Not sure if a game has been so polarizing to me before. There are a lot of aspects of Sea of Stars that I truly loved like the story, the combat, the constant introduction of new interesting characters, and the perspective altering hook that occurs about two-thirds of the way through the story. On the other hand, I also absolutely detested some of the design decisions in this game like the underutilization of it's core mechanics, the lame tumblr art cutscenes, lots of empty and long backtracking sections, and the tedious busy-work they ask you to do to unlock the "true ending" which in my opinion is worse narratively than the default ending.
In Sea of Stars you play as Zale and Valere, two young kids born on the solstice dropped off by an eagle to an island in which they will be groomed into magical fighters known as solstice warriors who's purpose is to fight off a terrible evil that threatens their world. Zale and Valere are being mentored by Headmaster Moraine who runs the Zenith Academy which exists to prepare solstice warriors for the dangers they will face. Standard JRPG open here, you are the chosen one (um.. or two), big bad to go fight, the world lies in the balance, good stuff overall. What makes the story interesting is all the characters you meet along the way as you inch closer to the confrontation with the big bad of the game. There is an innocence and naïveté to the writing which might sound like a negative, but I totally loved it. Humanizing the villain is becoming an overplayed trope in stories lately so it's refreshing to see a simple good guys vs. bad guys story. When I say good guys, I mean really good too, they are so squeaky clean perfect that it's almost painful at first but the characters really grow on you eventually. This happy go lucky attitude that encompasses most of the story forces your guard down so when the sad moments happen (and they do happen) it really hits you hard.
The combat is typical turn based JRPG fare but with a few additional elements added. For starters there is a timing element in which you can do additional damage on attacks if you time a button push perfectly with the impact of the attack. They also added a mechanic where most enemies will periodically wind up for a big attack which will give you some number of turns in order to pair the right combination of damage types together in order to cancel their attack. For example you may have 2 turns to hit an enemy with sharp, blunt, and moon damage or they will do a large AoE attack. These mechanics keep the gameplay fresh as you will be solving puzzles of how to stop enemies from performing their most dangerous attacks pretty much all fight and having to time your attacks perfectly to do maximum damager per attack. No real complaints here, though I would have liked to see more progression of spells and attacks like a FF Fire/Fira/Firaga system for example.
Exploration is mostly fine but I find it lacking in a few areas. For one the world is open, but has virtually no reason for being that way except in the last act of the game. You can roam around on your ship all day but can't explore most areas until you have the appropriate key item to unlock the entrance so it's slightly pointless. Returning back to previously explored places doesn't reward you with anything new except in a exceedingly small number of circumstances and yet you are asked to do just that a number of times towards the end of the game. These hollow backtracking sections are awful and are just screaming for some sort of enemy evolution or previously inaccessible areas made explorable with a newly acquired skill. Being able to free roam in a boat is great if handled appropriately, sailing around the ocean isn't fun unless there are some hidden things to find like an island with a secret boss hiding some cool loot or something and sadly that is nowhere to be found in this game... Again, until the last act of the game. The dungeon puzzles are so simple that usually you see what needs to be done as soon as you enter the area making the process of solving the puzzle seem more like busy work than actually solving a problem. I also feel like the designers totally underutilized time of day manipulation mechanics. It would have been nice to see maybe stronger or different enemies at night, maybe some environments that are only accessible at certain times of the day, or even a buff to Zale's damage during the day and Valere's damage at night. These are just the first few things that pop into my head, I imagine a lot more could have been done with this mechanic than the rather dull prism light puzzles that are scattered throughout the game.
Finally, hiding the "true ending" behind a fetch quest which requires going on an easter egg hunt backtracking through the whole game with no direction or knowledge of where to look when we've already discussed that backtracking in this game is terribly dull was a total dick move. "Why don't you just look up a guide" I hear you say, well a) because I shouldn't have to do that to get the "true ending", and b) because I had already found about 40/60 of the rainbow conches on my initial trek through the map so this would still require me to go through a list of all 60 to make sure I got them all, and sorry but I'm just not going to do that. If you design your game to require immense tedium OR going on the internet to find the solution to get true ending, I'm going to use the internet in a more efficient way and simply go on YouTube to watch the true ending and save a bunch of hassle. All the other hidden quests to unlock the true ending were totally fine with me and I actually did 5 of the 7 without even knowing there was a true ending that had these missions as a prerequisite.
Overall I really enjoyed most of my time with Sea of Stars and it scratched that nostalgic SNES JRPG itch I've been having for a while. I thought it had one of the most interesting worlds and stories I've seen in an indie RPG. And it could have been an all-timer if they fixed the issues I mentioned previously. Another plus is with the way the story unfolds it opens the door to all kinds of possibilities sequel-wise which in this case I think is pretty cool and I look forward to seeing what they do next.
In Sea of Stars you play as Zale and Valere, two young kids born on the solstice dropped off by an eagle to an island in which they will be groomed into magical fighters known as solstice warriors who's purpose is to fight off a terrible evil that threatens their world. Zale and Valere are being mentored by Headmaster Moraine who runs the Zenith Academy which exists to prepare solstice warriors for the dangers they will face. Standard JRPG open here, you are the chosen one (um.. or two), big bad to go fight, the world lies in the balance, good stuff overall. What makes the story interesting is all the characters you meet along the way as you inch closer to the confrontation with the big bad of the game. There is an innocence and naïveté to the writing which might sound like a negative, but I totally loved it. Humanizing the villain is becoming an overplayed trope in stories lately so it's refreshing to see a simple good guys vs. bad guys story. When I say good guys, I mean really good too, they are so squeaky clean perfect that it's almost painful at first but the characters really grow on you eventually. This happy go lucky attitude that encompasses most of the story forces your guard down so when the sad moments happen (and they do happen) it really hits you hard.
The combat is typical turn based JRPG fare but with a few additional elements added. For starters there is a timing element in which you can do additional damage on attacks if you time a button push perfectly with the impact of the attack. They also added a mechanic where most enemies will periodically wind up for a big attack which will give you some number of turns in order to pair the right combination of damage types together in order to cancel their attack. For example you may have 2 turns to hit an enemy with sharp, blunt, and moon damage or they will do a large AoE attack. These mechanics keep the gameplay fresh as you will be solving puzzles of how to stop enemies from performing their most dangerous attacks pretty much all fight and having to time your attacks perfectly to do maximum damager per attack. No real complaints here, though I would have liked to see more progression of spells and attacks like a FF Fire/Fira/Firaga system for example.
Exploration is mostly fine but I find it lacking in a few areas. For one the world is open, but has virtually no reason for being that way except in the last act of the game. You can roam around on your ship all day but can't explore most areas until you have the appropriate key item to unlock the entrance so it's slightly pointless. Returning back to previously explored places doesn't reward you with anything new except in a exceedingly small number of circumstances and yet you are asked to do just that a number of times towards the end of the game. These hollow backtracking sections are awful and are just screaming for some sort of enemy evolution or previously inaccessible areas made explorable with a newly acquired skill. Being able to free roam in a boat is great if handled appropriately, sailing around the ocean isn't fun unless there are some hidden things to find like an island with a secret boss hiding some cool loot or something and sadly that is nowhere to be found in this game... Again, until the last act of the game. The dungeon puzzles are so simple that usually you see what needs to be done as soon as you enter the area making the process of solving the puzzle seem more like busy work than actually solving a problem. I also feel like the designers totally underutilized time of day manipulation mechanics. It would have been nice to see maybe stronger or different enemies at night, maybe some environments that are only accessible at certain times of the day, or even a buff to Zale's damage during the day and Valere's damage at night. These are just the first few things that pop into my head, I imagine a lot more could have been done with this mechanic than the rather dull prism light puzzles that are scattered throughout the game.
Finally, hiding the "true ending" behind a fetch quest which requires going on an easter egg hunt backtracking through the whole game with no direction or knowledge of where to look when we've already discussed that backtracking in this game is terribly dull was a total dick move. "Why don't you just look up a guide" I hear you say, well a) because I shouldn't have to do that to get the "true ending", and b) because I had already found about 40/60 of the rainbow conches on my initial trek through the map so this would still require me to go through a list of all 60 to make sure I got them all, and sorry but I'm just not going to do that. If you design your game to require immense tedium OR going on the internet to find the solution to get true ending, I'm going to use the internet in a more efficient way and simply go on YouTube to watch the true ending and save a bunch of hassle. All the other hidden quests to unlock the true ending were totally fine with me and I actually did 5 of the 7 without even knowing there was a true ending that had these missions as a prerequisite.
Overall I really enjoyed most of my time with Sea of Stars and it scratched that nostalgic SNES JRPG itch I've been having for a while. I thought it had one of the most interesting worlds and stories I've seen in an indie RPG. And it could have been an all-timer if they fixed the issues I mentioned previously. Another plus is with the way the story unfolds it opens the door to all kinds of possibilities sequel-wise which in this case I think is pretty cool and I look forward to seeing what they do next.