Sea of Stars

[raisinbman]

Sea of Stars

This DEFINITELY is not a full review, but just wanted to get my initial thoughts out in case people were on the fence, but gaming is an embarassment of riches right now so I wouldn't blame you if you were preoccupied otherwise:

Sea of Stars was initially introduced as a prequel to The Messenger. I had no particular love for that game, as it was a tribute to games I never played. However this was being billed as a loving tribute to Chrono Trigger, which made me excited but trepidatious. Another game that was supposed to be based on Chrono Trigger, CrossCode, i had gotten really excited for, but in seeing someone stream it and seeing it was...puzzles bummed me out greatly. But I had not given up hope. Then the Chrono Cross remaster showed up and sucked. But even still, I figured someday someone would make a game that would be worthy of Chrono Trigger, and it clearly wouldn't be Squeenix as the Cross remake contained the most half-ass 'perfect ending' I've encountered in a while. But I don't just say that to talk crap, but to consider that that's probably the best I can expect from them, and would have to look elsewhere.

The game is pretty light on story, with a little preamble(I don't know if people who've played the messenger would've got more out of that, but I definitely didn't), then your characters get seemingly indoctrinated into a order of holy warriors who are determined to keep the peace despite the deadly Fleshmancer's possible presence. Dialogue/text is a little rough as it feels translated, and probably could've used another pass. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous though, if there's ever evidence against Sega's "2D games don't age well", it's this game. Obviously the sprites give it an aesthetic, but they're detailed, and have many frames that could've been skipped,tweened, or removed altogether. Like, for instance, enemy characters have unique power up animations for their moves, which I'm sure if the text just flashed and said 'ENEMY USED CLAW ATTACK' with a slight effect, we would all understand. Characters all have different frames for if they're happy, angry, etc. But on top of that all, there's alot of ambience in the sprites, INCLUDING a day/night system with shadows. My hat is truly off to this company for putting in what must be thousands of hours in putting this art piece together. People have also said this was influenced by Golden Sun, which I never played and only have cursory knowledge of. But even still, I can see it with the characters being elemental students travelling the land with little fanfare, and a bit of platforming. The story seems relatively inoffensive, and the main characters aren't all that exciting but I do appreciate that they aren't COMPLETELY silent, and have SOME conversation. The game also introduces modifiers early on(I'm guessing similar to Halo's skulls, however I only have positive ones at this point) which can increase or decrease the difficulty, or are just quality of life improvements, such as making 'perfect' attack timings more obvious when you get it right. Speaking of combat, that is where I'm not entirely sure of the game at this point.

Combat is pretty faithful to Chrono Trigger,but not completely - you time your hits and defense, like in the Mario RPG series. But it isn't just slavishly looking towards the old, it introduces a bit of choice. During your turn, you can swap between chars(except when you can't which is confusing), and your opponents will have a countdown for when they're going to act. The idea here is you need to figure out how to stop the enemy from casting spells(the appropriate counterattacks will appear above their heads), and you can't just brute force it. BUT on top of that, they add in another element. They introduce....I'm not even sure what to call it - if you do a melee attack on an enemy, elemental orbs will pour out of them. You can pick up these orbs to empower your next attack with moon or sun element. You would want to do this to attack enemies that cannot be harmed normally, increase the damage of your attack, or to try and stop an enemy from casting a spell because your attack will now deal physical AND magical damage. The problem is, unlike Mario RPG, it isn't a static 'this character goes, that character goes' system - enemies can move at various speeds, and require various attacks against them to stop their spellcasting. If this sounds like alot, it sure seems like it from my perspective! That being said, the game continues reassuring you that perfection in combat isn't necessary(almost literally in text), and characters will self-revive in combat after a set number of turns.

Continuing to talk about combat, there's also alot of moving elements on the screen, which can be jarring if you don't expect that since a central game mechanic is timing. The Mario and Luigi, Paper Mario, games all mitigated this by more or less having your characters be in static places - the heroes are on the left, and the baddies on the right. Yes, this would ocassionally change, but not so much you'd get 'cheap' game overs, etc. Chrono trigger, however, did have it's characters move around BUT, the difference is, there was no timing involved there. I'm guessing because of the way their sprites are drawn, they can't do every animation everywhere, so they move to get rid of this issue. The UI even 'randomly' moves around, and I don't know if I'm getting old but it's caused some confusion in the heat of battle for me.

Part of the reason people got excited for this game is Yasunori Mitsuda, who did much of the music for the original Chrono Trigger, is a guest composer for this game as well. In opening up the Matt McMuscles video for this game, I was a bit taken aback by how the music sounded, as this is not what I expect from Mitsuda, as someone who listens to a track(or more) of his every single day. That is not to say the music is bad, or it's beneath Mitsuda, but it was a bit jarring and I'll probably end up looking what tracks Mitsuda did specifically. The music is very indie-esque, if I were to summarize it. Nothing has grabbed me so far(which is why I was a bit surprised about the Mitsuda thing, but who knows, maybe I havne't listened to his tracks yet).

I definitely recommend this game as of this point, but regardless, the game has sold EXTREMELY well. This is great news for the dev, and for people like me who see 2D games as a thing of beauty, not a relic of the past, Sega.

[Rhaegyr]

Playing this at the moment and really enjoying it - it's just simple, JRPG-style nostalgia comfort food and exactly what I need at the moment.

I'm not that far into it though - only just finished the first boss on Wraith Island, about 10 hours in.

Oh, and it looks absolutely beautiful.

[Seph]

I backed the kickstarter based on the fact that The Messenger was one of my favourite games of the last few years, but I haven't got around to playing this yet other than the demo. The response I've seen has shown me I definitely backed the right horse after many letdowns and outright scams. I'll probably play it once I've worked through my PS4 backlog (I have the PC version).

[oni-link]

I'm also playing this now, about 16 hours in

It's been a while since I've played The Messenger but there are def music themes and a few locations from that game that show up in Sea of Stars, which is pretty cool

Overall I'm really enjoying the game so far

[goldmedalfun]

Thus far, the game is truly engaging me. super mario bros