Sea of Remnants runs two combat systems, and understanding that it does is most of the battle. The distinction is spatial: what happens on land and what happens at sea are different games with different rules.
When you land on an island, combat becomes turn-based. This is the tactical layer, and it is the one where your companion roster matters most, because the party you bring determines what the encounter demands of you. The game's tags list both turn-based combat and real-time tactics, and the island encounters are where the turn-based half lives.
The practical consequence is that island combat rewards planning over reflex. You are choosing what to bring to a fight before the fight starts, and the risk profile of an island is set by what it contains — which is why greed is the recurring temptation the game puts in front of you. An island's reward is proportionate to its danger, and the danger is what you have prepared for.
On the open water, combat is real-time. Here your ship's cannons and modular upgrades are the load-bearing decision, because the parts you fitted determine what you can do in a fight that unfolds faster than a turn order can be deliberated.
The two systems are deliberately opposed in tempo, and that is the interesting part. Land fights are puzzles you solve before they start; sea fights are problems you solve while they happen. A fleet good at one is not automatically good at the other, and the ocean being the game's primary space means the real-time half is where you spend the most time.
The sea monsters are the game's named antagonists, and the tags include psychological horror — which for a game of this shape is not merely atmosphere but a design statement. The horror is in the ocean, which is also the space you must cross to progress. That tension is the reason the game's presentation gets the attention it does.
The public material describes the two combat systems clearly and shows both in trailers, but the specifics that decide fights — damage formulae, status effects, weapon classes, difficulty options — are not yet publicly documented at the level a guide could be precise about. The Dawnbreaker beta with 21 playable characters and two new regions is the first real test of how these systems interlock. The community wiki's ships and crewmates sections are where that detail will accumulate fastest.