At some point I had planned to also review and talk about (video)games I enjoyed playing, and yet it felt daunting to do so knowing I do not live up to more mainstream and established reviewers. But some games live rent free in my head and I wanted to share with you about them.
I bought a copy for myself on my Steam Deck on sale after playing the demo and enjoying it enough. According to Steam, I spend 40.4 hours on it (most of it on the main game and a few hours on the DLC), and I have managed to get 31 out of 54 achievements. I was not achievement hunting so this was mostly through just playing the game and trying to complete it.
I am usually picky with my RPGs, particularly ones that are turn based and JRPG. I don’t play many nowadays, since they tend to be very difficult, require too much brain at times and not be engaging enough or be too slow. But Sea of Stars, had probably one of my favourite features, that through acquiring items you can modify how combat and gameplay happen to your preferences in very specific ways. This meant that I could immediately tell it that I wanted to recover to full health and stamina/magic after every combat ended successfully. This made all the difference.
So let’s cover all the usual points of games, starting with:
Combat
I hate having to worry post combat about not encountering new combat (the whole “oh no, I have fought 10 Pokemons in my journey to the next town and my party is about to be wiped and now another one just jumped on me out of the grass, oh hell” vibe is part of why I don’t finish Pokemon games or do so very slowly or without spending extra time on them). So having a way to just hit the next fight on a blank slate and keep levelling up helped a lot. There a few other modifiers you can add, like making the cooking dynamic a tiny bit quicker and a few others. I would try most of them (except the ones that made combat harder) and then decide if I wanted to keep them on or not, because it is extremely easy to toggle them on or off in your inventory.
Combat is true to a turn based RPG and you get the same experience but smoother that you would get in classic RPGs. You can play 3 characters max on the ground but easily swap them during the turn to create combos and ultimate. They interact well with each other and I kept the two main characters on as main fighters for most fo the game. Experience is gained amongst the team regardless of if you used the character or not, which is also great. Hate having to grind all the party just to get them to similar levels.
For me the combat was accessible and good. Enough of a challenge, but with good modifiers that made it easy enough to be enjoyable.
Art style and Aesthetic
This is a massive winner, I am in love with Bryce’s art and the old style PRG vibes are immaculate but with all the modernity and years of expertise added to them. Love the colour palettes of different places, the thematic vibes for each island and area, and even for each character. It was incredibly satisfying and I even ended up buying the art book because I love the art and style so much.
Plot and story
One thing I actually enjoyed a LOT about this, is that there was zero romance in it. It is a story of friendship, of children who love each other and grown to support each other, and they also fight evil and hope for a better world. And you get wholesome relationships between the characters, with each having a unique personality, unique challenges and ways their story comes through in their items and plot. I cried, I hoped, and I was with all characters all the way. It was just so beautiful and kept me engaged and I kept wanting to known more of their backstory. The story goes both fast and slow, and the progress can feel a bit grindy (but when doesn’t it in an RPG? This is what kills me from Final Fantasy games, they take forever).
Gameplay and overall feeling
This game reminded me of the joy of playing RPGs, and it took away most of the frustrating parts of it. It still has a lot of puzzles, many many fights (though as you revisit areas and level up, the fights end faster or you can completely skip them with new abilities) and some interesting abilities.
I had like zero strategy on how I levelled my characters up, so the builds were simply by “hey I think this will do well here because this characters is suffering from this” or “hey I use this character a lot to do this type of attack, so might as well buff that attack type”. It felt approachable and it worked. I didn’t need to read up several guides to be able to make my party well rounded and working to defeat enemies. I could you dive in, so I stayed in the game and played and played (40 hours of it).
I enjoyed it until I completed the main game, but I did get a bit overdone with it by the time I approached the DLC, and so I paused that, because the mechanics changed a bit and I just had played too many hours of it, to devote time for it, but I still wanted to give it a fair go once I have completed other games in between to give me a fresher mind.
Overall, it genuinely was so accessible, kept things fresh and has immaculate vibes. I want everyone to play this, particularly if you ever played old pixel graphic RPGs. Plus we have a sun and moon character, a wonderful best friend, an enigmatic ninja, a mysterious pirate captain and her odd crew, and a few other characters who have a lot of story to tell.
And even better, I actually stayed engaged and completed the game. It was that enjoyable that I played it end to end.
