Each area exudes a unique personality, thanks to catchy tunes that masterfully capture their essence.Įverything about Sea of Stars’ look and feel is clean and approachable, and each of its menus is easy to navigate. The former produced the soundtracks for Chrono Trigger and Xenogears – to name a few – and his unique style brings back memories of those old games. Its zones are varied and colorful, featuring emotive soundtracks composed by none other than Yasunori Mitsuda and Rainbowdragoneyes. I grew up playing the 16-bit SNES, GBA, and PS1 classics – essentially, the good old days of RPGs – and Sea of Stars hits all the right notes to make me long for those good old times. In its favor, there’s a lot of strong nostalgia vibes here. The campaign wraps up just before the limited combat options overstay their welcome, but I’d have liked a few more spells or combos per character to master. Often, the most fun part of progression was getting better at precise timing. With only six potential teammates to play with – and only a few skills and combos total – I found myself running through the same strategies over and over by the end. Overall though, I’m disappointed Sea of Stars’ combat system doesn’t get much deeper than that. Even so, it’s still extremely satisfying to pull off certain moves that require you to react to these finicky windows. For instance, one character jumps around before landing their strike on an enemy, and it’s easy to tap too soon or too late unless you memorize this whole thing. That’s especially hard to pin down when each animation has a different point of impact. But it took a while to get the hang of because their reaction window is frustratingly short, and without using a special relic that shoots a flare each time you land a boost, it’s not always clear exactly when you’re supposed to respond. I found it satisfying that most later battles required me to hit these boosts consistently in order to feel fair. It’s great that you can affect the flow of combat by pressing a button to critical hit, critical heal, or block an incoming attack as it lands. The world’s most interesting side locations, such as the many Solstice Shrines dotting the map, only become available to visit once you unlock flight.
Yes, Sea of Stars has a ship, but you won’t spend too much time sailing around since it mostly just serves to connect major points of interest between story events. It’s cool that this world’s NPCs respond to your actions and your growing power as literal superheroes, and it’s nifty to eventually gain the ability to fly – that lets you move around the overworld and finish up quests without the hindrance of returning to your ship. Sea of Stars also makes great use of day and night mechanics, often requiring you to shift the time of day with the shoulder buttons to shine daylight or moonlight on special nodes that unlock parts of the map. There are some tricky block-pushing puzzles and some that require you to remember a certain sequence of triggers to erect platforms in a certain order so you can climb up to the next doorway. The puzzles are simple but often require a decent amount of thought.
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