag your mouse left or right to position it. I bumped my mouse up to the highest dpi setting and I felt I was going to rub a hole in my mouse pad attempting to drag the light over. Most of the gameplay involves finding and clearing corruption from a area to continue. I felt some of these sections go on for too long. There are also collectables in the form of Messages In a Bottle and Seagulls. Shooing a Seagull results in an unskippable animation that gets old quick. I actually liked motor-boating around the cities and finding these collectable although I missed several. I have no idea what happens if you collect everything.
Conclusion: This game is worth the $20 in my opinion. While there are much longer games to be had at this price point, I sometimes prefer a game I can finish in an evening. I like quality over quantity for story driven games. At times, I feel the gameplay gets in the way of the story in Sea of Solitude. However, in retrospect after finishing it, it fits with the game. If I were to rate this game, I'd give it a 7/10. It's available on PS4, Xbox, and PC (Origin). https://www.ea.com/games/sea-of-solitude/buy
Edit: I didn't watch the launch trailer before I linked it. The song they used doesn't fit the tone of the game and is not in the game. The soundtrack fits the game but it's not really memorable.