Sea of Stars Review (Switch eShop)

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Version Reviewed: North American

About five years ago, a no-name studio called Sabotage wowed audiences when it put out The Messenger, a creative and innovative action platformer that quickly set itself apart from the deluge of similar retro-flavored titles releasing in the indie space. Empowered by that game’s deserved success, the team then began work on its dream project, a retro JRPG called Sea of Stars inspired by the likes of Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana. Some doubted the small studio’s ability to deliver such a different experience from its debut release, but we’re happy to report that any such doubts can be resolutely put to rest. Sea of Stars ticks all the boxes and executes its vision near-flawlessly, presenting players with a fun, engaging, and thoroughly excellent new entry in the JRPG genre.

Sea of Stars opens in an ancient library, where a mysterious archivist tells you a story that takes place in the same world as The Messenger, thousands of years before the events of that game. An evil god called The Fleshmancer created a few monstrous Dwellers before disappearing, and each of these creatures could turn into a World Eater and cause the apocalypse if allowed to grow to maturity. To oppose this, a powerful order of warrior mages called Solstice Warriors was formed to exterminate the Dwellers, which are vulnerable to magic during an eclipse.

Our dual primary protagonists, Zale and Valere, enter the story when there is only one Dweller left to destroy, though the Solstice Warriors themselves have dwindled to only three remaining members. Zale and Valere are thus recruited at a very young age to hone their respective affinities for sun and moon magic, culminating in a journey to track down and kill the final monster and put an end to The Fleshmancer’s wicked plans.

Much like in The Messenger, the plot of Sea of Stars encompasses much more than what it seems at first, and it’s a genuine delight to see how it unfurls and gradually widens its scope. Aside from a somewhat slow start, Sea of Stars features a thrillingly well-written narrative that manages to walk a very fine line between seriousness and levity. It overall feels darker and more intense than the general goofiness of Sabotage’s debut, yet there are plenty of welcome moments woven in where that wry writing style shows itself. Perhaps most importantly, Sea of Stars does a stellar job of building the relationship between the main party members, especially Zale and Valere. You’ll feel quite attached to this crew’s struggles across the 30 or so hours that it takes to see their story through and the emotional beats hit hard when they need to.

Sea of Stars follows the traditional JRPG template, wherein you explore an expansive world packed with secrets and dungeons, battle foes in turn-based combat, and build up a gradually expanding party where everyone fills a unique role in both combat and narrative. The influences of classic SNES JRPGs are obvious everywhere you look, yet Sea of Stars learns from these games and builds upon their ideas. For example, the world itself is impressively interactable for a retro RPG. If a ledge or roof looks like it could be climbed, it probably can; you’re not restricted to a strict grid-like movement area that boxes in your options.

Exploration feels almost exactly like what you might expect out of a modern entry in the Golden Sun series, with all dungeons and locales rife with new environmental puzzles and thoughtful design that takes things way beyond feeling like differently decorated corridors funneling you to the next plot point. Dungeons, in fact, feel quite traditionally Zelda-like in their layouts, with you usually obtaining some new gadget or magic power partway through that bestows a new traversal option and ‘unlocks’ the rest of the dungeon while giving you something new to use in the overworld to find more goodies and unlocks as you backtrack.

When you encounter enemies, battles take place right where you bump into them and follow standard turn-based rules. Every enemy will have a counter above their head that tells you how long you have before they attack again, and every now and then that counter will be accompanied by a small box with icons. These ‘Locks’ correspond to different kinds of elements and weapon types your characters fight with, and if you manage to hit an enemy with the right attacks before their counter hits zero, you’ll cancel their attack completely. Even if you don't hit all the locks in time, each one that you do manage will decrease the enemy’s power by a fixed percentage.

Borrowing from Super Mario RPG, both your offensive and defensive options can also be bolstered by timed inputs that either boost your damage or reduce how much you take from the enemy, and this does a lot to make battles more engaging. Needing to learn the new timings for fresh foes or attacks keeps you from getting too complacent, and adds a little more of a skill component to battles than simply building characters with the right stats and letting the numbers play out—you actually have to get better at fighting a boss if you keep losing.

Additionally, there’s a boost system here vaguely reminiscent of Octopath Traveler. Hitting enemies with standard attacks will not only generate some MP for you to use to unleash more powerful combos, but it’ll also send a flurry of magic orbs across the field, waiting to be used. If you want to juice up the damage of an attack or party buff, you can then have a character absorb the orbs up to three times per action to power up.

Battles are thus far more involved than simply selecting actions from a menu, and this dynamism makes every encounter feel meaningful. In a rare change from typical RPG design, even the low-level trash mobs you encounter while exploring hit hard and can comfortably knock out characters in two or three hits, even when you’re properly geared and leveled. This means that all the supplementary systems like attack boosting and input timing actually matter beyond just boss fights, which ensures that combat encounters never feel like mindless padding.

Full Accessibility Report

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In a rather forward-thinking move, characters are not leveled independently of each other. Instead, the whole party gains experience and levels up as one unit, with each character (even the ones that aren’t in active use) getting a commensurate stat bump when you level up. You still have some control over individual growth, as you can pick a stat for each character that you want extra points to go to when they level up, but we appreciated how this decision eliminates the ‘bench’ that most RPGs have. Every character in your party, even the ones that newly join, is battle-ready and equal to the others. And while you can only have three characters in play during a battle, any of them can tag out and be replaced by a party member on the sidelines without costing a turn. This encourages you to use the whole party all the time, rather than a select few that you build while ignoring the others.

Many great JRPGs have some game-length minigame that you can engage in, and Sea of Stars features this in the fun 'Wheels' game played with patrons in taverns you visit. Wheels is basically a dice-roller where the goal is to erase the opponent’s HP before they get you first. You begin each match by picking two characters, such as a mage and a knight, which will cast their action once they’re given enough energy, which is generated from your rolls. You get three rolls per turn, with each of the five wheels generating a symbol that corresponds to one of your characters or to a wall you can build to block damage.

The strategy of Wheels comes into play in how you can individually lock in wheels that you want to keep. If, say, you want your knight to attack this turn, it would be favorable to lock in any symbols you get that correspond to it. But, if your first roll generates several symbols for your mage instead, you have to consider if you’d rather lock in that unexpectedly favorable outcome, keep only some of the wheels, or toss it all and try again in the hopes that you get a similar roll for your knight. Winning a game of Wheels is thus equal parts skill and luck, as you’re ultimately hedging your bets and trying to preempt your opponent’s decisions.

Though it’s entirely optional, Wheels isn’t just some throwaway side mode—there’s an entirely separate progression system centered around it where you challenge gradually stronger opponents as you explore and receive new character types from your victories that expand your potential tactical options for future games. We loved the inclusion of Wheels in Sea of Stars, as it's separate from the rest of the gameplay loop without feeling needlessly distracting or obligatory, while offering a nice break from the action.

Sea of Stars is the kind of game that continuously finds ways to one-up itself, always pulling new tricks out of the bag just when you feel you might finally have seen all its ideas. Much like in The Messenger, there’s a moment about halfway through the game that recontextualizes everything that came before it and totally revitalizes the adventure by adding another layer to things. This is the furthest thing from a release that settles into complacent repetition, and it’s a genuine delight to see how tugging on some loose strings causes the whole game to open up in unexpected ways.

For its visuals, Sea of Stars employs a style that we would say exceeds Square Enix’s famed HD-2D system in keeping the spirit of classic pixel art alive while bolstering it with modern touches. The spritework is impressively detailed and features an insane amount of variety for the animation, giving all movement a staggering smoothness for a pixel art title. Environments are similarly rich with detail and each is visually distinct from the last, with the dungeons often proving to be the highlights of the whole experience. This is all tied together by a modern dynamic lighting system that gives Sea of Stars a surprisingly ‘real’ look in many places, substantially elevating the atmosphere of most environments.

As for the audio, Eric Brown—known by his stage name of Rainbowdragoneyes—returns after his stellar work on The Messenger’s soundtrack and we’re pleased to report that he hasn’t lost his edge. There's a different tone here and Sea of Stars' music is decidedly less catchy to match, but what it loses in energy it makes up for in setting effective atmosphere. Not only that, but the team at Sabotage managed to get Yasunori Mitsuda—the composer for Chrono Trigger—to write several tracks; his influence is abundantly evident in Brown’s work and their styles flow together flawlessly.

The only criticism that we can reasonably make about Sea of Stars is that it feels a bit awkwardly paced at times. It’s a thrilling ride from start to finish and is entirely worth seeing through, but there were a few times when you're forced to run errands that distract too much from the central story. There’s one moment where you arrive at a major plot point, only to be sent away by a character to do something to prove yourself to them. You go on that tangent and come back, and you're sent away again on another tangent to fetch an item for them from a dungeon. The combat and level design is excellent, so these tangents hardly feel like a bore, but we sometimes found ourselves wishing that there was a little more focus when it comes to story execution.

Sea of Stars is a sensational achievement for Sabotage. The studio is two for two in providing impressively designed and genuinely innovative takes on classic genres. Some pacing issues aside, the complex narrative, deep and strategic combat, thoughtful level design, and fantastic visuals and music all combine to make this one of the easiest recommendations we can make. If you consider yourself a fan of old-school RPGs, you must play Sea of Stars. And if not? The execution and polish here are so good that we’d suggest you give it a try anyway. There are few games that would be a better introduction and representation of what makes JRPGs great. Sea of Stars is an instant classic and a new high-water mark for modern retro-styled indies. You really shouldn’t miss out.

Excellent 9/10

Scoring PolicyReview copy provided by Sabotage