#game-review #finishedgame2024 # Sea of Stars  [Console:: PC] [Status:: Beaten] [Approximate Start Date:: 2024-03-18] [Finish Date:: 2024-07-15] [Clear Time:: 33h 15m] [Total Play Time:: 33h 15m] [nReplays:: 0] ## [Rating:: 75] # Playthrough Notes - Started on Stream, and am controlling Zale, cool you can switch # My Thoughts ## General Thoughts - This game is just "what if Stardew Valley but JRPG?". It's fine, I don't mind. Maybe I'm just a little cynical when it comes JRPG parties. - Garl is just ready to be friends again with Zale and Valere after ten years of not seeing them? He doesn't harbor ANY resentment about losing an eye? - People say that the traversal and combat in this game is akin to [[Chrono Trigger]] and [[Super Mario RPG]], and they're not wrong, but a LOT of the dungeon design is straight out of [[Golden Sun]] and [[Golden Sun - The Lost Age]]. If you like the dungeon traversal and its puzzles, you'll REALLY like Golden sun, especially when you get to the Lighthouses. - And I really enjoy this game's puzzle-dungeon traversal like the Wind pushing blocks in the Wind Mine dungeon or whatever it's called! I hope that it continues to do its own thing while still finding a way to combine features - Why is the flashback for Brugaves and Erlina right before the Fleshmancer's Castle AFTER they've betrayed us? Why not have it before or leave some breadcrumbs before it? If they're trying to make me feel bad for them, that's not really going to work after they've betrayed us! - If you're going to take party members out of the party, then fucking commit to it. Don't have Resh'an leave the party, but leave a puppet in your party. That's cheap and means nothing. - The Sky Base is just Ocean Palace but in the sky :] - Genuinely a great starter JRPG. Once you can appreciate the things that Sea of Stars does, you can then try the games that inspired it. I think this probably the most approachable type of RPG like this. A step beyond a Mario and Luigi RPG, the game that bridges the gap between that and, say, [[Final Fantasy IV]] or so. - But also, [[Golden Sun]] would fill the same niche, more or less. ### The Completionist / Constructionist and his Video Review have biased my view of this game - One has to feel a tragic sense of comedy when we consider the fact that Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil was removed from this game due to his involvement with his family's charity and their fraud. - His whole video is essentially unintentional satire, and I will not deny that this game does feel a little like it was perfectly designed from someone of the Normal Boots youtube collective. It's just a damn shame that the devs wanted to include their friend in a game and then said friend goes and allegedly commits charity fraud. - Also he really thinks Garl is someone "you'll fall in love with" over the course of the game. Like. i dunno dude... - I don't think I'll ever be able to separate this game from that context. I will always think about how Jirard was removed from this game because of the alleged charity fraud. - "I thought the sound track for the messenger was incredible. Eric Brown AKA RainbowDragonEyes, and my friend now, " ohhhhhh jirarrrrrrd #### Jirard and Sea of Stars Parallel - Something something critiquing nostalgia through the means of critiquing Sea of Stars and my relationship with watching Youtubers like the Completionist. - Watching Jirard talk about this game set up my expectations for something else, and when I started to realize the jig was up, I felt like I had been a bit betrayed? It's hard to rationalize. - Jirard's video is the reason why a LOT of people were initially really high on Sea of Stars, and now with the power of hindsight I can see that Jirard was being a bit of a used car salesman here. The game is good, but it's not great. More than anything playing this game was just another indicator to me that you can't trust what everyone on the internet says, and that's a good thing to recognize! - ==Sea of STars is a shining example of why you have to maintain a level of media literacy. Why you cannot listen to your "favorite" youtubers to form an opinion. - In my honest opinion, Jirard is an incredibly biased source, and we can clearly see that through the way he talks about his own inclusion in the game, and then also talks about the game being masterful (despite having hte game be made by his friends)\ - The video is an advertisement. NOT a review. - In a way, the way I look at Sea of stars is a lot like how I would look at the Completionist Videos. - Especially given Jirard's initial involvement - Maybe I'm too jaded and cynical, I don't know. ## Gameplay - hate these friggin ants dude. - There's this "Lock" system where if you manage to hit a foe with the specified types of attacks, you'll "break" them which removes their turns a la [[Octopath Traveler]], but there are cases where I think it's impossible to break all that locks? That feels very strange to me. - This feels like an attempt to make the combat more complex, but it feels like I'm getting screwed by the luck. I t feels arbitrary. Compare this to something like [[Octopath Traveler]] where each foe has a SPECIFIC lock every time that doesn't change, and so once I know how to handle one foe of this type, I can handle them all. Against bosses here in Sea of Stars, the lock system feels generally arbitrary because of the fact that sometimes I'll simply be unable to break the lock in the prescribed amount of turns. this makes me think that it's better to just clear the locks as much as I can, but even that doesn't feel satisfying and it just makes the fights feel more cumbersome. - I think the game's combat is at its best when you have everything unlocked. Initially I was a little turned off, but after I got everything, I felt better playing. ### The Room-to-Room Puzzles in the dungeons are Wonderful - the way dungeons are designed in this game is really neat and they tremendously remind me of [[Golden Sun]] and [[Golden Sun - The Lost Age]] with how their rooms interact with each other. Each room in a dungeon has a general puzzle3 akin to that of an escape room, which I like a lot. Each room is a self-contained puzzle that starts and stops in the room, complete with a few enemy encounters here and there. - The Tower of Antsuldo feels like a reimagining of Mercury Lighthouse - Similarly the Tree dungeon with the bird cultists really feels like Jupiter Lighthouse. - I love just running around in the world. It's a good fun feeling. ## Visual Presentation ### The Pixel Art is Incredible I've been a little worn out by the idea of a pixel JRPG lately. They've more or less run their course. I can let [[Octopath Traveler]] slide here because it more or less spawned the HD-2D artstyle, and at least [[Live Alive]] was a remake and they wanted to update the visuals. I would say that at present, I'm only going to appreciate a pixel art game made in the modern console era if it actually does something interesting with its design, and isn't just being pixel art for the sake of being pixel art. I'm ecstatic to say that Sea of Stars has so far managed to lean so hard into the pixel art that it excels at making the world feel distinct from the 16-bit era of JRPGs, while still evoking memories of them. In the same way that Shovelknight is how you remember every NES platformer, Sea of Stars *is* the SNES JRPG you grew up with, as evidenced by the visuals. They're all so carefully crated to add texture through a digital pointillism. ### Facial Portraits The quantity and quality of facial portraits demonstrates just how much the pixel artists cared about these character designs and interactions. Character's emotions are clearly conveyed through their character portraits which is always really great! - Though Zale and Valere using their default face sprites is fitting given how 8.5-11, paper-white-and-thin they are. ## An Adult Shoveling Fistfuls Cotton Candy and Funnel Cakes Into their Mouth I hate to be cynical, but something about this game just feels very unfulfilling when it comes to the narrative. I think it's Garl, but I can't be sure. The feeling I get from this game so far is like shoveling wads of cotton candy down my throat. It's sugary-sweet, doesn't satisfy me in the slightest, and I wonder how this constitutes as candy, and why I might've liked it as a kid. I might just be very cynical here, but I feel like this game's narrative is just like "[[Steven Universe]] meets [[Stardew Valley]], with a dash of your favorite Mario RPG.". There's nothing inherently *wrong* about this, but it doesn't satisfy me in the way that I was initially expecting. The giant that throws you across continents is named Y'eet. Yes, really. ### Is there such a thing as too comfy? - I get that it's really cool to be able to wander around and explore campsites when you're healing, and talk to party members to get their input on things. I think that's really neat. But it feels comfy for the sake of comfiness, which is fine. But it feels like it leans into this conflict-averse sentiment carried through by the game, which makes the initial story less compelling, it feels like. - When you wrap yourself in blanket upon blanket in a bed, and you smother yourself with pillows, you're left with feeling hot and sweaty and stuck to all these bedsheets, and for what. This was supposed to be *COZY*, right? - This is how I feel about Sea of Stars at points - And that's not to say that this makes Sea of Stars bad, far from it. In fact, given that this is the developer's SECOND game makes me very optimistic that they'll be able to learn and make something even better. ### It's Steven Universe-coded - People going into the game expecting game of thrones are going to be disappointed when they get Adventure Time. This game feels like it could've been made into a young adult animation TV series akin to [[avatar the last airbender]], [[The Owl House]], or probably most obviously (imo) [[Steven Universe]]. I mean, Garl is one-eyed Steven. - There's a BAND of kooky pirates. that's such a "pre-teen animation" thing here. - The world isn't filled with bad guys. the island where they build Mirth has no monsters or bad guys or even just people living there previously. Everything just kind of works out in the end just find, and in fact, the crypt on the island nearby is actually a GOOD thing! - This isn't a bad thing, but I feel like it's hard to consider this game to be among the great JRPGs when there's somewhat of a lack of nuance between the heroes and villains. I dunno, let's see how the story plays out. ### There are Too Many Characters - Why does the bird get to turn off all the "fast locks" at the end of the game when that's clearly something Serai should've been able to do - Why are Teaks and garl not the protagonists, or why don't Zale and Valere have some of those quirks? - Why is the mindset the game carries a "we help others by making them help themselves"? It's really unsatisfying. ## Audio Presentation - I actually cannot pick out which tracks are Yasunori Mitsuda's and which are the ones by Eric Brown - I like that the battle music and interface changes when you hop between dimension - The little blips and bloops in the menuing are quite satisfying. # Favorite Moments / Memories - "Wait, so you're all in there? Hahaha!" - Oh Zale, you thick-headed club-footed caveman of a protagonist # What were you doing when not playing this? - Just streaming in the Spring of 2024. Actually went to the eclipse in Bowling Green the week before I played the part where there was an eclipse in game. # Relevant Links - https://clips.twitch.tv/ModernArbitrarySharkFailFish-dhDPtWDlKvY8GsBl ( a good summary of some of my feelings about Sea of Stars)