I really enjoyed this game for the most part, but I will say that I was ready to be done with it at around the 30 hour mark. I went out of my way to get the true ending, which requires completing one of the collect-a-thon style quests and this took way longer than I would have liked. "Get 60 rainbow conches" doesn't sound that bad on paper, but you'll probably need to do a lot of backtracking to find them all, and god help you if you don't use a walkthrough.
Generally speaking, the combat system isn't the most complex thing in the world, but it's just satisfying enough to determine which party member should take the next turn, what they should do, who they should target, and so on. Additionally, I played with the Tactician's Mettle relic enabled (the game's equivalent of a hard mode). This made combat much more interesting than I'm sure it would have been otherwise, although I still didn't find it to be particularly challenging. The only times I ever lost a fight and had to reload from a save point were when I forgot to top off my party's health after a previous fight. My biggest criticism of the combat is that once you've figured it out, there's basically nothing new to be challenged by. Boss fights become more like slogs with ensured outcomes rather than tense, imposing challenges. It suffers from the classic problem of games with turn-based combat as a puzzle, meaning that the combat can be "solved."
The last major criticism I have is one that's been repeated many times, and it's regarding the game's story. It's nothing offensive, but it's absolutely nothing special either. It essentially boils down to: "We have to go to A place to get B thing, so that we can then go to C place and get D thing, so that we can then go to E place..." and this is pretty much the entire game. There's a great piece of writing advice that suggests using "So Then" to bridge different parts of a plot together, instead of "And Then." Sea of Stars feels like an "And Then" story in disguise as a "So Then."
Despite all of the above, as I said, I really enjoyed the game for the most part. The art style, music, animations, character designs, and cutesy dialogue really carried it for me. And it does genuinely feel like I went on a huge, epic journey with these characters. I don't feel sad that it's over, but I'm still glad to have been part of it. This game reminds me of something I would have played to death as a child, and it makes me happy to imagine other children (and adults) out there who will consider Sea of Stars to be their favorite game for many years to come.
Generally speaking, the combat system isn't the most complex thing in the world, but it's just satisfying enough to determine which party member should take the next turn, what they should do, who they should target, and so on. Additionally, I played with the Tactician's Mettle relic enabled (the game's equivalent of a hard mode). This made combat much more interesting than I'm sure it would have been otherwise, although I still didn't find it to be particularly challenging. The only times I ever lost a fight and had to reload from a save point were when I forgot to top off my party's health after a previous fight. My biggest criticism of the combat is that once you've figured it out, there's basically nothing new to be challenged by. Boss fights become more like slogs with ensured outcomes rather than tense, imposing challenges. It suffers from the classic problem of games with turn-based combat as a puzzle, meaning that the combat can be "solved."
The last major criticism I have is one that's been repeated many times, and it's regarding the game's story. It's nothing offensive, but it's absolutely nothing special either. It essentially boils down to: "We have to go to A place to get B thing, so that we can then go to C place and get D thing, so that we can then go to E place..." and this is pretty much the entire game. There's a great piece of writing advice that suggests using "So Then" to bridge different parts of a plot together, instead of "And Then." Sea of Stars feels like an "And Then" story in disguise as a "So Then."
Despite all of the above, as I said, I really enjoyed the game for the most part. The art style, music, animations, character designs, and cutesy dialogue really carried it for me. And it does genuinely feel like I went on a huge, epic journey with these characters. I don't feel sad that it's over, but I'm still glad to have been part of it. This game reminds me of something I would have played to death as a child, and it makes me happy to imagine other children (and adults) out there who will consider Sea of Stars to be their favorite game for many years to come.