“Sea of Stars” is an homage to games of old, sporting some stunning pixel art, a great turn-based system that adds some twists to the genre, and a good story to boot. This game might have gone under the radar of many as it came out on Aug. 29 a week before “Starfield” came out, but don’t sleep on the indie title made by Sabotage Studio. This is Sabotage’s second title, their first being “The Messenger”, which also saw good reviews and is also an old-school style game.
Back to “Sea of Stars” though, the game is an old-school turn-based RPG following a ragtag group of adventurers going to slay evil, which might sound basic but it adds depth later down the road. Two of said adventurers, and the main characters, are a brother and sister born on the winter and summer solstices, which in the game means they can become “solstice warriors” and are destined to save the world. That is the basic premise of the game, but it takes some turns the longer you play.
The game has heavy inspirations from a hit RPG called “Chrono Trigger” as it has a similar turn-based system and even the music is inspired by it, more on that later. Let’s start with the gameplay of “Sea of Stars.” The gameplay has two important parts, one is the turn-based combat and the other is the 2D platforming you will be doing outside of combat.
Combat is simple as it is similar to any turn-based RPG, but it adds a couple of things to spice up the gameplay, while also being challenging at times. The game has a “lock” system where if an enemy charges up a special move you can use certain attacks to match the “lock” to knock the enemy out of the move. This system makes strategizing attacks a lot more fun and challenging, cause while you are the “chosen ones” you are also pretty frail, as stopping attacks sometimes is more important than getting max damage. The other aspect of combat that is great is that when you hit an enemy with a basic attack they drop “mana” and you can use that to charge your basic attacks to do more damage.
The 2D platforming aspect is pretty standard for the industry of old-school RPGs, minus the difficult puzzles and random encounters. You have areas that are locked off until you find the tools you need to traverse them and puzzles that need said tools for you to continue the journey. The only gripe I have with this part is that it is kind of hard to see where to go sometimes, due to the old-school style and depth of terrain, but it isn’t detrimental in the slightest.
Speaking of terrain, the game world is gorgeous and I feel it is one of the better, maybe even best-looking pixel art game out there right now. The details of the world you traverse are amazing and look like a fantasy world. You can get immersed really easily as the art direction plays really well with every aspect of the game. From just the landscapes to how enemies look everything just fits into the world and not a lot of games can ace that, while “Sea of Stars” nails it. To make things better, we haven’t gotten to the best part of the game.
The best part of the game, by a slight margin and to my surprise, is the music. This is where the “Chrono Trigger” inspiration comes in as the musical composer of “Chrono Trigger” pitched in some tracks for the game. While those are great the other music composer, Eric W. Brown, made some spectacular music very similar to Yasunori Mitsuda’s sound, said composer for “Chrono Trigger.”
Everything about this game is great, so you might ask what the major issue is with the game? The main thing I have seen in reviews is that the game’s start is too slow and the story is a little too basic at times.
“I almost didn’t experience all of that [the soundtrack] in Sea of Stars story, which starts very slowly,” Jay Peters of The Verge said. “The story was so uninspiring for hours that I nearly gave up on Sea of Stars.”
While I don’t agree with the slow start to the game, Peters has a point with the beginning of the story being very uninspired. It has just about every trope old-school RPGs have, a chosen one, an evil entity that said chosen one has to fight, a ragtag group of people helping the chosen one’s, and many others. But if you can get past hour 6-7 in the game, then the plot takes some turns and gets interesting. “Sea of Stars” is a game that I wasn’t expecting much from and got a lot out of, so I would rate it a 9.5/10 just based on the fact that the only thing I had an issue with was the trope-heavy beginning.
