This is one of the hidden gems I've played this year, I came to the game with low expectations, seeing the previous games of the same studios were such letdowns for me, but with Cosmic Star Heroine, Zeboyd Studios really nailed their formula this time.

I like playing games in their highest difficulty most of the time, and with Breath of Death/Cthullu saves the world, that meant hours of grinding because the game wasn't balanced around those difficulties. But this time, there was almost no grinding needed at all once you fully understand the whole battle system.

The main gimmick of the battle system is also something I would like to see on more games. Here, you can't just spam your best skill over and over again, since almost all abilities are a one time use only, and are only recovered when you defend for a turn, this combined with hyper mode, a state where your next attack will do double damage every few turns, means that controlling the flow of the battle is the key for success.

The only downsides I've found is how many items are permanently missable, with a lot of places not being able to be revisited, and some side content is a bit obscure to find, abd also the story is not something extraordinary, but any of those things really hurt.

Fun little jrpg~ish indie game.

Gameplay stales quickly (although I sorta enjoyed demolishing enemies on the endgame with some broken abilities, but there's not so much science on the combat once you learn the drill.

Story is a hit or miss, kinda easy to lose the thread on, and some twists feels like had little to no build up which makes for some reveals to come up pretty fast and go quickly.

Characters are mostly just there and their function mainly is making the game feel overcrowded, which kinda hurts them as characters, including the main character, which is average at best.

Music is by far possibly the best part of the game, although I've gotta admit I'm not so fond of some tunes that are literally just buzzing.

Can recommend if you get this on a cheap sale.

Después de haberlo terminado no sabría decir si lo recomiendo. Las primeras 7 horas son increíbles, con un buen ritmo, personajes interesantes, diferentes, el combate se va complicando con cada habilidad o estilo de pelea diferente que consigues... Todo bien. Pero según vas avanzando se te empiezan a unir más y más personajes, a cada cual más circunstancial y que le dedican menos peso. Además, la trama que empezó tan bien, acaba descarrilando poco a poco hasta un completo desastre. Es como si hubiesen querido meter muchísimas cosas y se les acababa el tiempo o el dinero para el desarrollo. Pues no las metas deprisa y corriendo porque sale... esto.

Llegado un punto consiste en llegar a un lugar con muchos NPCs que te dicen un par de frases, combate, combate, combate, combate, combate, combate, combate, boss y vuelta a empezar. Y aunque el combate sea bueno y tenga unas ideas muy interesantes, muchas de las nuevas habilidades que consigues son tan situacionales que nunca te las pones ocupando un espacio.

Para acabar con lo malo, existe una mecánica hecha para farmear (si juegas en normal no es muy necesaria), donde puedes revivir los combates contra lo que acabas de pelear. Sería una buena idea si no fuesen siempre exactamente los mismos bichos donde ya sabes a la perfección como va a ir el combate, así que es tedio más que algo medio interesante. Sin añadir que por alguna razón que no entiendo, me ha parecido que los bichos de este sistema de daban menos experiencia que los que te acababas de cargar "en el mundo real" aun siendo exactamente iguales. Me fui antes del final a la zona que acababa de visitar, y el monstruo del farmeo me dio una cantidad ínfima de exp aun costándome poco menos tiempo que la primera vez que lo enfrenté haría 15 minutos.

Pero pasemos a las cosas buenas y a porque, pese a todo, lo recomiendo. Todo el apartado artístico, desde construcción de mundo, banda sonora, gráficos... todo esto es genial indiscutiblemente. El inicio como he dicho es potentísimo, si llega a mantener ese nivel no tendría NADA que envidiarle a los grandes del género. Y ya. Parece poco, pero en esas primeras 7 horas me estaba flipando todo, como se iba desarrollando y los personajes.

Sinceramente, creo que su mayor fallo con diferencia, es que en un JRPG no puedes descuidar tantísimo la historia y meterte chorrocientos personajes jugables a los que no les das desarrollo, porque hacen bulto y molestan. Mejor 6 bien definidos que 3 definidos, y 9 con dos pinceladas.

One of the most pleasant gaming surprises I've had over the past couple of years was Cthulhu Saves The World - it was full of carefully-considered tweaks to the traditional JRPG formula that made for a less frustrating and more involved gameplay experience. Despite the low production values and the meme storyline I knew Zeboyd Games were one to watch. Cosmic Star Heroine finally delivers on that potential by having a more serious story with a larger scale and much better graphics and music, but keeping the same spirit of innovation that made its predecessor so good.

Like Cthulhu Saves the World, this game is obviously made by people who love JRPGs, but are aware of the genre's quirks and actively crafted mechanics to circumvent them. This is apparent in the excellent battle system - your characters learn a multitude of differing abilities as they level up, and are able to 'equip' up to seven to bring into battle. MP doesn't exist in this game - instead, each of your abilities can only be used once before being unselectable, necessitating that you defend for a turn to 'recharge' your grayed-out abilities. This has ingenious implications for gameplay: you can't mindlessly spam your most powerful attack because you can only use it once, but you also can't spam normal attacks to save resources because there are no normal attacks. Instead, you are incentivized to explore your character's full repertoire of moves to find which tools work best for each situation. And because defending recharges your skills, this game is one of the few I've played that has more than a fringe use for the oft-neglected 'defend' command.

Each character has a 'hyper' mode (big damage/healing boost) that activates every few turns, which adds another layer of strategy; it forces the player to think 'when' as opposed to simply 'what'. Timing buffs and debuffs to stack with a character's hyper mode and dropping their most damaging attack is an absolutely essential skill in the higher difficulty levels, and the game is very transparent about its turn order which makes planning in advance easy and rewarding. It feels like an awful lot of moving parts to keep track of but feels surprisingly natural once you get the hang of it, and the game never feels too overwhelming because it refills your health after every battle so you are only managing your resources within a battle and not in between.

There's a lot to love here, but also a couple of aspects of the gameplay I wish they had tweaked. Characters not in your active party level up like normal (A Good Thing), but the game doesn't tell you when they learn new skills making their skill loadouts difficult to keep track of (Not A Good Thing). The various pieces of equipment can bestow some really cool abilities on you, but unfortunately the endgame equipment is so much higher than everything else statswise, restricting some potentially cool mix-and-match interactions between equipment that are not viable simply because the numbers are too low. Finally, the variable difficulty levels (meant to be a QoL feature) kind of hamstring the game a bit thanks to rather strange difficulty spikes - instead of four levels, I wish they had stuck with a default difficulty (with maybe an unlockable hard mode) and committed to making it balanced.

I won't spend too much time talking about the plot because I don't think the devs spent that much time worrying about it either - the characters are likeable and the dialogue is snappy, but the plot comes across as an excuse for cool setpieces and a vehicle for the stellar combat system... and that's okay for me. I'm generally a gameplay-over-story person, so despite my minor gripes above, the gameplay loop and general experience were strong enough to carry the game through its 15+ hour runtime.

This game scratched so many itches for me. It was the spiritual successor to classic Phantasy Star I'd wanted all my life, it was a relatively compact JRPG experience (we need more of those), and a gameplay-heavy story-lite game with a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe (I think we also need more of these), and a big nostalgia nod to the RPGs I grew up playing. More than that, though, the folks at Zeboyd Games refined and distilled the spirit of classic JRPGs so it transcends simple homage to become a stronger and more fun experience than all but the very best games from the era it invokes.

Cosmic Star Heroine made me realize that relying on pure creativity and energy doesn't work for a video game. Anyone who is a fan of Rick & Morty (and not a part of the crazy fandom) is probably aware that the main reason the show has hit a stride is due to its blatant creativity- it's not that the stories are particularly original (although a number of them certainly are), it's more that the animators beautifully pastiche so many cool visual gags/action beats into a single 23 minute episode that you can't help but admire the fiesta on screen!

The same applies for movies. Avatar is most notorious for this, but how many films have garnered high praise (or at least strong cult followings) for their imaginative bliss despite not being the best storywise? The answer is a lot, even for flicks I genuinely love like Dredd.

Cosmic Star Heroine tries to do the same. In a lot of ways, I consider it a 2D version of Mass Effect 1. Both are space operas centered around a galactic law enforcement officer; both feature vast mythologies and races; both contain narratives/gameplay systems reliant on building a team, and both contain elevator loading screens!

But it's really that second one that hammers home my point. Drawing a comparison to Mass Effect is a big thing, and I stand by it 100%. CSH may very well be the most creative 2D turn-based RPG I have ever had the privilege to play. It throws set-piece after set-piece at you; artistic monstrosity after artistic monstrosity; new setting after setting. It truly lives up to the first two words in its title. And yet, it just isn't fun. The comparisons to Mass Effect are purely aesthetic as the gameplay and story don't equate at all.

Let's begin with the narrative. CSH casts you as Alyssa L'Salle, a member of a law enforcement agency called the API. Like an atypical cyberpunk tale, L'Salle is sent on a mission that causes her to question the API and her part in it. Story developments happen and a grand conspiracy is revealed, sending L'Salle and her comrades on an intergalactic journey to discover the truth.

I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but the story ultimately isn't anything to write home about. Part of the issue is it plays all its cards within the first act- in Mass Effect, you were kept in the dark about Saren until well past the halfway point. In CSH, you'll already know what everyone is up to (or at least have a very strong idea based on past tropes/tales implemented in other games of this nature).

The bigger flaw, however, has to do with how short the game is. You should expect a minimum of 50 hours from a JRPG, even with the grinding aside. CSH has no grind, but it clocks in at less than 17 hours (the amount of time I took anyway- others may vary). This is not even close to the clock needed to expand on the world or side characters.

With the former, that's a big issue overall as CSH isn't really interested in fleshing out any of its aspects. You'll see tens of new concepts, races, species, abilities, pieces of lore, histories, etc...and only get glimpses into their intricacies. To be fair, Mass Effect did the same, but it made up for this by providing an encyclopedia and side missions/characters whose dialogues expanded upon these things when the main narrative didn't. CSH doesn't have an encyclopedia, and its NPCs give quick blurbs. Things like the Nuluupian's views on the afterlife, the existence of vampires, the logic behind gunmancy (all character powers in general), or the desolate history behind Araenu are barely imparted to you.

Your partners are the biggest letdown. Zeboyd Games was so focused on making all of them likable that it forgot to give them distinct personalities. They're either bland smartasses or bland straight-shooters, with no in-between. In Mass Effect, you were encouraged to seek your partners throughout the ship via their personalities being so distinct, enjoyable, and interesting. I didn't have that same draw here, with the exception of a cool bounty hunter who joins later on. This hurts considering that most of them give information about a new side mission - information that is time-sensitive.

But the gameplay is what the majority of JRPG fans will be most interested in, and that's sadly where CSH falters the most. I mentioned that there was no grind, which may remind some folks of Chrono Trigger- a title that was acclaimed for removing the grinding nature atypical of its genre (especially at the time). It did it through providing just enough enemies in an area that you could level up comfortably, as well as making boss fights strategy-based over bullet sponges.

CSH fails to do both. There are no respawning enemies: when you clear an area, it remains cleared unless a new narrative threat is brought in down-the-line. In its place, you have monsters that are essentially bullet spongey. Status affects like poison, stun, and charm exist, but most of these beings contain a resistance factor that negates this ability. And even if it does hit, it only lasts one turn, barely giving any advantage, especially if you're up against multiple thugs (poison being the exception- it lasts the entire battle [minus heals], but it barely does any damage on its own, so it doesn't matter). There's really no strategy to any fights the way there was in Chrono Trigger- you essentially have to use most of your team members to attack whilst the other one(s) heals. Even elemental advantages (which hovering over an enemy reveals) maybe rack up an extra 200 damage max, which is peanuts for these fights.

The only other option is buffing. To clarify, CSH has a charge or style meter that builds up over each character's turn- if it fills up, your character's damage is extended (not even inherently doubled, although it can be depending on external factors like element). You can increase a character's attack power through partner boosts or item boosts, thereby buffing them to do a ton of damage. But again, this is a one-time thing, and the enemy will more than likely have more than enough health to batter you.

It's not that CSH heroine is hard, it's that it's only hard or easy. There are 4 difficulties: the bottom two make the game way too simple and the top 4th makes it too hard. The middle ground is theoretically the 3rd (which is what I did it at for most of my playthrough), but you will run into so many parts during the game (particularly after the first third) wherein a miniboss or specific group of enemies are capable of spamming high damage on ALL your members, causing you to get mowed down easily. Your only choice? Turn down the difficulty. While CSH lets you restart a battle from there, you are only able to turn down the difficulty outside of the battle mode. And considering the spikes are inconsistent, you could very well not plan your saves well, meaning it's best to just save after every major encounter. Oh, and unlike Chrono Trigger, you’re unable to do combo-attacks between characters (L’Salle is the only exception, but she requires a specific item to be equipped on her).

Each character has a diversity of unique powers at their disposal that can make fights fun if only to try them all out, and leveling up gives you new abilities that you swap around (7 slots total per a character). Enemies, on the other hand, are very limited outside of boss fights- they'll have 1, if you're lucky 2, attacks, showcasing a surprising lack of initiative from a team that was brimming from head-to-heel with imagination.

Overall though, this combat system is very frustrating and makes fights not fun. I like a challenge in my games, but when you have no way to either strategize or grind to level-up, it leaves you with a system full of difficulty spikes that can only be alleviated by permanently keeping the difficulty low, which makes the game too easy! And considering there is no New Game+ mode, I don't see how it is possible to play CSH at higher difficulties. Hell, there is even a dungeon that is insanely hard on the EASIEST mode. With no way to level up, how in the world are you expected to beat it on any difficulty?

The short length of the game provides an additional harbinger onto the story- throughout the 13 chapters, you’re often forced to take on a new partner who, while matched to your current level, has abilities that flat-out suck in the battle scenario. Yet you’re forced to use them over the other partners you have been dedicating time to upgrading/customizing.

The loot/equipment system is abysmal as well. It's ridiculously old-school in that every new planet you explore contains a store with the latest equipment, meaning you'll want to buy it out to give your characters the best of the best. Or will you? See, immediately continuing the story/exploring after visiting that store will, 9 times out of 10, give you a weapon that is EVEN BETTER than the one you just bought from the store. I have no idea what the developers were thinking here. Thank goodness money (credits) is easy to come by, otherwise this would be a serious design flaw. Also, some idiot decided to put an Arete lootbox in the very last level (when you play the game, you’ll realize why this is idiotic).

Equipment can provide decent stat boosts, but it’s usually minimal (and doesn’t change the character sprite on-screen). You can also recruit people onto your ship that provide team boosts, but the majority of their recruitment is shoved into the third act, and there’s no way of knowing how to get them besides revisiting past planets Metroidvania style and TALKING to them (which you probably won’t be inclined to do since the majority of them don't stand out).

Graphically, the game is very beautiful. I loved the anime-esque style utilized for the human characters, while the aliens are all unique- again, it really is a 2D Mass Effect. Unfortunately, CSH has a serious problem with portraying 3D spacing, particularly verticality (read my review of Verdant Village and imagine that verticality issue 3x worse [https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-verdant-village/). Also, for all the creativity of the different cities/societies, I couldn’t help but feel that the color palette was lacking at times. Araenu is the one exception- every other place tends to be built around a three-hue scheme max.

The music OST is good- it tends to not stick out much, but when it does it’s excellent and when it’s not it’s soothing. The problem is there isn’t enough- a lot of areas, especially later in the title, have the same motifs playing through multiple stages despite them being different parts visually. Also, the battle theme is kept the same sadly.

Sound effects, on the other hand, are very lacking. The same elemental sound is reused for every attack of the same nature, despite them being radically different (ex. a laser sounds like a slap).

So yeah, overall I did not enjoy Cosmic Star Heroine. It has a lotta zaniness going for it, and throws so many things at you that you’re bound to be invigorated by the action viscera. But it doesn’t have a story strong enough to carry your interest (with an ending that tacks on a potential sequel), the characters are likable but bland, and the combat system gets atrociously inconsistent and, with the lack of strategy, VERY repetitive. And considering you’ll have to go out of your way to find the side missions, it sucks that there is no motivation to go out and talk to people, especially those on your ship (and even then it’s time-sensitive, and without in-game journal to jot down what the character said, you’ll have to write it up separately lest you forget it and lose out on a semi-invigorating action beat).

Like I said, it took me around 17 hours to beat it (Steam shows 19, but I fell asleep for about 1.5-2 of those hours, meaning they don’t count). This includes me going out of my way to find the side content (or rather, looking up how to find it since the game is so obtuse with regards to directions). Regardless, at $15.00, you’re getting your money’s worth since there is definitely at least 8 hours from the story alone.

But my issue here isn’t with the amount of content, it’s with the lack of funness. CSH wasn’t enjoyable because of all the reasons listed above, and due to that, I personally cannot recommend it.

A simple and somewhat short JRPG-like. Nearly unplayable on the higher difficulty, so I'd stick with the default.

Encounters play more like puzzles than actual adhoc strategy.

Story is fun, but nothing to write home about and doesn't wear out its welcome.

Cosmic Star Heroine Review Podcast | "An Old School JRPG Experience" | VGBC #28 (REMASTERED)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTLOyZdv5LI&t

My Final Verdict/Rating:

Cosmic Star Heroine is a solid all around JRPG, and pays homage to old school JRPG games like Wild Arms, Chrono Trigger, and Bugs Life the video game. I enjoyed the time I spent with it, loved their in-depth/streamlined approach to combat… but at the same time I felt the game played it pretty safe. It had the old-school JRPG formula down to the t, but it just didn’t really do anything major to set it apart from other games of the same genre. The story was about what you would expect too. The character variety was great though, never thought I would ever team up with a psychic ant - or a disco dancing robot. Which is completely fine to be honest, not every game needs to reinvent the wheel - I had a good time, and if you like JRPGs I am sure you will have a good time too.

Which is why I am giving Starship Lords a 7.5 out of 10.

Overall a good step up for Zeboyd games although it is far from perfect. Gameplay-wise it's very strong, the binary character development systems of Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves The World have been shed and you now have an expansive ability and equipment system that let's you change up your characters on the fly. Lots of options to experiment with, and if you love burst damage playstyles then you'll love this game. One problem though is that once you get the strongest options, the short format of the battles can lead to them being a tad repetitive. This is aided by the game being short and fast paced though.
The biggest weakness ties into the previous point however, this game is very quick and unfortunately with pretty shallow writing. Consequently, this can actually make it really hard to follow what's going on as you get little room to process things, and characters are seldom developed beyond their introduction, especially painful due to the expansive cast. Tying back into gameplay, the extensive cast and line up changes forced on you make it a little undesirable to experiment with new combat options. Still, I've played far less polished independent RPG's, and by the standards of that field this is one of the better ones out there. If it was a little less derivative, I'd probably rate it just a bit higher.

Very cool game - has a clever puzzley take on traditional turn based JRPG combat, and manages to create a setting with a lot of new and interesting concepts (a miracle in this day and age). On the other hand the story (while having a lot of good and interesting ideas) tends to feel pretty "no thoughts, head empty" - characters just kind of do whatever they're supposed to do next for the plot, without a lot of depth or motivation. Plus while most of the characters are really interesting on paper, they don't get fleshed out enough to live up to their promise.

The game really peaks when you're exploring a town or city belonging to an alien culture - talking to the npcs in those locales and learning about the world, those moments are the few times the game really comes alive and feels like a real place, with real people.

Man, what a glorious experience this was. You can tell that it was made by people who have an immense appreciation for the JRPG genre, as they know exactly what to keep and what to change. This game is a perfect love letter to the genre, and feels like a worthy successor to Phantasy star.
- The gameplay is sublime, with each battle feeling like a real strategic puzzle. The most satisfying parts of the game was where I finally worked out how to properly combine different skills to nuke a boss in one hit.
I love JRPGS that allow me to change my party on the fly, so big points in this regard here, and bonus points for making each character very different from each other (which is an acheivement, seeing as there's something like 8 playable characters). I had fun switching around every character and trying out different combos. Arete and Z'Xorv were my two favourites, while Dave and Finn were my least favourites. Clarke and Lauren were also cool on paper but ended up being really situational in their usage. Chan, Psybe, Orson, Sue and Alyssa were all decent too. But the overall customisation the game gives you in terms of loadout helps to ensure that each character can play in a way that better suits your own playstyle.
- This game is perfectly paced, and knows when not to overstay its welcome. It's a good length, and every dungeon feels the right size. This is helped by how encounters work, where none of them are random.
- While the plot is nothing to write home about, this game has some of the best jokes ever made. It takes a lot to make me break down laughing at a text-based joke said by a random NPC, but this game got me to do that several times.
- My one complaint is that the final boss is way too easy. You just need to equip the last shield you can buy on every character in your party (easily done with how much money you have accumulated at this point), and then every enemy in the final dungeon does 1 damage to you.

Overall, I cannot recommend this game enough if you like JRPGs. Give it a go, you will have an absolutely phenomenal time.

CSH is an above average indie RPG. I loved the music and visuals in the game. I felt like a missing SNES RPG. The two biggest things I can say to this game is this. On the negative side the story in this game is a big nothing burger with a side of luke warm bland fries. On the positive side the battle system is like a piping hot fresh pizza with loads of toppings and you can taste each individual thing. I don't know why I went with a food analogy but it's true. The battle system is honestly one of my favorite ones in a turn based game. They NAILED the difficulty balance. It's never brainless but never daunting. Thought as to be put in every action but it's also not make one mistake and your dead either. I platinumed this game twice and honestly it's because of the visuals and battling were so strong.

Platinum # 61 and 82

Full review over at my website: https://www.nepikigaming.com/reviews/cosmic-star-heroine/

''Cosmic Star Heroine is a fresh sci-fi JRPG with an especially good battle system that kept me engaged throughout the entire game, constantly desiring to try out different team builds from the wide array of characters. All of them feel very different from each other with their own abilities and specialities that often compliment other characters as well. Not only that, but the battle system tests your strategic mind as well due to monsters getting stronger the longer a battle goes on, and your main form of attack going on cooldown after a single use. If this sounds overwhelming, you have nothing to fear as the title is very approachable with difficulties that can be changed at any point, grinding being obsolete and other quality-of-life improvements. But the amount of characters are also the game’s biggest flaw, as they usually have a single characteristic that does not get developed over the course of the game. Most characters aren’t even directly important to the plot and just happened to join the party by chance, which results in them having a lot less screentime as they usually don’t have a relation to any of the other characters in the party. The story is not really noteworthy either but granted, most of the issues surrounding the characters and the story are softened by the overall charm the game has, with Zeboyd Games’ trademark humour shining in the writing as always.''