Sea of Stars is a serious contender to my GOTY 2023
First things first, I was a top backer for this game and have been waiting for this game for 3 years while being active on Sabotage’s discord. With that said, I’ll try to be as objective as possible.
Sea of Stars is a game that has reminded me why I love this medium so much and why some artistic expressions and deliveries can only be achieved by games. This game was like going back to the past to those times where I was a kid playing Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger or Golden Sun for the first time. Why those games specifically? Because those are the games, I felt inspired Sabotage Studio in developing SoS.
The sprite work and atmosphere in SoS is sublime and rich, with very different faunas and ecosystems to find throughout the adventure. There are many secrets and treasure chests to find in good ol fashioned SNES RPG games, something I’ve been longing for a long time. These beautiful scenes are accompanied by an excellent soundtrack by the same composer as The Messenger + 10 amazing tracks by the legendary Mitsuda. It’s even more impressive when each area has a different version depending on if you are exploring during the day or night.
What I liked the most about Sea of Stars is the gameplay and Sabotage’s vision of fun. While this is a retro inspired RPG, it has many QoL features from modern games that just enhances de experience even more. There are items called relics which you can turn on or off depending on your playstyle. There are relics that heals you after each battle, relics that reduces the price of items in shops, or relics that boost your EXP gained, this is all optional. Having options is great.
Besides that, the battle system is just pure fun. The lock-break system was obviously inspired by Octopath Traveler’s Shield Points and weakness system and it is a battle system and just works. I’m grateful you couldn’t just press A to win and you had to strategize and optimize your turns or else the game would punish you with enemies dealing special attacks that dealt tons of damage.
I mentioned Golden Sun earlier, and the reason were the puzzles. While the puzzles in Sea of Stars are not mind-blowing o ultra creative, I appreciate the inclusion of them to make the dungeons and areas more fun to traverse. It’s refreshing to not having to just walk and fight enemies until the end.
Speaking of traversing, the use of verticality in this game is incredible. I love how everything interconnects and maximizes the use of the space of the screen instead of having dozens of areas or screens.
Some flaws and my gripes with the game
This has been said in a lot of reviews in outlets but yeah, the writing is not the best. While I think the story is good, my biggest problem are the characters. To be more specific, the two main characters Valere and Zale. It feels like they are just there. They are not silent protagonists but they may was well be, you could exchange the dialogue of Zale to Valere and vice versa and you wouldn’t notice any difference.
I also would’ve loved more interaction between the whole cast, the game at times just feels like a nonstop rush to the end with no time to breath and give the characters some development.
Another issue I had it had were the combos. I barely used them in normal battles, not because they are useless but because it takes too long to activate them. By the time you could use one the fight is almost over. They feel like they are exclusively for boss battles.
Lastly, I felt like the bosses are way too easy. There are a couple near the end of game that I felt had the best mechanics and were actually hard but most of them you just kill them with the same strat of building up combo points, break locks and release your best skills when boss is on “cooldown”.
That said, I absolutely LOVED my 40 hours with the game, and backing it was one of the best decisions I made three years ago. I firmly believe Sea of Stars is one of the best indie games of all time and a serious contender to my GOTY 2023.
First things first, I was a top backer for this game and have been waiting for this game for 3 years while being active on Sabotage’s discord. With that said, I’ll try to be as objective as possible.
Sea of Stars is a game that has reminded me why I love this medium so much and why some artistic expressions and deliveries can only be achieved by games. This game was like going back to the past to those times where I was a kid playing Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger or Golden Sun for the first time. Why those games specifically? Because those are the games, I felt inspired Sabotage Studio in developing SoS.
The sprite work and atmosphere in SoS is sublime and rich, with very different faunas and ecosystems to find throughout the adventure. There are many secrets and treasure chests to find in good ol fashioned SNES RPG games, something I’ve been longing for a long time. These beautiful scenes are accompanied by an excellent soundtrack by the same composer as The Messenger + 10 amazing tracks by the legendary Mitsuda. It’s even more impressive when each area has a different version depending on if you are exploring during the day or night.
What I liked the most about Sea of Stars is the gameplay and Sabotage’s vision of fun. While this is a retro inspired RPG, it has many QoL features from modern games that just enhances de experience even more. There are items called relics which you can turn on or off depending on your playstyle. There are relics that heals you after each battle, relics that reduces the price of items in shops, or relics that boost your EXP gained, this is all optional. Having options is great.
Besides that, the battle system is just pure fun. The lock-break system was obviously inspired by Octopath Traveler’s Shield Points and weakness system and it is a battle system and just works. I’m grateful you couldn’t just press A to win and you had to strategize and optimize your turns or else the game would punish you with enemies dealing special attacks that dealt tons of damage.
I mentioned Golden Sun earlier, and the reason were the puzzles. While the puzzles in Sea of Stars are not mind-blowing o ultra creative, I appreciate the inclusion of them to make the dungeons and areas more fun to traverse. It’s refreshing to not having to just walk and fight enemies until the end.
Speaking of traversing, the use of verticality in this game is incredible. I love how everything interconnects and maximizes the use of the space of the screen instead of having dozens of areas or screens.
Some flaws and my gripes with the game
This has been said in a lot of reviews in outlets but yeah, the writing is not the best. While I think the story is good, my biggest problem are the characters. To be more specific, the two main characters Valere and Zale. It feels like they are just there. They are not silent protagonists but they may was well be, you could exchange the dialogue of Zale to Valere and vice versa and you wouldn’t notice any difference.
I also would’ve loved more interaction between the whole cast, the game at times just feels like a nonstop rush to the end with no time to breath and give the characters some development.
Another issue I had it had were the combos. I barely used them in normal battles, not because they are useless but because it takes too long to activate them. By the time you could use one the fight is almost over. They feel like they are exclusively for boss battles.
Lastly, I felt like the bosses are way too easy. There are a couple near the end of game that I felt had the best mechanics and were actually hard but most of them you just kill them with the same strat of building up combo points, break locks and release your best skills when boss is on “cooldown”.
That said, I absolutely LOVED my 40 hours with the game, and backing it was one of the best decisions I made three years ago. I firmly believe Sea of Stars is one of the best indie games of all time and a serious contender to my GOTY 2023.