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Switch, Playstation 4/5, Xbox One/Series, Windows
// 2024-02-02, 7 min read, #gaming #review
Sea of Stars gripped me from beginning to end. I have a lot to say about it. It was so much of what I want in an RPG.
(I have to apologize, I know in my 2023 reviews I said I'd be working on my backlog, but the first game for 2024 is a new game. It came out in August 2023 and I played it via my PlayStation Plus subscription in January 2024. This is simply not a backlog game.)
For starters, it's absolutely gorgeous. The game looks like an amazing 2D RPG of old, but there are a few areas where its true nature shines through. I won't name the most obvious one since it comes after a pretty major plot point, but there especially the lighting system gives it away: somehow the developers have made this gorgeous pixel art game using a 3D environment. You see hints of it earlier in various landscaping, the way light moves across the player sprites, and especially in shadow casting. There's actually polygons underneath everything. I'm really curious how they did this, because most of the time it looks just like a flat 2D SNES pixel based game.
The sound design is great, everything feels satisfying. The music is pretty fantastic, and they even got Yasunori Mitsuda who's done work on the Chrono and Xeno series to do some tracks for Sea of Stars too! Personally I found it pretty easy to pick out which were his :)
Something I find lacking in RPGs is character growth in relation to the big bads. Sure, we level up the characters and increase their stats and spells and skills through battle, they might pick up some new mechanics to traverse the world, but I don't usually see much narratively about the heroes developing that. Sea of Stars has a really nice focus on that, actually. Throughout the story you absolutely see Valere and Zale get stronger and it is represented in the narrative, in their dialogue, in their story actions. It all feels like it makes sense. In your various Final Fantasies I always feel like a player pushing my way through a bunch of mechanical fights and then fighting the final fight to see the ending, and that's when I'm invested in the story!
Don't get me wrong, plenty of RPGs I've played do character growth and do it well, largely it's stuff that doesn't affect the mechanics of the game or relate to the protagonist's power level compared to the antagonist's power level. I love it when characters work through trauma, develop their relationships, become better people. What I'm specifically pointing out here is that every time a new major ability is unlocked, or there was previously a roadblock, it's not just a level up and learn a new spell situation. In Sea of Stars, it's actually part of the characters' journey narratively, and it's presented wonderfully.
With Sea of Stars I felt like I was actually watching these characters realize themselves. I was invested in them. And not just Valere and Zale, Seraï as well and especially especially Garl. He's the heart of the team and I would even say the whole game. He goes through a lot and never loses his spirit or determination, while gaining confidence and figuring out his place in the world. You also really feel how close Valere, Zale, and Garl are. It's incredibly heart warming and makes for some very emotional scenes. Garl's story touched the most, actually.
Sea of Stars also does something I've only seen happen in GRANDIA so far: At one point a major fight to save the world is lost and a very important non-player character who is a core part of the main characters' lives, and a core part of the actual decades long fight to save the world, **gives up**. He just throws down his staff and cape and gives up. And unlike in GRANDIA, where it's the main player character who does that, so it has to get undone pretty quickly actually, this one doesn't come back. He settles elsewhere and tries to enjoy the rest of his life. You can visit with him, check up on him, but that's it. He never rejoins the fight or the story. And frankly I don't blame the guy one bit. I think it's a very realistic reaction when you're old and everything you've been doing your whole life falls to pieces because of betrayal. It is so soul crushing that you just can't continue on that path any longer.
As for the battles, they're pretty straight froward. Skills/magic, combo attacks reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, and ultimate attacks that really come in clutch. One nice touch is that you can swap characters in and out mid turn and it doesn't spend that turn, and you can do this as many times as you want in the same turn. This is really useful when you're trying to maximize coverage for party heal items, setting up team skills, or for breaking spell locks on enemies. The lock system really adds some sorely needed complexity and strategy to battles. When enemies are preparing stronger skills or spells, they'll have a set of symbols above their head for you to clear out. The symbols indicate what kind of damage needs to be dealt to clear that lock (blunt, slashing, lunar magic, solar magic, etc.). For example if you have three lunar locks and two slashing locks, you need to hit three times with lunar magic and twice with a sword or dagger (and there's no one character than can do both lunar and slashing). You're also presented a countdown on every enemy that shows how many actions are left until the enemy makes a move. This allows you to plan which characters and moves make the most sense to clear the locks.
Further, there's a "live mana" system in battles that adds to the strategy. Basically, when you do a normal attack on an enemy it results in these little balls popping out of the enemy (in addition to the damage of course). These balls can be optionally used to power up any attack or skill. When applying them to a skill you increase its output (damage or healing), but when it's applied to a basic attack it applies that character's magical element to their weapon. This allows you to use magical damage without spending any MP. This is a super useful mechanic for handling the lock system and taking advantage of enemy weaknesses.
Sometimes you're given a lock scenario that looks like you can't complete it in the turns remaining, but there is one character with a skill that delays enemy turns, as long as you keep their skill points up to use it when you need it. Or maybe you don't have that skill ready and all you can do is prepare to take a strong attack. It all just works, and it never feels unfair.
In fact, I think I died maybe eight times throughout the game. If you hit continue at the Game Over screen, it heals you up and puts you at the start of the previous screen before the fight. Sea of Stars is incredibly fair. Game Over screens that just reboot a game piss me off so much. I am old, I do not find that bullshit entertaining anymore. It is bad game design to force the player to replay hours of gametime because of stingy save point placement, long dungeons, and tough boss fights. Sea of Stars never does this. It also features autosaves on certain screen transitions, so you're never too far from your last save point in case the of a power failure.
And Sea of Stars does something I never thought possible: It created a fishing minigame that is good! I have never played a good fishing minigame before, but by golly Sea of Stars did it. It's not complicated, it doesn't get in your way, but neither is it incredibly simple and pointless. I actually enjoyed fishing. It felt just right. For comparison, Animal Crossing's fishing is very simple, but it's also just tedious. Sea of Stars adds the absolute bare minimum to make it interesting, to get rid of that tedium without adding a new kind of tedium. Plus there's not even that many total different fishes to catch, so if you're trying to complete the 'Catch All Fishes' trophy, it's not hard at all to do through your normal gameplay.
I highly, highly, highly recommend this game if you like RPGs.
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