Sea of Stars | REVIEW

"We’ve had turn based combat for over 30 years now and somehow Sea of Stars managed to find new ways to engage and entertain me with it."

HOW I PLAYED: Nintendo Switch

STORY - 11/20

The Intro does a great job establishing the tone and giving the player a chance to feel out the game. You jump right into controlling the characters and learn to climb ladders and jump around the world's level design. I was immediately captivated and just wanted to keep exploring.

Cutscenes are one of the game's weakest aspects. I was not a fan of the character portraits that played during dialogue and especially the fully animated cutscenes. This art style felt like a shortcoming rather than I was being treated to a “cinematic”. I’m probably spoiled by the thousands of hours I’ve spent watching Studio Ghibli films but compared to the game's outstanding pixel art, the cutsences kept reminding me of crappy cartoons from the 90s or when they'd use the B animators to do every third episode of Dragon Ball Z. It's just not pretty.

World Building is sub-par here as well. The game makes attempts to fill in the gaps and add atmosphere with towns and taverns and mini-games but none of them really moved me. Truly great games make you feel like you're in their world and not playing a game anymore. I felt like I was playing Sea of Stars: not in it.

Overall Story might be the game's single weakest link. Probably because of the poor pacing and the fact that I took multiple breaks to play other games while playing through Sea of Stars that I can’t even tell you what the story is about. I had to Wikipedia the plot to remind myself. Ultimately though it didn’t stick with me. There are some charming moments, some characters that are memorable and relatable like Garl but in the end the story felt like it was trying really hard to be something that it wasn’t. The whole game has this "this is supposed to be epic" tone to it. I would have preferred a simpler plot and story to match the look of the game. It's all too involved and exaggerated. I couldn’t keep up. Maybe I didn’t want to.

GRAPHICS - 19/20

Character Models are expressive and full of life. I remember the first time I played Final Fantasy V and was thrilled when I noticed how they had developed brand new facial animations that none of the previous games had. Sea of Stars gives you that feeling of excitement all the way through. 

Environments are just pause-the-game-stop-what-you’re-doing-gorgeous. They squeezed every single drop out of these pixels as they possibly could. Characters create shadows as they pass by light sources, flowers and plants gently sway in the wind, water ripples and it’s like desert for breakfast lunch and dinner. Environments are stunningly detailed and varied and the whole game (minus the cutscenes) is a joy to behold.

AUDIO - 19/20

The Ambiance was everything you could want for a game like this. In a word. Incredible. From the inspired soundtrack down to the details in sound design. One or two tracks were remixed throughout the game for a different area and I definitely preferred the original compositions. Other than this though the music was stellar. 

Boss Music was unreal. Some of best bops since Nobuo Uematsu was in his prime. The main battle theme that plays through the game is a real treat too. I was bouncing in my chair the whole time.

Sound Design was handled with extreme care and finesse. Satisfying high level sounds and FX really elevate the experience of Sea of Stars. I literally would run around firing the grappling hook at walls and objects because I was such a big fan of the sound the collision made. You can tell they hired a team who truly understood the craft.

GAMEPLAY - 33/40

Controls are great and make sense. Outside of combat there are only a few action commands such a turning objects, jumping or climbing ladders and all of these are intuitive. The game makes great use of the shoulder buttons as well for a cool mechanic that comes into play early in the game. 

Pacing is a major issue in Sea of Stars. The writing is also exceptionally mediocre, especially the opening few hours. I often felt like the vocabulary didn’t match what a particular character would or should say. It was clunky at best and bordering on written by someone who was ESL. Sentences were way too long and some dialogue just plain broke the immersion for me. When your game doesn’t have voice acting you have to do so much with just text. I think of the golden age of Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem where you could get a sense for a character's entire lifetime by the nuances in their speech and their lexicon. Unfortunately Sea of Stars is wearing a shoe size a few too big and trips over itself a lot. I’ve never disliked pirates this much.

Boss Quality is one of the game's biggest assets. The encounters you'll have with these enemies are memorable and come across as highly inspired. They vary in style, visual aesthetic, mechanics and duration. I haven't been this excited about bosses since Bloodborne. 

Gameplay Variety is fantastic. The game already breaks up the monotony of combat with level-based puzzle solving which was just challenging enough and rewarding to complete. Beyond this you can acquire ingredients in the world and cook them with recipes you will collect, play music in the taverns, try the game's main mini-game called Wheels or talk to one of your companions who will tell you stories by the campfire. There's plenty to keep you busy.

One of my favourite things about playing the game was noticing all the references to old RPGs I found. The SNES Final Fantasys, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Tales of Symphonia, I was even reminded of Dark Souls when I came across the odd ladder I had the option of kicking down for a shortcut. Sea of Stars is one big love letter to the classics that came before it. It borrows so many elements from great RPGs but still feels fresh and exciting. We’ve had turn based combat for over 30 years now and somehow Sea of Stars managed to find new ways to engage and entertain me with it. 

Enemy Variety is also outstanding. Each area has baddies that match their environment really well and will keep your attention in combat. Like the bosses they are unique, visually captivating and inspired. There's more enemy variety in this cute little pixel game than all of Breath of the Wild.

Replayability is an option here for the "True Ending". Once you complete the main game you can replay and explore its additional content. This includes a completely different and secret ending that requires completing seven side quests to unlock.

Bonus - 2/3

I played Sea of Stars on a Switch Lite and it ran like a dream. I encountered nothing that I could call a bug or a glitch. The loading times were fair and I had no real complaints.

While I’m not going to be running to tell my friends about the story I would gladly return just for the joy of the combat system and the visual spectacle. Add to this some S-tier music and Sea of Stars is worth a play through for anyone remotely interested in RPGs. I genuinely had a great time. If you're a fan of this genre you need to play this game. Period. They may have failed on several fronts, you can chalk it up to the directors' taste, whatever, there's still so much to be appreciated in Sea of Stars as a game and a piece of art.