A cozy game of low stakes and personal journeys.

Honestly, it's a pretty middling game. The puzzles were too easy. The default camera settings were set by a monster and the walking speed drove me insane.

But the game oozes a curious amount of charm. The characters are likeable and their relationships with each other were believable. The story wasn't groundbreaking but enjoyable. The game looks and sounds great.

I love that Nintendo has been reviving some of their long dead IPs. Can we get Hotel Dusk remake next please?

It is a cardinal sin to lock a true ending to a JRPG behind 100% completion. And the ending was not worth the effort. I should have just watched the true ending on Youtube and saved myself a tedious 3 hours.

Sea of Stars is carried by its art style and music. To the people saying it has a good story, are we playing the same game? The story itself is fine, standard JRPG chosen one saves the world, but the writing and world building is awful. I didn't care about any of the characters because they had no personality, really disliked Gary-Stu deus ex machina Garl, and stopped caring about the plot after the whole Garl part. And the dialogue was really, really terrible.

And like hello? Erlina and Brugaves?? Like I didn't like them at all but they really just yolo'd out of the story half way through. And Resh'an and Aephorul?? See you space cowboy??

Combat got tedious 10 hours in when nothing ever changed. I just spammed the exact same skills and strategy I did in the first hour to the final boss fight. There was no feeling of progression to the combat because of that.

Boss design is fabulous. The exploration and puzzles were simple but enjoyable enough. The game is eye candy with great music and sound design. Unfortunately the terrible writing, cardboard cut-outs of characters and self-insert Garl dragged down an otherwise decent game.

I suffered through this just for Edgeworth and so I can play AAI2.

the good:
- Edgeworth, Gumshoe, Kay, Badd
- AGENT LANG chefs kiss

the neutral:
- the gameplay is fine but the novelty wears off after the first case
- the cases and majority of characters are painfully average and frankly forgettable except for the overarching mystery of the Yatagarasu

the bad:
- the bloat. there is so much unnecessarily dialogue which adds nothing to the game but puts me to sleep
- each case could have been written a lot tighter if people would just shut up and not make you have to prove every single tiny point before you can arrest the culprit