I agree with this. Sea of Stars is just your average 7/10 game.
The problem is that it got massively overhyped by reviewers who all gave it "10/10, perfect game, the next Chrono Trigger" and then it went on to win best indie of the year.
If people hadn't exaggerated how good it was and compared it to the all-time great jrpgs then Sea of Stars wouldn't get nearly as much hate as it does now. But since it got overhyped everyone feels the need to push back against that and point out all its shortcomings.
I think a lot of that hype comes from people who dont play many JRPGs so they compare it to a false idea of JRPGs in their heads; tons of grinding, etc even when that kind of stuff hasnt been the norm for over a decade
This idea lends well to my experience (from Facebook JRPG groups) that most of the people who were really blown away by it were like new parents who are worn out and have no free time, so are very choosy about what they delve into. And entrepreneur hustle culture bros who also have very little free time and are just looking to sate the rose colored glasses of their childhood. So exposure to all the great more recent games isn't clouding their enjoyment
Tons of grinding hasn’t even been a required thing in most JRPGs since the NES era lol… even by the time of the SNES most JRPGs were perfectly beatable just by not running from every encounter. It’s such a bizarre antique of a holdover that hasn’t even been true since before most of the people who think it were born.
There are exceptions obv, and grinding is optional and incentivized all the time, but I’m just talking strictly required.
To be fair, if you're unfamiliar with the genre, you might find that a lot of JRPGs require a lot of grinding, just as a result of your personally not being very good at them and needing to compensate for poor strategy.
Usually grinding isnt even enough to compensate for low skill and lack of strategy, no matter how much you grind your not breaking through matador until you do what the game wants you to and use the mechanics
Matador is a boss in smt3 that is basically impossible to beat if you’re not using buffs and debuffs. By that point in the game you should be using them but you could power through, grind, and get past previous random encounters and bosses without them. Matador is smt3 taking off the gloves and saying “no, you need to be playing proficiently or you’re not getting through”.
There are a lot of games where the characters/builds I want to use are just numerically inferior, and I make up for it with grinding. You can call it poor strategy, but if that is what it takes to make the cool abilities useful, I call it poor balance.
I feel like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Players hear others say JRPGs are grindy --> they play JRPGs and get stuck on a boss but instead of reconsidering their strategy and equipment, they just go grind levels and brute force the boss because everyone says grinding is just the genre --> Those players then continue to perpetuate the myth that JRPGs are all grindy.
Go to r/finalfantasy and you can see this misconception being pushed onto new players in real time.
The sub is borderline unreadable some days because at least half the comments in every single Pixel Remaster help thread are just [people telling OP to grind](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1crenn6/cecil_only_usable_party_member/).
My guy og final fantasy didnt really have strategy, you can defeat marilith/kari using fire. In the roughest spots it truly is a matter of grinding/hoping you arent insta-killed,
I'm with you.
Been playing jrpgs since the 90's and SoS is easily a 9/10 game for me.
I think a lot the people that don't like it or think it's just average are those who were just expecting something different from it, like lots of intricate min maxing elements for one example.
The problems I see most cited are that combat doesn't expand as you progress like it does in Chrono Trigger, and it's fairly the same thing through most, if not all of the game
And the writing for the main characters make them very passive and ineffectual in order for them to be better self-inserts for the player, and it gives Garl all the character development and agency, and keeps the main characters from growing much or having agency or personality of their own
All of this is accurate. The game is fun at first and then you realize its just going to be the exact same thing for the next 30ish hours.
The main characters might be the most bland and uninteresting MCs in any jrpg I've ever played. Not unlikable just...boring af with no personality.
I'd also add that the writing in general is pretty subpar and the story plays it pretty safe.
The combat doesn't expand by adding new abilities to existing characters, it expands by adding new characters throughout the game, along with more powerful consumables. But the parameters of combat never change, you're always trying to balance lock breaking versus damage dealing.
This gives the player a sense of achievement that's more like a platformer than a typical RPG. Early in the game, you don't really understand how combat works and your move set is limited. Late in the game, you've become so good at juggling party members, managing turn order, and timing consumable usage that you feel like you're in control of combats, and it's not just "Do I have the gear or levels to beat this fight?" like it is with most JRPGs.
There's still a lot of room for improvement with the combat, but I don't think people give it enough credit for what it does do well. And there are so few games that give that same feeling of mastery.
Honestly I was expecting either a half decent story or half decent characters, but anything related to the plot is outdone by anything from the SNES days, even A Link to the Past has better characters and story. It's a very pretty game and a very competent RPG, but it feels very shovelware like, like a AAA game with realistic graphics and no substance whatsoever.
Yup they wanted it to be modernized. Modernizing classic genres Isn’t always an improvement though. Sometimes putting modern conveniences into a classic style ruins what made it great.
Sea of stars is retro. It follows the rules of what the originals did without being derivative and having the magic of the originals. There should be appreciation for this as it’s a worthwhile achievement.
Jrpgs are a weird genre though, as there is so much disagreement over which games are good and plenty of agreement over things the classics should have done differently. It’s not surprising to me that a throwback would be so divisive.
Bingo.
This is why I'm so critical of it myself. I played this supposed 10/10 amazing retro throwback after the heaps of glowing praise and was met with the most middle-of-the-road forgettable rpg I played all year.
Yes, the fact that it got compared to Chrono Trigger was so fucking frustrating, the characters and story are the worst part of Sea of Stars. It's a cute game, very pretty and the music is nice, not fantastic. Also If you hate Garl, I think the game just drops down even more because the game literally sucks him off so hard.
I think it's telling that you assume everyone who lauded the game and granted it awards was exaggerating how good Sea of Stars is. It implies that everyone else was acting in bad faith. As opposed to a sincere difference of opinion, borne of a legitimate disagreement.
I didn't mean to imply it was bad faith, more that most games journalists have no fucking clue what they're talking about.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Yeah mid is a perfect way to describe it as it, while somewhat enjoyable for me, it wasn’t really memorable. A lot of how we are raised in our home country’s culture dictates how we approach things, like art. Allow me to elaborate for others
And no matter how much we try to emulate something, our true ethics and colors find a way to cross into the work we put out.
Basically, have you ever seen all those “how to draw anime” books? Or a majority of “fan art” we see of Japanese/asian media. Well all those things have this weird “fake anime” look….like, it’s hard to explain but you immediately can tell that it was not done authentically by someone from Asia lol.
Our style in the west for animation usually falls in the crudely drawn / exaggerated simplified category, all so that things are easier and quicker to produce. Look at our cartoons. All of them. It used to be different a long time ago, but now days the style is entirely different.
Sea of stars has that similarish vibe. I played dragon quest V for the first time on DS after playing sea of stars, and I remember almost everything that happened in DQ. It was a thrilling experience. The core loop was addicting too. And that shit is there decades old lol
Sea of stars feels like a homage to those games but doesn’t quite reach it because of the obvious regional differences that affect how we approach working. The Asian/japanese way of doing things, even game development can be seen all over. From the textures of 3d models all being super neat and organized and packed together efficiently.
While in the west the files are all bloated and messy without any structure (I mod games a lot so I see this often) even file sizes are vastly different due to how they efficiently pack things well, I just downloaded Elden ring which was around 30GB and then call of duty Cold War which was nearly 200GB 😭
I agree with this comment. Chrono Cross and Sea of Stars are the same genre, but Chrono Cross is just oozing a wistful, somber yet almost joyful tone, like a half-remembered dream about growing up and turning infinite possibilities into finite actions, for better or worse. You'll never see those days again, and it hurts, but thats not entirely bad. It's also a new day.
Japan is really really good at that tone in almost all media.
By contrast, Sea of Stars is trying really hard, maybe too hard to manfacture emotion, but still only manages to feel like an imitation made by people who aren't sure what emotions they're even supposed to be feeling.
Agreed so much, idk why but like the core vibe I love in JRPG’s I just find lost in games from the west that try recreating that feeling, even ones like Undertale. Like it feels as if the stats don’t matter and so much of the core mechanic is lost in general.
Like I know sea of stars won indie game of the year last year somehow, but I feel like there had to have been some weird bias involved.
Their prior game, the messenger, the ninja gaiden-like clone, that was good. Platformers are generally fine. Same with metroidvanias. But when it comes to rpg games it’s just not the same when made in the west, even if they are trying to emulate things
Do you feel many newer Japanese made RPGs are capturing this quality you're looking for? If so can you give some examples? I ask because I feel the world has changed so much in ways that make it very difficult to capture some of the vibes that many of older JRPGs had, but was curious what your personal take was.
To give an example of what I mean, I've seen newer games try to replicate Masato Kato's themes of coming together to look after each other and the planet, but that's a message that has a very different meaning and context for a Westerner today compared to in the 90s when the illusion that the peace they were currently experiencing would be long lasting still held. I recently replayed Chrono Trigger and it feels different now, in the 90s it felt like Chrono Trigger was giving me an IRL quest to live better by my community and environment, playing it in 2024 it feels like we failed that quest.
What the samhell are you talking about, boy? Growing up in the eighties and nineties was highly frought with doom and gloom and environmental/nuclear anhilation
80s sure, in 1980 the UK government mailed everyone a leaflet on how to survive and attack, you have films like 1983's *The Day After* and 1984's *Threads*.
But the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989 was an event that carried an enormous emotional weight for Europe, the cold war ended, in 1991 Gorbachev famously declade "the risk of a global nuclear war has practically disappeared" and people wanted to believe that. The specter of nuclear annhilation that was so evident in the 80s mostly faded through the 90s.
The horrors of the 90s were happening where the Anglosphere didn't have to see or think about them, and the Gulf War was a hegemonic war where the new world order was simply doing it's thing.
And I think in late 90s media you see a lot of that, this idea that we got through that whole mess and maybe we could actually make the world a better place and have lasting peace.
Funny thing is this seems to happen between generations as well. Even small generations. Like Valkyria Chronicles 4 was a swan song passion project from the Valkyria Chronicles team, and they failed to recapture their own magic. Tokyo RPG Factory was a separate team, a long time later, but from the home country, and even the home publisher, and they struggled to recapture that magic. And we have things on our side of the pond like Shredders Revenge trying to sate people's nostalgic appetite for 80s/90s era TMNT, and it was ***almost*** there, just .. not quite
I think a lot of fans fail to dissect why they loved what they loved, and what made those things great. So when they try to ape it, they're just going by feeling rather than true understanding. Because sometimes you get someone paying an homage to something bygone and they knock it out of the park. This is a dumb example, but one that jumps to mind is a game called Freedom Planet, it does 2D Sonic better than Sega and Sonic Team can do 2D Sonic. Same with the Sonic Mania guys. They understood what was enjoyable about the 2D Sonic games, and what made them work
Sabotage Studio had talent, love, and passion, but not understanding. At least that's the impression I'm getting from everything
Mind you I'm not comparing to 3D Sonic and I'm not saying they're better than the Genesis/Mega Drive game. I'm comparing to things like Sonic 4 and the 2D segments of Sonic Boom. But maybe I'm missing a good official 2D Sonic game. I thought Sonic Generations was just okay, one of their better attempts, but I'd still take Sonic Mania. Is there a good one I missed out on? Or if you actually enjoyed Sonic 4, that's fine, but I think you'd be the minority. But that's okay too
I think that cultural differences are going to have some impact on the flavor of a game, but I think it's a mistake to assume that the difference in style between Dragon Quest V and Sea of Stars is mostly cultural. Earthbound and Undertale were made in different cultures and different decades, but they feel very similar in flavor, because not only was the creator of Undertale heavily inspired by Earthbound, both games were made by genuinely skilled and creative writers exploring how the features of their medium could be used to toy with players' expectations and influence their emotions.
Dragon Quest isn't one of my personal favorite series, but it's one of the banner series of the JRPG genre because the games are consistently made by a skilled team putting in a lot of effort to polish their formula. If other creators fail to copy its flavor, it's not necessarily because they don't share the same cultural background, they may just not be that good.
Yeah, in addition I think the explanation about the non-Japanese way of doing things falls flat on it's face when their idea of "Japanese way" is they picked up playing English localised versions of the game.
Basically, some people get what makes these games tick, and some people don't (sadly sometimes including the original creators 20 years later). I've also seen plenty of Japanese-made games that do not get at all what made the JRPG classics good.
The classic example is FF6's Kefka Palazzo where Kitase had the character in his head, but never managed to fully bring it to life in the original domestic release of the game. When he say how Kefka was portrayed by Woolsey he felt it had done a better job bringing his character to life than the original release, so even in the FF6 re-translation and other appearances of the character the FF3US depiction is used.
While I agree that indies/fangames getting it right is rare, I think that's more a reflection of how little importance is place on game writing. It kinda blows my mind that you spend so much time any money making an RPG then don't even bother to pay a professional editor to make sure their script isn't full of typos, let alone address the fact they often that the script wasn't written by a writer either.
Good writing takes time, care and a little humility. Sea of Stars writing was the product of none of these things.
I think it's always worth keeping in mind for context that there were lots of JRPGs from the SNES/PS1 era which just weren't particularly good, and not many people have especially fond memories of. Lots of people talk about wanting to recapture the flavor of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger or Earthbound. Some people try to recapture the flavor of games like the Breath of Fire or Lufia series, which never had as wide an impact, but are still regarded by their fans as classics. But how often do you see people trying to capture the spirit of Inindo, or Robotrek, or (god forbid) The 7th Saga? All of those are games which tried to innovate with some original concepts and mechanics, but didn't really hit the mark they were aiming for. People tend to only remember the highlight games of the era, and forget that making a standout game isn't the default result of trying to capture a particular flavor.
>“fake anime” look….like, it’s hard to explain but you immediately can tell that it was not done authentically by someone from Asia lol.
I legitimately cannot understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that all artstyles need to follow the generic Japanese anime look? Why does the art have to be done "authentically by someone from Asia"? As an artist this makes zero sense at all.
My buddy and I love pretty much the same exact games., especially JRPGS.
He loved Seas Of Stars, I hated it.
Its that type of game. People are pretty split down the middle.
Funny thing that the studio built by Square to do exactly that, on their home turf, also released mostly 7/10 games lol I really wanted to like Tokyo RPG Factory, but I Am Setsuna didn't really do it for me, and that seemed like their best outing
To be honest, half the time I ask people "What the hell did you expect from a AA or indie studio?" when they throw the expectation of putting out the next big "Final Fantasy killer" on the JRPG fanbase's laps.
Too many people expect too much from low budget. You might be able to fix mediocre talent in AAA, but you really can't solve problems involving low budget in AA/Indie without... well, budget and resources.
The worst example is when some nostalgia-addicted angryman spouts "pixels just cost cheap, this should be easy mode for you guys to make a soulful game", when the integration of high-quality pixel art and vfx effects still has potential project-ending high costs due to it's extreme time-draining and specialized requirements (i.e. Pizza Tower took all that time just to fully animate TWO characters with vibrant life. Imagine trying to do nearly that for four).
That, or how additions of features more and more tremendously adds towards development time. Development time the Sea of Stars team probably didn't have considering most Indie teams barely even survive when their first payments arrive through the mail. Makes me pretty mad at how the Indie market has become as much of a punching bag as the AAA industry when all said rage does is make people want to go into gamedev less and less.
As others have mentioned it’s…fine.
Unfortunately overhyped for various reasons. Some self inflicted wounds as well.
Music is great. Visuals are amazing. Some level and dungeon designs are great.
Writing is…mediocre if I’m generous, pretty terrible if I’m not. Story is meh. Combat is too drawn out, and too simple. Characters have very few moves and very few options. Progression never feels good. Leveling up and gear are just not impactful.
I think it’s too long for me what they’ve designed. I grew tired of the combat like a quarter of the way in, and it never really grows or does anything.
I think the game reviewed too well for what it is, and I think in particular, on a JRPG sub, enthusiasts have played so many better games that it was easy to disappoint this crowd.
Same, I was locked in and totally hooked, but didn’t particularly care for the story. I ultimately fell off from the “stiffness” of the battle system and lack of moves. Once the full battle system was revealed I was totally stoked on it, but agree that it’s just a little drawn out for repetitive move sets
If it was the first turn based rpg I played as a child though, it would 1000% be my favorite. It brought me back to playing Super Mario RPG for the first time.
It’s got great spirit and you can tell the designers really put love into the game, which i appreciated. I do think it’s worth a few hours of play through
Really well said. I haven’t played it yet but this makes me feel a lot better about backlogging it, because I’m all about combat, tinkering characters and a good story as well.
Octopath 1 burned a LOT of people, of course the sequel was going to have less hype... especially when Square had since made a habit of re-releasing their old titles, so Octopath's 'throwback' excitement is also gone.
I still haven't played Octopath 2 because the first was such a boring game to me. Held my attention for 10 of the 100+ hours I put in... I firmly believe that most of the people who like the first Octopath never truly beat it (as in worked to get the real ending).
On the other hand, people who have played a lot of JRPGS like myself end up playing a lot of janky half baked games with questionable mechanics. Sea of Stars, on the other hand, is refreshingly well polished. Story is terrible but the other components make up for it imo.
I see what you're saying, but the battle mechanics, to me, were refreshing at first but then became repetitive too quickly. I still haven't picked it back up. I believe I had just >!beaten that dark monster thing in the mansion.!<
It's better than a Kemco or Idea Factory game is such a wild bar to set when it won game of the year lol Thankfully, though I've also played dozens of JRPGs over the years, I still try to stick with the cream of the crop because I haven't played all the greats just yet. There's still great games from PS1/2/3 and stuff I can go back to before I start craving a generic JRPG experience just to sate an appetite. And there's still quality JRPGs being released these days that I can't have played them all yet. It's a good problem to have. But unfortunately I can't make room for games like SoS to not hit me with compelling writing or battle mechanics
This review was identical to my experience. I enjoyed it overall, and it’s genuinely a breath of fresh air visually (it’s actually a 3D game made to look 2D, and that’s how the lighting looks so great!). But it was just too long and the writing was meh aside from a few points along the way. The characters were very boring, even though some of them stood out somewhat.
It's a game that seems fun at first, but it starts running out of intrigue the longer it goes. I never outright hated it, but I was disappointed in what amounted to a nothing ending...UNLESS you do side quests to get the true ending later.
Music is fun though.
This is how I felt. I was hooked till around 60-70% into the game. Then it felt like a chore. The game was fun but the combat is very straight forward and never changes. I think for a first game it was fine. If they make a sea of stars 2 hopefully they develop the combat more and make gear more impactful
The best word I can use to describe SoS is shallow. The music and visuals are great, but the story and characters are completely flat (legit only once in the whole game did I think the story did anything interesting) and while the combat is fun at first, it never evolves or changes. Each character only gets four or five skills maximum, and throughout my playthrough I consistently had less accessories (the only equipment type that's not just straight stat upgrades) than my party could equip so no real decision-making there either.
If I'm being honest, by the time I beat the clockwork castle I was so uninterested in the gameplay and story that I just looked up the ending and I feel like I didn't really miss out on anything by stopping there.
I played both in the same year to 100%, I ended up liking Sea of Stars a bit more. They both fed and were heavily inspired by games and nostalgia from the same era, and I'd easily recommend both, but sos feels more polished, and an experience I would recommend to more people.
I had more quality fun that year with SoS than octopath 2, but I do think nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting.
It has its issues, but I don't think it overstays it's welcome. I'm baffled by the whiplash to what I'd call overwhelmingly positive critical reception.
It's fine... I bounced off it after 15 or 20 hours. Only having three or four abilities in combat for the entire game just kills the battle system dead.
It was okay at first but the game expects you to care about these characters and its story without giving you any real reasons to, making it tedious and boring.
Dropped it after a couple hours because I had no reason to keep playing, the combat gimmick wasn’t enough.
The way you phrased that makes it sound like a game becomes good and bad, good and bad, as public opinion shifts, rather than always being exactly what it is.
In a meta way, that's kind of true. So many people rely on peer reviews, and so many people jump on bandwagons, good and bad, that in a sense that's exactly what happens.
I'd say the more jrpgs you have played, the less likely you are to like it.
Story and characters are below average, the introduction is boring. I don't like having to choose stats when you level up.
Graphics are good.
I didn't like the battle system either, it is very active, requires pressing buttons when you attack or defend with no room for error, and didn't feel rewarding to me.
I don’t think this is true.
I’ve played a ton of JRPGs, and absolutely loved SoS. It dragged towards the end, and I was satisfied with the standard ending and won’t pick it up again anytime soon, but I’d put it high on my JRPG list.
It’s divisive depending on what you value/look for in a game
The game is the most mid rpg ive ever played. It doesnt do anything at all well. Characters are boring. Combat is boring. The world is boring. Progression is boring. What is it youre valuing exactly?
I started playing it and mario rpg at the same time. I quit mario rpg, beat sos and got the older sequel. It's a great game and the story has a lot going for it if you care about games that has lore that spans more than one game.
Just very mid, everything is mediocre, combat, music, gameplay, writing, artistic direction. The worst parts imho are music and writing, they're absolutely horrendeous and scream amateurism. Only worth it if you can get it for $5. Keep in mind that I went in with 0 expectations and was still let down.
It's very okay
The visuals and music are stunning
Everything else is like watching a comedy that's just references to better stuff but without an understanding of why those things worked.
It's a bit shallow in some areas and didn't hold my attention.
Presentation and charm could go a long way for more people, my time with it wasn't bad per se.
I think it's excellent in certain aspects, mainly music, art style and exploration, bad in others, mainly the story and writing and it also has a couple of aspects that some people like and others really dislike, like the gameplay.
Overall I loved the experience, but I didn't like the story at all. Imo how much you will like it depends on whether you like the gameplay, and how much you care about plot and writing in your games
Just an average game.
I've played though it and I cant say I did not have fun, but I cant deny it fails as an RPG in may aspects either.
The story is underrated imo. Is not a, quote on quote, "masterpiece", but I think sabotage did a decent job of tying everything up, considering it's a prequel to the The Messenger. Also >!Garl's death!< actually managed to surprise me somewhat. Not because its an insane plot twist (honestly it's easy to see it coming), but because the overall tone of the game made me think Sabotage wouldn't have the balls to do it.
What gets me it's the actual gameplay. The combat is fun but it gets repetitive really quickly and it also lacks various RPG elements such as buffs/debuffs, status effects, etc.
But the biggest sin of SoS for me is the absolute lack of side-quests. There's only one side quest revolving around each party member respectivelly and that's it. Sabotage really built such a massive world, but with barely any way of interacting with it. All of the places in SoS are so beautiful aesthetically, yet they feel like a lifeless Void because there's pretty much only chests there and not a single NPC gives anything more than fluff dialogue.
Kinda sad, because just based on the map and world building alone, this game could've been one of the best RPGs ever made, but it turned out so painfully average.
I hope you can enjoy it. I’ve tried giving the game many chances and it’s just a very mediocre jrpg. It’s pretty to look at but that’s about it. The characters are plain and boring and the combat, while fun at first gets very repetitive to the point I can’t bother to keep playing.
Hey you, Flanos!
Thanks man, keep it up, I really appreciated the input.
Now I'm gonna clear my storage space to get better games than this dodged bullet of a game.
It looks and sounds great. The battle mechanics are just massively slow and cumbersome, and leveling feels useless. Bosses do nothing but make you burn healing items as you spend 2/3 the time knocking out their shields. It’s the only mechanic the game has and it feels like a slog.
Some people really like it.
Me, on the other hand? [I keep a link ready for my take on the game shortly after dropping it](https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/16mal7y/sea_of_stars_vs_octopath_2/k1he9b3/). IMO the only thing Sea of Stars really has going for it is graphics.
I've had a hard time talking myself into playing it tbh. I don't like level caps, and I like to grind. If people don't like grinding thats fine but don't kill my hopes, I just don't understand why it can't be an option to grind if you want. Chained echoes I have similar issues with. So two games I was really looking forward to killed themselves for me, except I was actually decently far into chained echoes.
The artwork is amazing, I’d say it’s the best feature of the game. Apart from it, everything else is horribly bad, imho.
The story and characters are terribly childish, to the point that reading dialogs makes you upset.
The combat system is repetitive and doesn’t give you enough freedom.
Given that this is an RPG, it fails in most of the things that would make a game of this kind great.
This game, unfortunately, is one of the worst RPGs I have recently played.
PS: And Garl the worst character of all the RPGs I have ever played.
Dropped it. Bad story, bad characters, shallow combat.
Looks great and music was decent. Regret not trying it on game pass before dropping full price on it
I loved it.
Music and art style is terrific. Personally, I didn't find much issue with the story or the writing. It isn't the most complicated in terms of story, but for me it wasn't an issue.
In terms of the combat, it is very simple. The game also does not have much challenge depending on the relics you have activated. I found the bosses to be quite cool, though certainly not as difficult as some other JRPGs (read that as not difficult at all).
I played Chained Echoes not long before SoS, and SoS felt very watered down in comparison, but I felt that as soon as I stopped comparing it to other games in the genre (despite their obvious common ancestors such as Chrono Trigger) I found the game to be really good.
I didn't do much reading on SoS online before picking the game up. My decision to start it was mostly because the game looked cool. Only after I finished the main story did I go online, read a couple of reviews and found out that it was so polarizing. So I went in with a very naive overview of the game, and found that I mostly enjoyed it unadulterated by the opinions of others.
4/10. Graphics are great and some of the maps are cool. Pretty terrible otherwise. Combat is boring and takes way too long, equipment and leveling up feels pointless, story isn’t interesting at all, the characters are lame, and so on.
I managed to make it about 15 hours in before I just had to stop and ask myself what the hell I was doing. Towards the end, I wasn’t having fun in the slightest and I really had no desire to play another second… so I didn’t.
As others have pointed out it’s the case of a “meh” game sold to us under the hype that it was a masterwork.
Battle system is great and fun but the characters get a pittance of abilities and you will always end up falling back on literally the first ability the characters earn.
Music is excellent except where it’s not.
The story is a quite good prequel to the messenger. It would be a great story for a game of that scope. In a jrpg game it’s more middling and a lot of the twists are as obvious as the death of a redshirt a week before retirement with a pregnant dog. One thing I personally dislike about the story is that it too melodramatic for the sake of melodrama, and antagonists who have an opportunity to be complex and conflicted end up being moustache twirling hamjobs
It's just okay. Great visuals, great music, and pretty good combat foundations. But the writing and characters are kinda eh (the main two characters are essentially interchangeable and their friend feels like the real main character and feels a bit like a mary sue IMO) and though the combat foundation is good, it's ultimately a bit shallow as each character only gets 3 skills and one ultimate. There are dual techs, but IMO they charge up too slowly to be used much outside boss fights.
I wanted to love this game. I even backed it on Kickstarter, so for it to fall so flat for me has been very disappointing. It's a beautiful game and that might be the best thing it has going for it. I wasn't much of a fan of the actual gameplay. Battles, even against normal enemies, felt like they took forever. I know turn based rpg's aren't exactly fast but this made it even more of a slog. I go back to it every once in a while to see if it'll be different this time around but I'm still left with the same thoughts. A friend of mine feels similarly.
I couldn’t get into it. It might have been because it was overhyped by my friends (Chrono Trigger and SMRPG are two of my all time favourites, so everyone told me I would love this game) but the start was so boring that I stopped after a couple of hours. I may revisit it one day and try again, but it’s not a priority by any means.
As an elder millennial I don't understand the praise it got on so many accounts. The pixel art is beyond beautiful, I agree with that, but even the music that many seem to praise here simply isn't that great. I forgot most tracks, while I can still hum many tunes from Lufia 2 or Terranigma. The battles are so dry, so boring and exhausting to get through. The story was simply so bad, I think I did quit around half the game in. I felt the game didn't respect my time. In my opinion, it's definitely one of the worst JRPGs of the last decade.
For example, the battle theme **Battle On!** starts out well enough, but it lacks depth and creativity and already starts cycling during the first 40 seconds or so. I can grab themes from the NES era that have more spark than this.
Played Sea of Stars for about two hours and COULD NOT force feed any more to myself.
COULD NOT PUT CHAINED ECHOES DOWN until I beat it and got a dozen hours or so into new game+.
Chained Echoes, despite its flaws, maybe because of its flaws, is everything Sea of Stars should have been.
I played it when it released on PlayStation Plus. I really liked it! Found the sprite animations were good and loved the Super Mario RPG timed-attacks. The story is fine, nothing really to write home about. OST is awesome.
Overall I'd say it's like a solid 7
EDIT: Don't remember if there was a difficulty mode but whatever I played on was VERY easy. Don't know if I saw the Game Over screen once.
I completely hated it.
The visuals and music are top notch though! The writing and story however is extremely boring and predictable with no depth whatsoever.
Most puzzles have a sign or npc close by that gives you "hints" that outright explain what to do.
It would probably work extremely well as a first rpg game for young kids.
>It would probably work extremely well as a first rpg game for young kids.
Well that sounds disappointing, like who has asked for this? :/
Especially because the game looks like a new 2D Final Fantasy or something of that scope
It's a very enjoyable game. A big chunk of the Internet wanted it to be the next coming of Chrono Trigger, but I think it's more of a spiritual successor to Mario RPGs in that it's more of a hybrid of an adventure game and an RPG than a traditional JRPG. I think one of the more underappreciated aspects is its level design. There are a lot of fun little puzzles out in the world, and the dungeons are like lite Zelda dungeons.
To each their own, but I personally liked the combat a lot. It’s one of my favorite systems. Especially when I turned on Tactician’s mettle. It’s true that your tools and moves don’t change much, but they make up for it with a wide variety of encounters. Between timed hits and whether or not to break locks, each fight is a little different. Also, I like how there is no pure white mage or black mage- everybody has a mix between damage moves and support/utility moves, and there’s no fluff moves like in so many other RPGs where you won’t use half the moves more than once.
Edit; it’s also really unique that you can choose exactly when your characters act
Because the marketing of the game is banking on nostalgia, but end up having superficial resemblance of the classics. It is a good JRPG on its own, although if it fell short on multiple fronts.
A lot of very critical opinions here, let me share my take from a guy who grew up playing turn based snes jrpgs in the 90's as a kid.
I enjoyed SoS and found myself very pleasantly surprised the more I played. It was a lot of fun, not crazy deep or mind blowing but yo honestly it's a great nod to an old era of gaming.
The art and music really stood out to me.
Very reminiscent of snes era RPGs especially Chrono trigger and I do hope they continue to make games like this.
I think a lot of people went into it expecting something that they didn't get. I'd probably compare it to something like FF13. Some people like it, some people don't like it. But a lot of people who dislike it, dislike it because they were expecting something else.
Which is fine, but it's weird because there's this massive collection of people who can't seem to accept that different people might have different tastes, and have to scream from every mountaintop that they didn't like it and that it was overhyped and all of that. Personally, I loved the game, enjoyed it from start to finish.
Polarizing is a great word for it. Try the demo if you have a console, the full game is pretty much just more of that. The full version adds to it, layers on new combat and movement mechanics and all of that, but if you don't like the demo you probably aren't going to like the full version.
It's a good game, but it's not reinventing any wheels or rewriting the rulebook for character archetypes. It's "classic" in every sense of the word: the combat feels old-school, the characters feel pretty reminiscent of common archetypes, the story (though it has promise) largely stays in safe RPG territory. It's a good game that got way overhyped. I personally love it *for* its simplicity, but that simplicity is entirely why so many were disappointed with it.
People can share their opinion but at the end of the day, the best way is still playing it for yourself. Especially if a game is a very polarising one.
It’s like a 6.5-7. Beautiful art style, right gameplay. Horribly boring protagonists and predictable story. I gave it about 4-5 hours before I got bored. If you have any 90s JRPGs you haven’t played, just play those lol
It’s funny how much opinion changes once the newness and hype wears down. It was slightly above average to mid when it came out, and slightly above average to mid now that the dust has settled.
The soundtrack is awesome, especially the boss theme, but the game's story was a mess. Combat was alright, but I agree with others it got repetitive.
Other thing that bugged me was having the completionist in the game, and prominently so. They got rid of him, but only because of his fraud debacle.
It's got neat gameplay but personally I felt bored overall. Some games just jive better for some than others and this was just kind of an average game imo
This sub is the only place I've ever seen calling sea of stars either trash or mid. Every reviewer liked it, was a commercial and critical success and won indie game of the year. I also personally really liked it, solid 8.5/10. Only negative I can think about the game is annoying characters like Garl and that pirate woman
I mean it hasn’t changed since it launched. It’s always just been kind of milquetoast imo. Absolutely beautiful art direction, graphics, and music. Very mediocre gameplay and writing.
Still shit, not even polarizing. People appreciate what it was trying to do. It laid great groundwork, and then fumbled all of it. Battle mechanics didn't grow, story fell apart, world building melted into nonsense, etc.
You know what? I loved it. It has its flaws, and it certainly could have used some copy editing before release, but I rarely found myself taken out of the game because of such things.
It's not perfect, but it's fun. I've been playing RPGs since the late 1980s, and I enjoyed it just as much as I've enjoyed some of the classics. I'll eventually replay it, too. In fact, because I played it for free on PS+, I wanted to show my love by buying a physical edition of the game, which just came in the mail last week.
I can give a perspective of someone who hasn’t played many pixel based jrpgs and say I really enjoyed the game. The art was breathtaking and the combat was fun and interactive.
Best couch co-op JRPG I have ever played. Barely average standalone JRPG. If you have a wife or girlfriend it is a must play. If you're gonna go it alone then it's probably missable
Hey thanks for the info, I did a search and see that it's "in the works" - I don't have an XBox but hopefully since it's a Unity game, this feature will be coming to different platforms!
[https://www.eurogamer.net/sea-of-stars-has-multiplayer-co-op-on-the-way](https://www.eurogamer.net/sea-of-stars-has-multiplayer-co-op-on-the-way)
I went in expecting a turn based RPG with a cute art style. I found the characters to be intriguing and accessible for all ages. There’s even some pretty heavy themes in there considering all the characters have some sense of elongated lives, immortality, or resurrection. There’s a decent amount of exploration and secrets as well. I ended up loving it and played it twice back to back for the platinum. Maybe that’s not for everybody, but it was exactly what I wanted.
I think it's very very mid, which would be fine if it reviewed that way but for some reason it's praised as chrono trigger 2.0 when it's not even in the same playing field
Did you play the Messenger? I did and absolutely adored it. Amazing throwback game and I loved sea of stars as it acts as a prequel for that game. If you didn't play the Messenger and don't get the references then it might not be for you.
It's great! I enjoyed the story - you just gotta recognize the star is Garl the cook, not the two Solstice Warriors. Garl knows he doesn't have superpowers like his besties do, but that doesn't mean he can't make choices that matter. He cooks dinners for his friend's and does what he can to help those in need a put a smile on their face. Sea of Stars is a tribute to the normal folks, not the superheroes, and this is a genre that could use more of that.
The combat I think is really well done. To the folks who say it's too easy I ask: *compared to what?* I don't hear anyone complaining about how easy Chrono Trigger, FF7, Secret of Mana, etc. are. Maybe they're playing with the Amulet of Storytelling without realizing, in which case they should turn that off, but the battles certainly kept me engaged. Sure the characters don't have a ton of skills - but the ones they do have each have their uses. Super Mario RPG doesn't have a ton of skills either, and they make it work.
Anyhow, what makes Sea of Stars combat interesting is how you have to manage your SP strategically for each character so you can get the right attack type combos off in order to interrupt enemy attacks. You can't just open every single combat with a Moonerang - you'd run out of juice. A well-timed Disorient can make ALL the difference to buy you enough time to stop a boss from casting its ult. The fact that the damage types needed to interrupt attacks are randomized means that every encounter feels unique.
>The combat I think is really well done. To the folks who say it's too easy I ask: *compared to what?* I don't hear anyone complaining about how easy Chrono Trigger, FF7, Secret of Mana, etc. are. Maybe they're playing with the Amulet of Storytelling without realizing, in which case they should turn that off, but the battles certainly kept me engaged. Sure the characters don't have a ton of skills - but the ones they do have each have their uses. Super Mario RPG doesn't have a ton of skills either, and they make it work.
Like dislike a game I'm fine w/ it, but Ppl aren't being consistent w/ what they like.
Neither to be honest. It's fine, but doesn't do enough to be great, nor does it do enough to be outright terrible.
I agree with this. Sea of Stars is just your average 7/10 game. The problem is that it got massively overhyped by reviewers who all gave it "10/10, perfect game, the next Chrono Trigger" and then it went on to win best indie of the year. If people hadn't exaggerated how good it was and compared it to the all-time great jrpgs then Sea of Stars wouldn't get nearly as much hate as it does now. But since it got overhyped everyone feels the need to push back against that and point out all its shortcomings.
I think a lot of that hype comes from people who dont play many JRPGs so they compare it to a false idea of JRPGs in their heads; tons of grinding, etc even when that kind of stuff hasnt been the norm for over a decade
This idea lends well to my experience (from Facebook JRPG groups) that most of the people who were really blown away by it were like new parents who are worn out and have no free time, so are very choosy about what they delve into. And entrepreneur hustle culture bros who also have very little free time and are just looking to sate the rose colored glasses of their childhood. So exposure to all the great more recent games isn't clouding their enjoyment
Tons of grinding hasn’t even been a required thing in most JRPGs since the NES era lol… even by the time of the SNES most JRPGs were perfectly beatable just by not running from every encounter. It’s such a bizarre antique of a holdover that hasn’t even been true since before most of the people who think it were born. There are exceptions obv, and grinding is optional and incentivized all the time, but I’m just talking strictly required.
To be fair, if you're unfamiliar with the genre, you might find that a lot of JRPGs require a lot of grinding, just as a result of your personally not being very good at them and needing to compensate for poor strategy.
Usually grinding isnt even enough to compensate for low skill and lack of strategy, no matter how much you grind your not breaking through matador until you do what the game wants you to and use the mechanics
>matador ???
Matador is a boss in smt3 that is basically impossible to beat if you’re not using buffs and debuffs. By that point in the game you should be using them but you could power through, grind, and get past previous random encounters and bosses without them. Matador is smt3 taking off the gloves and saying “no, you need to be playing proficiently or you’re not getting through”.
I wish 90% of Bosses were like that in JRPGs.
Its a skill check boss fight in SMT Nocturne
Sort of like minotaur in SMT 4
There are a lot of games where the characters/builds I want to use are just numerically inferior, and I make up for it with grinding. You can call it poor strategy, but if that is what it takes to make the cool abilities useful, I call it poor balance.
I feel like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Players hear others say JRPGs are grindy --> they play JRPGs and get stuck on a boss but instead of reconsidering their strategy and equipment, they just go grind levels and brute force the boss because everyone says grinding is just the genre --> Those players then continue to perpetuate the myth that JRPGs are all grindy.
Wait till these people play Arc Rise Fantasia...
Go to r/finalfantasy and you can see this misconception being pushed onto new players in real time. The sub is borderline unreadable some days because at least half the comments in every single Pixel Remaster help thread are just [people telling OP to grind](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1crenn6/cecil_only_usable_party_member/).
My guy og final fantasy didnt really have strategy, you can defeat marilith/kari using fire. In the roughest spots it truly is a matter of grinding/hoping you arent insta-killed,
Eh, I've been playing JRPGs since the 90s and it was my second favorite game that came out last year.
I'm with you. Been playing jrpgs since the 90's and SoS is easily a 9/10 game for me. I think a lot the people that don't like it or think it's just average are those who were just expecting something different from it, like lots of intricate min maxing elements for one example.
The problems I see most cited are that combat doesn't expand as you progress like it does in Chrono Trigger, and it's fairly the same thing through most, if not all of the game And the writing for the main characters make them very passive and ineffectual in order for them to be better self-inserts for the player, and it gives Garl all the character development and agency, and keeps the main characters from growing much or having agency or personality of their own
All of this is accurate. The game is fun at first and then you realize its just going to be the exact same thing for the next 30ish hours. The main characters might be the most bland and uninteresting MCs in any jrpg I've ever played. Not unlikable just...boring af with no personality. I'd also add that the writing in general is pretty subpar and the story plays it pretty safe.
The combat doesn't expand by adding new abilities to existing characters, it expands by adding new characters throughout the game, along with more powerful consumables. But the parameters of combat never change, you're always trying to balance lock breaking versus damage dealing. This gives the player a sense of achievement that's more like a platformer than a typical RPG. Early in the game, you don't really understand how combat works and your move set is limited. Late in the game, you've become so good at juggling party members, managing turn order, and timing consumable usage that you feel like you're in control of combats, and it's not just "Do I have the gear or levels to beat this fight?" like it is with most JRPGs. There's still a lot of room for improvement with the combat, but I don't think people give it enough credit for what it does do well. And there are so few games that give that same feeling of mastery.
Bingo.
Honestly I was expecting either a half decent story or half decent characters, but anything related to the plot is outdone by anything from the SNES days, even A Link to the Past has better characters and story. It's a very pretty game and a very competent RPG, but it feels very shovelware like, like a AAA game with realistic graphics and no substance whatsoever.
Yup they wanted it to be modernized. Modernizing classic genres Isn’t always an improvement though. Sometimes putting modern conveniences into a classic style ruins what made it great. Sea of stars is retro. It follows the rules of what the originals did without being derivative and having the magic of the originals. There should be appreciation for this as it’s a worthwhile achievement. Jrpgs are a weird genre though, as there is so much disagreement over which games are good and plenty of agreement over things the classics should have done differently. It’s not surprising to me that a throwback would be so divisive.
Mabe more that using the light boomerang from fight one into endgame though, more skills would certainly have been pretty good
Bingo. This is why I'm so critical of it myself. I played this supposed 10/10 amazing retro throwback after the heaps of glowing praise and was met with the most middle-of-the-road forgettable rpg I played all year.
Yes, the fact that it got compared to Chrono Trigger was so fucking frustrating, the characters and story are the worst part of Sea of Stars. It's a cute game, very pretty and the music is nice, not fantastic. Also If you hate Garl, I think the game just drops down even more because the game literally sucks him off so hard.
I think it's telling that you assume everyone who lauded the game and granted it awards was exaggerating how good Sea of Stars is. It implies that everyone else was acting in bad faith. As opposed to a sincere difference of opinion, borne of a legitimate disagreement.
I didn't mean to imply it was bad faith, more that most games journalists have no fucking clue what they're talking about. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Yeah mid is a perfect way to describe it as it, while somewhat enjoyable for me, it wasn’t really memorable. A lot of how we are raised in our home country’s culture dictates how we approach things, like art. Allow me to elaborate for others And no matter how much we try to emulate something, our true ethics and colors find a way to cross into the work we put out. Basically, have you ever seen all those “how to draw anime” books? Or a majority of “fan art” we see of Japanese/asian media. Well all those things have this weird “fake anime” look….like, it’s hard to explain but you immediately can tell that it was not done authentically by someone from Asia lol. Our style in the west for animation usually falls in the crudely drawn / exaggerated simplified category, all so that things are easier and quicker to produce. Look at our cartoons. All of them. It used to be different a long time ago, but now days the style is entirely different. Sea of stars has that similarish vibe. I played dragon quest V for the first time on DS after playing sea of stars, and I remember almost everything that happened in DQ. It was a thrilling experience. The core loop was addicting too. And that shit is there decades old lol Sea of stars feels like a homage to those games but doesn’t quite reach it because of the obvious regional differences that affect how we approach working. The Asian/japanese way of doing things, even game development can be seen all over. From the textures of 3d models all being super neat and organized and packed together efficiently. While in the west the files are all bloated and messy without any structure (I mod games a lot so I see this often) even file sizes are vastly different due to how they efficiently pack things well, I just downloaded Elden ring which was around 30GB and then call of duty Cold War which was nearly 200GB 😭
I agree with this comment. Chrono Cross and Sea of Stars are the same genre, but Chrono Cross is just oozing a wistful, somber yet almost joyful tone, like a half-remembered dream about growing up and turning infinite possibilities into finite actions, for better or worse. You'll never see those days again, and it hurts, but thats not entirely bad. It's also a new day. Japan is really really good at that tone in almost all media. By contrast, Sea of Stars is trying really hard, maybe too hard to manfacture emotion, but still only manages to feel like an imitation made by people who aren't sure what emotions they're even supposed to be feeling.
They even got a term for it: [Mono no Aware](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware)
Oh wow.
Agreed so much, idk why but like the core vibe I love in JRPG’s I just find lost in games from the west that try recreating that feeling, even ones like Undertale. Like it feels as if the stats don’t matter and so much of the core mechanic is lost in general. Like I know sea of stars won indie game of the year last year somehow, but I feel like there had to have been some weird bias involved. Their prior game, the messenger, the ninja gaiden-like clone, that was good. Platformers are generally fine. Same with metroidvanias. But when it comes to rpg games it’s just not the same when made in the west, even if they are trying to emulate things
Do you feel many newer Japanese made RPGs are capturing this quality you're looking for? If so can you give some examples? I ask because I feel the world has changed so much in ways that make it very difficult to capture some of the vibes that many of older JRPGs had, but was curious what your personal take was. To give an example of what I mean, I've seen newer games try to replicate Masato Kato's themes of coming together to look after each other and the planet, but that's a message that has a very different meaning and context for a Westerner today compared to in the 90s when the illusion that the peace they were currently experiencing would be long lasting still held. I recently replayed Chrono Trigger and it feels different now, in the 90s it felt like Chrono Trigger was giving me an IRL quest to live better by my community and environment, playing it in 2024 it feels like we failed that quest.
What the samhell are you talking about, boy? Growing up in the eighties and nineties was highly frought with doom and gloom and environmental/nuclear anhilation
80s sure, in 1980 the UK government mailed everyone a leaflet on how to survive and attack, you have films like 1983's *The Day After* and 1984's *Threads*. But the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989 was an event that carried an enormous emotional weight for Europe, the cold war ended, in 1991 Gorbachev famously declade "the risk of a global nuclear war has practically disappeared" and people wanted to believe that. The specter of nuclear annhilation that was so evident in the 80s mostly faded through the 90s. The horrors of the 90s were happening where the Anglosphere didn't have to see or think about them, and the Gulf War was a hegemonic war where the new world order was simply doing it's thing. And I think in late 90s media you see a lot of that, this idea that we got through that whole mess and maybe we could actually make the world a better place and have lasting peace.
My town didnt , we had nuclear drills and the like even in to mid late 90’s
Funny thing is this seems to happen between generations as well. Even small generations. Like Valkyria Chronicles 4 was a swan song passion project from the Valkyria Chronicles team, and they failed to recapture their own magic. Tokyo RPG Factory was a separate team, a long time later, but from the home country, and even the home publisher, and they struggled to recapture that magic. And we have things on our side of the pond like Shredders Revenge trying to sate people's nostalgic appetite for 80s/90s era TMNT, and it was ***almost*** there, just .. not quite I think a lot of fans fail to dissect why they loved what they loved, and what made those things great. So when they try to ape it, they're just going by feeling rather than true understanding. Because sometimes you get someone paying an homage to something bygone and they knock it out of the park. This is a dumb example, but one that jumps to mind is a game called Freedom Planet, it does 2D Sonic better than Sega and Sonic Team can do 2D Sonic. Same with the Sonic Mania guys. They understood what was enjoyable about the 2D Sonic games, and what made them work Sabotage Studio had talent, love, and passion, but not understanding. At least that's the impression I'm getting from everything
I don't think those game does any 2d sonic games better than Sega or sonic team.
Mind you I'm not comparing to 3D Sonic and I'm not saying they're better than the Genesis/Mega Drive game. I'm comparing to things like Sonic 4 and the 2D segments of Sonic Boom. But maybe I'm missing a good official 2D Sonic game. I thought Sonic Generations was just okay, one of their better attempts, but I'd still take Sonic Mania. Is there a good one I missed out on? Or if you actually enjoyed Sonic 4, that's fine, but I think you'd be the minority. But that's okay too
I think that cultural differences are going to have some impact on the flavor of a game, but I think it's a mistake to assume that the difference in style between Dragon Quest V and Sea of Stars is mostly cultural. Earthbound and Undertale were made in different cultures and different decades, but they feel very similar in flavor, because not only was the creator of Undertale heavily inspired by Earthbound, both games were made by genuinely skilled and creative writers exploring how the features of their medium could be used to toy with players' expectations and influence their emotions. Dragon Quest isn't one of my personal favorite series, but it's one of the banner series of the JRPG genre because the games are consistently made by a skilled team putting in a lot of effort to polish their formula. If other creators fail to copy its flavor, it's not necessarily because they don't share the same cultural background, they may just not be that good.
Yeah, in addition I think the explanation about the non-Japanese way of doing things falls flat on it's face when their idea of "Japanese way" is they picked up playing English localised versions of the game. Basically, some people get what makes these games tick, and some people don't (sadly sometimes including the original creators 20 years later). I've also seen plenty of Japanese-made games that do not get at all what made the JRPG classics good. The classic example is FF6's Kefka Palazzo where Kitase had the character in his head, but never managed to fully bring it to life in the original domestic release of the game. When he say how Kefka was portrayed by Woolsey he felt it had done a better job bringing his character to life than the original release, so even in the FF6 re-translation and other appearances of the character the FF3US depiction is used. While I agree that indies/fangames getting it right is rare, I think that's more a reflection of how little importance is place on game writing. It kinda blows my mind that you spend so much time any money making an RPG then don't even bother to pay a professional editor to make sure their script isn't full of typos, let alone address the fact they often that the script wasn't written by a writer either. Good writing takes time, care and a little humility. Sea of Stars writing was the product of none of these things.
I think it's always worth keeping in mind for context that there were lots of JRPGs from the SNES/PS1 era which just weren't particularly good, and not many people have especially fond memories of. Lots of people talk about wanting to recapture the flavor of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger or Earthbound. Some people try to recapture the flavor of games like the Breath of Fire or Lufia series, which never had as wide an impact, but are still regarded by their fans as classics. But how often do you see people trying to capture the spirit of Inindo, or Robotrek, or (god forbid) The 7th Saga? All of those are games which tried to innovate with some original concepts and mechanics, but didn't really hit the mark they were aiming for. People tend to only remember the highlight games of the era, and forget that making a standout game isn't the default result of trying to capture a particular flavor.
>“fake anime” look….like, it’s hard to explain but you immediately can tell that it was not done authentically by someone from Asia lol. I legitimately cannot understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that all artstyles need to follow the generic Japanese anime look? Why does the art have to be done "authentically by someone from Asia"? As an artist this makes zero sense at all.
Tumbler art and deviant art while aping anime aesthetics look cheap af
This nails it. The shrug emoji is probably the best way to describe it.
That's how I felt about the Messenger. A solid 7.
Interesting. Both games seem to be linked together in some kind of way.
Really not much to add to this statement. Game is textbook “just fine” while I will add that the visuals are really great. Everything else is mid.
Exactly, it is one of the most mediocre games even created.
My buddy and I love pretty much the same exact games., especially JRPGS. He loved Seas Of Stars, I hated it. Its that type of game. People are pretty split down the middle.
I appreciate all the efforts to make 90s/Square Enix style JRPG but I feel as if they’re all hitting that 7 out of 10 range.
Funny thing that the studio built by Square to do exactly that, on their home turf, also released mostly 7/10 games lol I really wanted to like Tokyo RPG Factory, but I Am Setsuna didn't really do it for me, and that seemed like their best outing
I am setsuna was half baked, it really needed more time to cook
To be honest, half the time I ask people "What the hell did you expect from a AA or indie studio?" when they throw the expectation of putting out the next big "Final Fantasy killer" on the JRPG fanbase's laps.
That’s a bit excessive.
Too many people expect too much from low budget. You might be able to fix mediocre talent in AAA, but you really can't solve problems involving low budget in AA/Indie without... well, budget and resources. The worst example is when some nostalgia-addicted angryman spouts "pixels just cost cheap, this should be easy mode for you guys to make a soulful game", when the integration of high-quality pixel art and vfx effects still has potential project-ending high costs due to it's extreme time-draining and specialized requirements (i.e. Pizza Tower took all that time just to fully animate TWO characters with vibrant life. Imagine trying to do nearly that for four). That, or how additions of features more and more tremendously adds towards development time. Development time the Sea of Stars team probably didn't have considering most Indie teams barely even survive when their first payments arrive through the mail. Makes me pretty mad at how the Indie market has become as much of a punching bag as the AAA industry when all said rage does is make people want to go into gamedev less and less.
As others have mentioned it’s…fine. Unfortunately overhyped for various reasons. Some self inflicted wounds as well. Music is great. Visuals are amazing. Some level and dungeon designs are great. Writing is…mediocre if I’m generous, pretty terrible if I’m not. Story is meh. Combat is too drawn out, and too simple. Characters have very few moves and very few options. Progression never feels good. Leveling up and gear are just not impactful. I think it’s too long for me what they’ve designed. I grew tired of the combat like a quarter of the way in, and it never really grows or does anything. I think the game reviewed too well for what it is, and I think in particular, on a JRPG sub, enthusiasts have played so many better games that it was easy to disappoint this crowd.
The lack of gear and special skills was really disappointing.
Same, I was locked in and totally hooked, but didn’t particularly care for the story. I ultimately fell off from the “stiffness” of the battle system and lack of moves. Once the full battle system was revealed I was totally stoked on it, but agree that it’s just a little drawn out for repetitive move sets If it was the first turn based rpg I played as a child though, it would 1000% be my favorite. It brought me back to playing Super Mario RPG for the first time. It’s got great spirit and you can tell the designers really put love into the game, which i appreciated. I do think it’s worth a few hours of play through
Really well said. I haven’t played it yet but this makes me feel a lot better about backlogging it, because I’m all about combat, tinkering characters and a good story as well.
This came isn’t without merits. But it’s 0/3 on those things lol.
I can't believe it came out the same year as Octopath 2 and somehow got way more hype and visibility
Octopath 1 burned a LOT of people, of course the sequel was going to have less hype... especially when Square had since made a habit of re-releasing their old titles, so Octopath's 'throwback' excitement is also gone. I still haven't played Octopath 2 because the first was such a boring game to me. Held my attention for 10 of the 100+ hours I put in... I firmly believe that most of the people who like the first Octopath never truly beat it (as in worked to get the real ending).
Unfortunately I think you’re correct. I liked Octopath. I loved the sequel.
its a bummer that the combat is... meh. i was considering copping.
On the other hand, people who have played a lot of JRPGS like myself end up playing a lot of janky half baked games with questionable mechanics. Sea of Stars, on the other hand, is refreshingly well polished. Story is terrible but the other components make up for it imo.
I see what you're saying, but the battle mechanics, to me, were refreshing at first but then became repetitive too quickly. I still haven't picked it back up. I believe I had just >!beaten that dark monster thing in the mansion.!<
That's where I dropped it too, I just got bored.
Combat is not at all well polished.
It's better than a Kemco or Idea Factory game is such a wild bar to set when it won game of the year lol Thankfully, though I've also played dozens of JRPGs over the years, I still try to stick with the cream of the crop because I haven't played all the greats just yet. There's still great games from PS1/2/3 and stuff I can go back to before I start craving a generic JRPG experience just to sate an appetite. And there's still quality JRPGs being released these days that I can't have played them all yet. It's a good problem to have. But unfortunately I can't make room for games like SoS to not hit me with compelling writing or battle mechanics
> it won game of the year lol thank god playing fighting games jaded me to these when multiversus won goty for 2022
This review was identical to my experience. I enjoyed it overall, and it’s genuinely a breath of fresh air visually (it’s actually a 3D game made to look 2D, and that’s how the lighting looks so great!). But it was just too long and the writing was meh aside from a few points along the way. The characters were very boring, even though some of them stood out somewhat.
It's a game that seems fun at first, but it starts running out of intrigue the longer it goes. I never outright hated it, but I was disappointed in what amounted to a nothing ending...UNLESS you do side quests to get the true ending later. Music is fun though.
This is how I felt. I was hooked till around 60-70% into the game. Then it felt like a chore. The game was fun but the combat is very straight forward and never changes. I think for a first game it was fine. If they make a sea of stars 2 hopefully they develop the combat more and make gear more impactful
The best word I can use to describe SoS is shallow. The music and visuals are great, but the story and characters are completely flat (legit only once in the whole game did I think the story did anything interesting) and while the combat is fun at first, it never evolves or changes. Each character only gets four or five skills maximum, and throughout my playthrough I consistently had less accessories (the only equipment type that's not just straight stat upgrades) than my party could equip so no real decision-making there either. If I'm being honest, by the time I beat the clockwork castle I was so uninterested in the gameplay and story that I just looked up the ending and I feel like I didn't really miss out on anything by stopping there.
I still genuinely can't believe the high reviews it got. It's completely average Chained Echoes is far better
I played both in the same year to 100%, I ended up liking Sea of Stars a bit more. They both fed and were heavily inspired by games and nostalgia from the same era, and I'd easily recommend both, but sos feels more polished, and an experience I would recommend to more people. I had more quality fun that year with SoS than octopath 2, but I do think nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting. It has its issues, but I don't think it overstays it's welcome. I'm baffled by the whiplash to what I'd call overwhelmingly positive critical reception.
Yeah the reviews were such crap.
People are allowed to like the game.
Bad.. Run away and don't believe the weird positive reviews
It's fine... I bounced off it after 15 or 20 hours. Only having three or four abilities in combat for the entire game just kills the battle system dead.
It was okay at first but the game expects you to care about these characters and its story without giving you any real reasons to, making it tedious and boring. Dropped it after a couple hours because I had no reason to keep playing, the combat gimmick wasn’t enough.
Yeah hard agree on this, the story just has no depth whatsoever. Dropped it around the same time I think, just too RPG by numbers.
Honestly just play Chrono Trigger instead. Sea of Stars is just Chrono Trigger but worse.
The way you phrased that makes it sound like a game becomes good and bad, good and bad, as public opinion shifts, rather than always being exactly what it is. In a meta way, that's kind of true. So many people rely on peer reviews, and so many people jump on bandwagons, good and bad, that in a sense that's exactly what happens.
Could be great but end up mediocre. My impression got worse because of overhype too.
I'd say the more jrpgs you have played, the less likely you are to like it. Story and characters are below average, the introduction is boring. I don't like having to choose stats when you level up. Graphics are good. I didn't like the battle system either, it is very active, requires pressing buttons when you attack or defend with no room for error, and didn't feel rewarding to me.
I don’t think this is true. I’ve played a ton of JRPGs, and absolutely loved SoS. It dragged towards the end, and I was satisfied with the standard ending and won’t pick it up again anytime soon, but I’d put it high on my JRPG list. It’s divisive depending on what you value/look for in a game
The game is the most mid rpg ive ever played. It doesnt do anything at all well. Characters are boring. Combat is boring. The world is boring. Progression is boring. What is it youre valuing exactly?
Do you use QTEs in battle?
Yes. If you've played any of the Mario RPG games it's very reminiscent of that
I started playing it and mario rpg at the same time. I quit mario rpg, beat sos and got the older sequel. It's a great game and the story has a lot going for it if you care about games that has lore that spans more than one game.
Just very mid, everything is mediocre, combat, music, gameplay, writing, artistic direction. The worst parts imho are music and writing, they're absolutely horrendeous and scream amateurism. Only worth it if you can get it for $5. Keep in mind that I went in with 0 expectations and was still let down.
It's very okay The visuals and music are stunning Everything else is like watching a comedy that's just references to better stuff but without an understanding of why those things worked.
It's a solid 5/10.
It's a bit shallow in some areas and didn't hold my attention. Presentation and charm could go a long way for more people, my time with it wasn't bad per se.
Best thing about it was wheels imo. I need a wheels table irl.
If you want to play a classic jrpg, do it. Go play Lunar or Chrono Trigger or Phantasy Star IV. Sea of Stars is a decaffeinated imitation of those.
Best comment so far. I agree, go find Lunar for an awesome experience or CT for a quick and satisfying play through.
I think it's excellent in certain aspects, mainly music, art style and exploration, bad in others, mainly the story and writing and it also has a couple of aspects that some people like and others really dislike, like the gameplay. Overall I loved the experience, but I didn't like the story at all. Imo how much you will like it depends on whether you like the gameplay, and how much you care about plot and writing in your games
Just an average game. I've played though it and I cant say I did not have fun, but I cant deny it fails as an RPG in may aspects either. The story is underrated imo. Is not a, quote on quote, "masterpiece", but I think sabotage did a decent job of tying everything up, considering it's a prequel to the The Messenger. Also >!Garl's death!< actually managed to surprise me somewhat. Not because its an insane plot twist (honestly it's easy to see it coming), but because the overall tone of the game made me think Sabotage wouldn't have the balls to do it. What gets me it's the actual gameplay. The combat is fun but it gets repetitive really quickly and it also lacks various RPG elements such as buffs/debuffs, status effects, etc. But the biggest sin of SoS for me is the absolute lack of side-quests. There's only one side quest revolving around each party member respectivelly and that's it. Sabotage really built such a massive world, but with barely any way of interacting with it. All of the places in SoS are so beautiful aesthetically, yet they feel like a lifeless Void because there's pretty much only chests there and not a single NPC gives anything more than fluff dialogue. Kinda sad, because just based on the map and world building alone, this game could've been one of the best RPGs ever made, but it turned out so painfully average.
It OK. I didn't even finish it.
Bad American made game
right.
I hope you can enjoy it. I’ve tried giving the game many chances and it’s just a very mediocre jrpg. It’s pretty to look at but that’s about it. The characters are plain and boring and the combat, while fun at first gets very repetitive to the point I can’t bother to keep playing.
Hey you, Flanos! Thanks man, keep it up, I really appreciated the input. Now I'm gonna clear my storage space to get better games than this dodged bullet of a game.
It’s fucking trash
Most of what I've seen has been that it's aggressively average with a pleasing retro rpg aesthetic.
It looks and sounds great. The battle mechanics are just massively slow and cumbersome, and leveling feels useless. Bosses do nothing but make you burn healing items as you spend 2/3 the time knocking out their shields. It’s the only mechanic the game has and it feels like a slog.
Some people really like it. Me, on the other hand? [I keep a link ready for my take on the game shortly after dropping it](https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/16mal7y/sea_of_stars_vs_octopath_2/k1he9b3/). IMO the only thing Sea of Stars really has going for it is graphics.
I've had a hard time talking myself into playing it tbh. I don't like level caps, and I like to grind. If people don't like grinding thats fine but don't kill my hopes, I just don't understand why it can't be an option to grind if you want. Chained echoes I have similar issues with. So two games I was really looking forward to killed themselves for me, except I was actually decently far into chained echoes.
The artwork is amazing, I’d say it’s the best feature of the game. Apart from it, everything else is horribly bad, imho. The story and characters are terribly childish, to the point that reading dialogs makes you upset. The combat system is repetitive and doesn’t give you enough freedom. Given that this is an RPG, it fails in most of the things that would make a game of this kind great. This game, unfortunately, is one of the worst RPGs I have recently played. PS: And Garl the worst character of all the RPGs I have ever played.
I felt like he was a self-insert or something.
Dropped it. Bad story, bad characters, shallow combat. Looks great and music was decent. Regret not trying it on game pass before dropping full price on it
[удалено]
Look another enemy with two blades and a strike shield. Guess we just keep hitting normally….
I loved it. Music and art style is terrific. Personally, I didn't find much issue with the story or the writing. It isn't the most complicated in terms of story, but for me it wasn't an issue. In terms of the combat, it is very simple. The game also does not have much challenge depending on the relics you have activated. I found the bosses to be quite cool, though certainly not as difficult as some other JRPGs (read that as not difficult at all). I played Chained Echoes not long before SoS, and SoS felt very watered down in comparison, but I felt that as soon as I stopped comparing it to other games in the genre (despite their obvious common ancestors such as Chrono Trigger) I found the game to be really good. I didn't do much reading on SoS online before picking the game up. My decision to start it was mostly because the game looked cool. Only after I finished the main story did I go online, read a couple of reviews and found out that it was so polarizing. So I went in with a very naive overview of the game, and found that I mostly enjoyed it unadulterated by the opinions of others.
4/10. Graphics are great and some of the maps are cool. Pretty terrible otherwise. Combat is boring and takes way too long, equipment and leveling up feels pointless, story isn’t interesting at all, the characters are lame, and so on. I managed to make it about 15 hours in before I just had to stop and ask myself what the hell I was doing. Towards the end, I wasn’t having fun in the slightest and I really had no desire to play another second… so I didn’t.
I liked it
I got bored after 7-8 hours...
It hits some high highs but also some low lows. Overall it’s pretty but forgettable.
As others have pointed out it’s the case of a “meh” game sold to us under the hype that it was a masterwork. Battle system is great and fun but the characters get a pittance of abilities and you will always end up falling back on literally the first ability the characters earn. Music is excellent except where it’s not. The story is a quite good prequel to the messenger. It would be a great story for a game of that scope. In a jrpg game it’s more middling and a lot of the twists are as obvious as the death of a redshirt a week before retirement with a pregnant dog. One thing I personally dislike about the story is that it too melodramatic for the sake of melodrama, and antagonists who have an opportunity to be complex and conflicted end up being moustache twirling hamjobs
It's just okay. Great visuals, great music, and pretty good combat foundations. But the writing and characters are kinda eh (the main two characters are essentially interchangeable and their friend feels like the real main character and feels a bit like a mary sue IMO) and though the combat foundation is good, it's ultimately a bit shallow as each character only gets 3 skills and one ultimate. There are dual techs, but IMO they charge up too slowly to be used much outside boss fights.
I wanted to love this game. I even backed it on Kickstarter, so for it to fall so flat for me has been very disappointing. It's a beautiful game and that might be the best thing it has going for it. I wasn't much of a fan of the actual gameplay. Battles, even against normal enemies, felt like they took forever. I know turn based rpg's aren't exactly fast but this made it even more of a slog. I go back to it every once in a while to see if it'll be different this time around but I'm still left with the same thoughts. A friend of mine feels similarly.
I loved it. The exploration was great.
I couldn’t get into it. It might have been because it was overhyped by my friends (Chrono Trigger and SMRPG are two of my all time favourites, so everyone told me I would love this game) but the start was so boring that I stopped after a couple of hours. I may revisit it one day and try again, but it’s not a priority by any means.
Platinumed it. It’s okay :)
I dropped the game
As an elder millennial I don't understand the praise it got on so many accounts. The pixel art is beyond beautiful, I agree with that, but even the music that many seem to praise here simply isn't that great. I forgot most tracks, while I can still hum many tunes from Lufia 2 or Terranigma. The battles are so dry, so boring and exhausting to get through. The story was simply so bad, I think I did quit around half the game in. I felt the game didn't respect my time. In my opinion, it's definitely one of the worst JRPGs of the last decade.
The music is pure bad taste imho, if something can doom or save a game it's definitely the music.
For example, the battle theme **Battle On!** starts out well enough, but it lacks depth and creativity and already starts cycling during the first 40 seconds or so. I can grab themes from the NES era that have more spark than this.
Wouldn't waste 40 hours on a mediocre game
Played Sea of Stars for about two hours and COULD NOT force feed any more to myself. COULD NOT PUT CHAINED ECHOES DOWN until I beat it and got a dozen hours or so into new game+. Chained Echoes, despite its flaws, maybe because of its flaws, is everything Sea of Stars should have been.
I played it when it released on PlayStation Plus. I really liked it! Found the sprite animations were good and loved the Super Mario RPG timed-attacks. The story is fine, nothing really to write home about. OST is awesome. Overall I'd say it's like a solid 7 EDIT: Don't remember if there was a difficulty mode but whatever I played on was VERY easy. Don't know if I saw the Game Over screen once.
I enjoyed it. Combat gets a little stagnant, but I still highly enjoyed my likely one and only play through.
I completely hated it. The visuals and music are top notch though! The writing and story however is extremely boring and predictable with no depth whatsoever. Most puzzles have a sign or npc close by that gives you "hints" that outright explain what to do. It would probably work extremely well as a first rpg game for young kids.
>It would probably work extremely well as a first rpg game for young kids. Well that sounds disappointing, like who has asked for this? :/ Especially because the game looks like a new 2D Final Fantasy or something of that scope
I think it’s great. Loved it to be honest.
It’s simple, really. If you’re a fan of JRPGS, do not buy this game. If this is your first entry to the genre, do not buy this game.
It's a very enjoyable game. A big chunk of the Internet wanted it to be the next coming of Chrono Trigger, but I think it's more of a spiritual successor to Mario RPGs in that it's more of a hybrid of an adventure game and an RPG than a traditional JRPG. I think one of the more underappreciated aspects is its level design. There are a lot of fun little puzzles out in the world, and the dungeons are like lite Zelda dungeons.
Pretty good but overhyped. Enjoy it for what it is (and for what it isn't, the writing...) and you'll have a good time. 7.5/10 for me.
A fine 7/10 It's good, just not quite what all we hoped for.
I played the demo and really didn't like the combat. Chrono Trigger it ain't.
To each their own, but I personally liked the combat a lot. It’s one of my favorite systems. Especially when I turned on Tactician’s mettle. It’s true that your tools and moves don’t change much, but they make up for it with a wide variety of encounters. Between timed hits and whether or not to break locks, each fight is a little different. Also, I like how there is no pure white mage or black mage- everybody has a mix between damage moves and support/utility moves, and there’s no fluff moves like in so many other RPGs where you won’t use half the moves more than once. Edit; it’s also really unique that you can choose exactly when your characters act
I like it, not really heard about it being polarising. Just a solid, game, even if it had a few weaknesses, but what game doesn’t?
Every second guy I stumble upon says it's a nostalgia cashgrab :/
It was overhyped at launch and then over-criticised to compensate for that hype. That averages out to it being decent.
Because the marketing of the game is banking on nostalgia, but end up having superficial resemblance of the classics. It is a good JRPG on its own, although if it fell short on multiple fronts.
A lot of very critical opinions here, let me share my take from a guy who grew up playing turn based snes jrpgs in the 90's as a kid. I enjoyed SoS and found myself very pleasantly surprised the more I played. It was a lot of fun, not crazy deep or mind blowing but yo honestly it's a great nod to an old era of gaming. The art and music really stood out to me. Very reminiscent of snes era RPGs especially Chrono trigger and I do hope they continue to make games like this.
It’s okay? I think it’s a solid game. It’s basically average. Has some good things but some bad as well.
I think a lot of people went into it expecting something that they didn't get. I'd probably compare it to something like FF13. Some people like it, some people don't like it. But a lot of people who dislike it, dislike it because they were expecting something else. Which is fine, but it's weird because there's this massive collection of people who can't seem to accept that different people might have different tastes, and have to scream from every mountaintop that they didn't like it and that it was overhyped and all of that. Personally, I loved the game, enjoyed it from start to finish. Polarizing is a great word for it. Try the demo if you have a console, the full game is pretty much just more of that. The full version adds to it, layers on new combat and movement mechanics and all of that, but if you don't like the demo you probably aren't going to like the full version.
You don't think it's fair to expect an interesting story when you start something that looks like a JRPG?
I thought it was great. Not legendary or a must play but damn it was good enough and felt really nice to have a modern made classic style jrpg
It's a good game, but it's not reinventing any wheels or rewriting the rulebook for character archetypes. It's "classic" in every sense of the word: the combat feels old-school, the characters feel pretty reminiscent of common archetypes, the story (though it has promise) largely stays in safe RPG territory. It's a good game that got way overhyped. I personally love it *for* its simplicity, but that simplicity is entirely why so many were disappointed with it.
People can share their opinion but at the end of the day, the best way is still playing it for yourself. Especially if a game is a very polarising one.
It's good, but people are pissed it overshadowed Chained Echoes and will never forgive it for that.
It’s like a 6.5-7. Beautiful art style, right gameplay. Horribly boring protagonists and predictable story. I gave it about 4-5 hours before I got bored. If you have any 90s JRPGs you haven’t played, just play those lol
I love sea of stars, but it’s nostalgia bait. I thought it did what it set out to do well.
Octopath Traveler 1 and 2 all day everyday.
It’s funny how much opinion changes once the newness and hype wears down. It was slightly above average to mid when it came out, and slightly above average to mid now that the dust has settled.
The soundtrack is awesome, especially the boss theme, but the game's story was a mess. Combat was alright, but I agree with others it got repetitive. Other thing that bugged me was having the completionist in the game, and prominently so. They got rid of him, but only because of his fraud debacle.
Good game from PS Extra for me.
Good, not great, but good.
Good. I rarely strive to 100% games but this one I was so in love with that I left it at 99%. Yes I didn't get one achievement that needs NG+.
I enjoyed it. Combat has cool ideas but after a few hours, the battles become long and repetitive.
It's got neat gameplay but personally I felt bored overall. Some games just jive better for some than others and this was just kind of an average game imo
This sub is the only place I've ever seen calling sea of stars either trash or mid. Every reviewer liked it, was a commercial and critical success and won indie game of the year. I also personally really liked it, solid 8.5/10. Only negative I can think about the game is annoying characters like Garl and that pirate woman
People are mad online that it isn’t their dream game and have committed to hating it. Just try it.
It's mediocre. Good to play if you got nothing else left. Not terrible by any means but also not good at all.
I mean it hasn’t changed since it launched. It’s always just been kind of milquetoast imo. Absolutely beautiful art direction, graphics, and music. Very mediocre gameplay and writing.
Still shit, not even polarizing. People appreciate what it was trying to do. It laid great groundwork, and then fumbled all of it. Battle mechanics didn't grow, story fell apart, world building melted into nonsense, etc.
You know what? I loved it. It has its flaws, and it certainly could have used some copy editing before release, but I rarely found myself taken out of the game because of such things. It's not perfect, but it's fun. I've been playing RPGs since the late 1980s, and I enjoyed it just as much as I've enjoyed some of the classics. I'll eventually replay it, too. In fact, because I played it for free on PS+, I wanted to show my love by buying a physical edition of the game, which just came in the mail last week.
Great little game 😍 chained echoes too is good 🙂
Never been bad, just average outside the visuals
I can give a perspective of someone who hasn’t played many pixel based jrpgs and say I really enjoyed the game. The art was breathtaking and the combat was fun and interactive.
Best couch co-op JRPG I have ever played. Barely average standalone JRPG. If you have a wife or girlfriend it is a must play. If you're gonna go it alone then it's probably missable
Are you thinking of a different game? It is listed as a single player on Steam.
On Xbox it was couch co-op
Saw it on PlayStation and pc only! The best couch coop rpg experience I’ve had is probably Children of Morta.
Hey thanks for the info, I did a search and see that it's "in the works" - I don't have an XBox but hopefully since it's a Unity game, this feature will be coming to different platforms! [https://www.eurogamer.net/sea-of-stars-has-multiplayer-co-op-on-the-way](https://www.eurogamer.net/sea-of-stars-has-multiplayer-co-op-on-the-way)
It’s just fine. I think it’s worth trying Play it and see if you like it.
It's MID.
I loved it. Chained echo took longer for me to love it but both are great indie rpgs. Honestly seems weird the game is divisive.
Games an easy 7/10 not great but not awful either
I went in expecting a turn based RPG with a cute art style. I found the characters to be intriguing and accessible for all ages. There’s even some pretty heavy themes in there considering all the characters have some sense of elongated lives, immortality, or resurrection. There’s a decent amount of exploration and secrets as well. I ended up loving it and played it twice back to back for the platinum. Maybe that’s not for everybody, but it was exactly what I wanted.
I think it's very very mid, which would be fine if it reviewed that way but for some reason it's praised as chrono trigger 2.0 when it's not even in the same playing field
this sub doesnt like mainstream jrpgs🤷♂️ try it on game pass thats the cheapest way to try it
More like LAMEstream jrpgs amirite?? :D
It's good but not great 6-7/10. There was nothing that particularly hooked me in the game, so I got bored and stopped playing it.
it’s a good first timer jrpg for beginners also i think people overhyped it way too much, expecting the next chrono trigger
It's a great retro jrpg. I personally had a blast playing it!
Below average for me because it's slooooow and the writing drags it down so much.
Did you play the Messenger? I did and absolutely adored it. Amazing throwback game and I loved sea of stars as it acts as a prequel for that game. If you didn't play the Messenger and don't get the references then it might not be for you.
It's great! I enjoyed the story - you just gotta recognize the star is Garl the cook, not the two Solstice Warriors. Garl knows he doesn't have superpowers like his besties do, but that doesn't mean he can't make choices that matter. He cooks dinners for his friend's and does what he can to help those in need a put a smile on their face. Sea of Stars is a tribute to the normal folks, not the superheroes, and this is a genre that could use more of that. The combat I think is really well done. To the folks who say it's too easy I ask: *compared to what?* I don't hear anyone complaining about how easy Chrono Trigger, FF7, Secret of Mana, etc. are. Maybe they're playing with the Amulet of Storytelling without realizing, in which case they should turn that off, but the battles certainly kept me engaged. Sure the characters don't have a ton of skills - but the ones they do have each have their uses. Super Mario RPG doesn't have a ton of skills either, and they make it work. Anyhow, what makes Sea of Stars combat interesting is how you have to manage your SP strategically for each character so you can get the right attack type combos off in order to interrupt enemy attacks. You can't just open every single combat with a Moonerang - you'd run out of juice. A well-timed Disorient can make ALL the difference to buy you enough time to stop a boss from casting its ult. The fact that the damage types needed to interrupt attacks are randomized means that every encounter feels unique.
>The combat I think is really well done. To the folks who say it's too easy I ask: *compared to what?* I don't hear anyone complaining about how easy Chrono Trigger, FF7, Secret of Mana, etc. are. Maybe they're playing with the Amulet of Storytelling without realizing, in which case they should turn that off, but the battles certainly kept me engaged. Sure the characters don't have a ton of skills - but the ones they do have each have their uses. Super Mario RPG doesn't have a ton of skills either, and they make it work. Like dislike a game I'm fine w/ it, but Ppl aren't being consistent w/ what they like.