About 5 years in the past, a no-name studio referred to as Sabotage wowed audiences when it put out The Messenger, a artistic and progressive motion platformer that rapidly set itself other than the deluge of comparable retro-flavored titles releasing within the indie area. Empowered by that recreation’s deserved success, the group then started work on its dream venture, a retro JRPG referred to as Sea of Stars impressed by the likes of Chrono Set off and Secret of Mana. Some doubted the small studio’s skill to ship such a special expertise from its debut launch, however we’re joyful to report that any such doubts may be resolutely put to relaxation. Sea of Stars ticks all of the containers and executes its imaginative and prescient near-flawlessly, presenting gamers with a enjoyable, participating, and totally wonderful new entry within the JRPG style.
Sea of Stars opens in an historic library, the place a mysterious archivist tells you a narrative that takes place in the identical world as The Messenger, hundreds of years earlier than the occasions of that recreation. An evil god referred to as The Fleshmancer created just a few monstrous Dwellers earlier than disappearing, and every of those creatures might flip right into a World Eater and trigger the apocalypse if allowed to develop to maturity. To oppose this, a robust order of warrior mages referred to as Solstice Warriors was shaped to exterminate the Dwellers, that are weak to magic throughout an eclipse.
Our twin main protagonists, Zale and Valere, enter the story when there is just one Dweller left to destroy, although the Solstice Warriors themselves have dwindled to solely three remaining members. Zale and Valere are thus recruited at a really younger age to hone their respective affinities for solar and moon magic, culminating in a journey to trace down and kill the ultimate monster and put an finish to The Fleshmancer’s depraved plans.
Very similar to in The Messenger, the plot of Sea of Stars encompasses way more than what it appears at first, and it’s a real delight to see the way it unfurls and regularly widens its scope. Apart from a considerably sluggish begin, Sea of Stars incorporates a thrillingly well-written narrative that manages to stroll a really tremendous line between seriousness and levity. It total feels darker and extra intense than the final goofiness of Sabotage’s debut, but there are many welcome moments woven in the place that wry writing fashion exhibits itself. Maybe most significantly, Sea of Stars does a stellar job of constructing the connection between the principle social gathering members, particularly Zale and Valere. You’ll really feel fairly hooked up to this crew’s struggles throughout the 30 or so hours that it takes to see their story by way of and the emotional beats hit onerous when they should.
Sea of Stars follows the normal JRPG template, whereby you discover an expansive world full of secrets and techniques and dungeons, battle foes in turn-based fight, and construct up a regularly increasing social gathering the place everybody fills a singular position in each fight and narrative. The influences of traditional SNES JRPGs are apparent all over the place you look, but Sea of Stars learns from these video games and builds upon their concepts. For instance, the world itself is impressively interactable for a retro RPG. If a ledge or roof appears to be like prefer it may very well be climbed, it most likely can; you’re not restricted to a strict grid-like motion space that containers in your choices.
Exploration feels virtually precisely like what you would possibly anticipate out of a contemporary entry within the Golden Solar collection, with all dungeons and locales rife with new environmental puzzles and considerate design that takes issues approach past feeling like in another way adorned corridors funneling you to the following plot level. Dungeons, the truth is, really feel fairly historically Zelda-like of their layouts, with you often acquiring some new gadget or magic energy partway by way of that bestows a brand new traversal possibility and ‘unlocks’ the remainder of the dungeon whereas providing you with one thing new to make use of within the overworld to search out extra goodies and unlocks as you backtrack.
While you encounter enemies, battles happen proper the place you stumble upon them and observe normal turn-based guidelines. Each enemy could have a counter above their head that tells you ways lengthy you’ve earlier than they assault once more, and every so often that counter can be accompanied by a small field with icons. These ‘Locks’ correspond to totally different sorts of components and weapon sorts your characters struggle with, and if you happen to handle to hit an enemy with the appropriate assaults earlier than their counter hits zero, you’ll cancel their assault fully. Even if you happen to do not hit all of the locks in time, every one that you just do handle will lower the enemy’s energy by a hard and fast share.
Borrowing from Tremendous Mario RPG, each your offensive and defensive choices may also be bolstered by timed inputs that both increase your harm or scale back how a lot you’re taking from the enemy, and this does loads to make battles extra participating. Needing to be taught the brand new timings for contemporary foes or assaults retains you from getting too complacent, and provides slightly extra of a ability element to battles than merely constructing characters with the appropriate stats and letting the numbers play out—you really need to get higher at combating a boss if you happen to preserve shedding.
Moreover, there’s a lift system right here vaguely paying homage to Octopath Traveler. Hitting enemies with normal assaults won’t solely generate some MP so that you can use to unleash extra highly effective combos, but it surely’ll additionally ship a flurry of magic orbs throughout the sector, ready for use. If you wish to juice up the harm of an assault or social gathering buff, you possibly can then have a personality soak up the orbs as much as thrice per motion to energy up.
Battles are thus way more concerned than merely choosing actions from a menu, and this dynamism makes each encounter really feel significant. In a uncommon change from typical RPG design, even the low-level trash mobs you encounter whereas exploring hit onerous and may comfortably knock out characters in two or three hits, even once you’re correctly geared and leveled. Which means that all of the supplementary methods like assault boosting and enter timing really matter past simply boss fights, which ensures that fight encounters by no means really feel like senseless padding.
In a somewhat forward-thinking transfer, characters usually are not leveled independently of one another. As a substitute, the entire social gathering features expertise and ranges up as one unit, with every character (even those that aren’t in energetic use) getting a commensurate stat bump once you stage up. You continue to have some management over particular person development, as you possibly can decide a stat for every character that you really want further factors to go to after they stage up, however we appreciated how this determination eliminates the ‘bench’ that almost all RPGs have. Each character in your social gathering, even those that newly be a part of, is battle-ready and equal to the others. And whilst you can solely have three characters in play throughout a battle, any of them can tag out and get replaced by a celebration member on the sidelines with out costing a flip. This encourages you to make use of the entire social gathering on a regular basis, somewhat than a choose few that you just construct whereas ignoring the others.
Many nice JRPGs have some game-length minigame which you can interact in, and Sea of Stars options this within the enjoyable ‘Wheels’ recreation performed with patrons in taverns you go to. Wheels is principally a dice-roller the place the purpose is to erase the opponent’s HP earlier than they get you first. You start every match by choosing two characters, corresponding to a mage and a knight, which is able to forged their motion as soon as they’re given sufficient power, which is generated out of your rolls. You get three rolls per flip, with every of the 5 wheels producing a logo that corresponds to one in all your characters or to a wall you possibly can construct to dam harm.
The technique of Wheels comes into play in how one can individually lock in wheels that you just need to preserve. If, say, you need your knight to assault this flip, it will be favorable to lock in any symbols you get that correspond to it. However, in case your first roll generates a number of symbols in your mage as an alternative, it’s a must to take into account if you happen to’d somewhat lock in that unexpectedly favorable consequence, preserve solely among the wheels, or toss all of it and take a look at once more within the hopes that you just get an identical roll in your knight. Profitable a recreation of Wheels is thus equal elements ability and luck, as you’re in the end hedging your bets and attempting to preempt your opponent’s choices.
Although it’s fully elective, Wheels isn’t just a few throwaway aspect mode—there’s a wholly separate development system centered round it the place you problem regularly stronger opponents as you discover and obtain new character sorts out of your victories that increase your potential tactical choices for future video games. We beloved the inclusion of Wheels in Sea of Stars, because it’s separate from the remainder of the gameplay loop with out feeling needlessly distracting or compulsory, whereas providing a pleasant break from the motion.
Sea of Stars is the type of recreation that repeatedly finds methods to one-up itself, at all times pulling new methods out of the bag simply once you really feel you would possibly lastly have seen all its concepts. Very similar to in The Messenger, there’s a second about midway by way of the sport that recontextualizes all the things that got here earlier than it and completely revitalizes the journey by including one other layer to issues. That is the furthest factor from a launch that settles into complacent repetition, and it’s a real delight to see how tugging on some free strings causes the entire recreation to open up in surprising methods.
For its visuals, Sea of Stars employs a method that we might say exceeds Sq. Enix’s famed HD-2D system in retaining the spirit of traditional pixel artwork alive whereas bolstering it with fashionable touches. The spritework is impressively detailed and options an insane quantity of selection for the animation, giving all motion a staggering smoothness for a pixel artwork title. Environments are equally wealthy with element and every is visually distinct from the final, with the dungeons typically proving to be the highlights of the entire expertise. That is all tied collectively by a contemporary dynamic lighting system that offers Sea of Stars a surprisingly ‘actual’ look in lots of locations, considerably elevating the ambiance of most environments.
As for the audio, Eric Brown—identified by his stage title of Rainbowdragoneyes—returns after his stellar work on The Messenger’s soundtrack and we’re happy to report that he hasn’t misplaced his edge. There is a totally different tone right here and Sea of Stars’ music is decidedly much less catchy to match, however what it loses in power it makes up for in setting efficient ambiance. Not solely that, however the group at Sabotage managed to get Yasunori Mitsuda—the composer for Chrono Set off—to write down a number of tracks; his affect is abundantly evident in Brown’s work and their types circulation collectively flawlessly.
The one criticism that we will moderately make about Sea of Stars is that it feels a bit awkwardly paced at occasions. It’s an exciting journey from begin to end and is fully price seeing by way of, however there have been just a few occasions once you’re compelled to run errands that distract an excessive amount of from the central story. There’s one second the place you arrive at a significant plot level, solely to be despatched away by a personality to do one thing to show your self to them. You go on that tangent and are available again, and also you’re despatched away once more on one other tangent to fetch an merchandise for them from a dungeon. The fight and stage design is superb, so these tangents hardly really feel like a bore, however we typically discovered ourselves wishing that there was slightly extra focus in relation to story execution.
