I was very hyped for Sea of Stars when it was first announced. I was a very big fan of the teams first game The Messenger and consider it one of my favorite indies. When it looked like they were going to be doing a SNES style RPG with gorgeous sprite work I was instantly sold. Screens gave me some serious Chrono Trigger vibes and with the writing style that I liked with the Messenger it was hard not to look forward to it. In the end I feel like Sea of Stars only delivered about half of my expectaitons.

The first thing you notice is that the game looks beautiful. They did a really impressive job with the sprite work and backgrounds. Each scenery really feels like it has life put into it. Couple that with an equally nice soundtrack and the game is a sight to behold and makes you want to adventure through every nook and crany. There are so many varied places to visit, all with different moods and feels that by the time you reach the end it's kinda amazing how much was actually in there in it's 30 hour journey. Especially more in the later half. Lots of places and locales that I really didn't expect to see and some audio and visual surprises that kept a grin on my face the majority of the time. Unfortately for me the rest of the package just didn't live up to these standards. For every other great thing I feel Sea of Stars takes two steps back or fumbles and drops the ball with no ground gain.

The combat is as simple as a modern game can get. Almost too simple to it's detriment. Almost is the key word. Just your basic attack, skills, combination skills and items. The battling feels almost ripped from Super Mario RPG. Where you can get a boost to your attack or mitagate damage if you time your button press right before you hit an enemy or block an attack. It's a simple thing that in the grand scale doesn't equate to a lot or determine a victory but damn it does feel good and satisfying that it's kind of a thing I tend to do in turn based RPG's anyway out some sort of reflex. I like how the game basicaly says "try to learn the timing for each attack but if you can't it's okay it's only a little extra for fun."

I am firm believer that turn based RPG's don't need to overcomplicate themselves to be rewarding and fun. I just wish Sea of Stars had just a little more variety to it's combat. The moment to moment idea of what you should be doing in battle works and flows really good but the problem is that there is just not enough variation of attacks, so you will be seeing the same pattern of strategy over and over again. Every party member has a total of 4 different special moves and a few combination attacks with other party members. For a game that is 30 hours long this is just not enough to keep the game interesting for a lot of players. You have 3 different special attacks that have different magic elements assosiated to it and one ultimate limit break style of hail mary attack. So in regular battles you 3 main attacks you are going to use over and over again. Hell I felt like the first ten hours of the game I only had a two specials for each characters. Each move is pretty useful though. Some cover a wide area, one might be a heal or a multihitting attack that you have to carefully time your attacks back and forth or charge and hold a button and release at the right time. Mechaniclly all great ideas but after using moonmerang and sun blast for the 600th time it's a wonder why their aren't more moves to be delt out and build more variety. This isn't a game held back by limitations. I'm not asking for a 50 move set tier list where only five are actually useful but goddamn are the they crazy only limiting ourselves to 3 moves per member. This is the kind of stuff that makes characters stand out and special. It's just baffling to me. I understand quality over quantity but when starting the battle i feel like I have my first four or so actions planned out to always be the same because this exact strat is the best use of my mana it becomes boring.

Other things about the gameplay aren't nearly as dire but not perfect either. There is this artifact system in the game as well. Where unlockable in menu toggles become available that changes the way the game or battles function. LIke for example two you start out with is one that adds 100% more health to the party or one that auto heals you after every battle which are both designed to help people who are not great at RPG's and just want to explore the story. I get it, and options are nice but it does kind irk me a bit there is no negative to using them. This does feel like a game where they don't want the combat to be the deal breaker for the player. The artifacts I thought was a really interesting idea that I felt was greatly underutilized. LIke finding a secret contian a permenant 20% increase in experiance or a item locater or a choice of making attack timings easier but the pay off is less or increase the speed of travel on the world map. A unlockable toggle for these kind of things is kind of different and i rather liked the idea of customizing the way the game functioned based on my exploration or deeds. The sucky thing is though is that there are so few of them in the game it feels like a wasted oppurtunity and more of a combat handicap. I would have loved a teleport out of dungeon one or a magic costs doubled for 2x the power. Something where you could customize the experiance but not bogg down the actual combat. Wasted oppurtunity. On the plus side though, I feel the base difficulty is pretty balanced as is and there is a lot of enemy variety and bosses throughout the game. Overall enjoyed the combat but found it fun enough but can't help be taken back by the lack of effort with strong foundations.

When it comes to the story and adventure of Sea of Stars I have to say it's extremely uneven. One of the biggest problems I have with Sea of Stars characters is one I feared right away. Just looking at the characters I know they should behave. We have here two leads that at their very core are a set of protaginists that are cleary defined as the good guys persona and magic adept and those two things are thier entire character. It's so boring and dull and quite frankly lazy. The characters are so one note it's a detriment to the entire experiance. They are simply "We were raised to fight evil using moon and sun magick and it's our destiny to do good" that's there whole persona. I'm not against silent protaginists in RPG's that are supposed to represent the player but Sea of Stars is not that kinda game. These characters can and do talk but they have nothing meaningful to say. Way more of a reactionary duo. Something happens, insert dialog of characters responding. The writing in the game is actually very poor and as someone who doesn't and isn't always bothered by this, it really stood out to me how much it really did in this one. Characters don't actually say "This makes me so happy!" Which is just strange as I really liked the writing and jokes of teams last game. Why couldn't our leads have personality like that game.

Like I have been saying there are foundations to where you could have built from. Like looking at the graphic image above with the two leads. Just looking at them you should be able to just grasp thier personality from that image alone. The boy, Zale for example, looks like a hot head who might think more in the moment and who would say things without thinking them through that might have a bigger temper because he has the bombastic fire sun magic. Or on the flip side Valerie who has moon magic is the complete opposite of her brother who is more thoughtful and calculated but tends to overthink things and it causes rifts in her circle, and she is more humble and likes to meditate and people please. Then through the course of the story they would come to learn from each other and learn that they work better togather than apart and grow as characters by impactful scenes. Simple bread and butter and some flavor text and some character growth scesnes, subvert an expecation or two and done. There I just thought of that simple by the concept art of the two leads and a tad of gameplay info. Would have been great and it's what I was expecting. Sea of Stars greatly let me down on this aspect. There is no character growth or personality at all. Things happen to a character and they react to it in the one dimension the game has given them.

Let me side track this bit one step further. I know people who have completed the game might be like what about characters like Serai or MVP of the story Garl the have depth. Do they though? I do appreciate what they attempted to do with a character like Garl but the problem is that he too is one note and doesn't actually grow at all. He is the same character from start to finish. The thing with Garl is that he is the friend of the duo leads and his character is that he loves his friends and just wants to follow them on their adventure and do the right thing and cooking is his hobby. There is his whole arc, that to the T. "This three person party is like having the entire team of avengers all being captain america, it doesn't work" Any way his main ordeal is that he isn't as strong as them but still wants to help and our lovable heroes can't say no cause Garl is our best friend. So he always doing and speaking for the party pretty much with our leads essentially saying "I agree or great idea Garl!" and using the sheer force of positivity to sway the situation in the pary's favor. Well that only works for so long. Good characters have hills and valleys and maybe if something happened to due to his one track mind that would cause him to stumble that would be interesting. I'm not saying it has to be drastic or turn him into a emo sad sack of shit but this isn't it. I'm trying to keep this spoiler free but I'll just say his arc and popularity so to speak is unearned.

As for the meat of the story the game is an exploration heavy world quest to defeat the evil Fleshmancer and his world eating monsters. Which is a fine premise for a game like this. It doesn't have to keep you guessing with the plot or have a dozen twists and turns. If the story had the flavor of this games backgrounds and music I would be singing it's praises but it's pretty basic. My biggest issue with it is the pacing of the game. It really does feel like it drags on for so long at times. The second half is clearly much more interesting than the first half. First half kind of seems like meandering around waiting for something to happen. Travel here to here go through this cave to get to this hill top so you can get into this town where you need to find this guy and repeat for about a dozen hours. Outside the varied locations the story itself doesn't take any risks but there are some cool moments and sets. Especially the nods and callbacks to the Messenger. My beef with the story isn't so much with what it is but what they do with it. I already said my issues with the writing but there are also so many threads or tiny quirks that really lead nowhere and I was eagerly awainting a small scene to explain them. The entire beef with the other solstice warriors feels unresolved and flat with no pay off for the amount of times it was brought up and some of the motivations of the characters namely late game characters feels odd. Some characters are introduced and quickly forgoten or killed with little context. The game also have one of those F You endings play again to fight the true final boss and get a slightly alternate endings, which always feels cheap. And with this one I feel there is a big character assasination moment that the party does that really put a sour taste in my mouth.

In the end I can't help be dissapointed in Sea of Stars because I honestly expected better. When first starting it and seeing the visuals really gave me a wow feeling that faded harder and harder the more I kept going and for a moment or two I thought my expectations might be subverted and the game was gonna take a huge turn for the better but it really didn't. Sea of Stars while great to look at and pleasant to listen to I was ready for adventure and have fun only to get bogged down with the realization that it was mostly one note and every wish for this to be the turning point just simply never came. I know not everybody feels this way and the game feels to be pretty split but gotta be honest it was a siren that cast it's lure out to me only to break my heart when I got there.