Sea of Stars Review
Sea of Stars Review
Ma-Star-Piece
As students of the genre, Sabotage Studio incorporates elements that have become staples of RPG’s spanning over three decades and fused all of the individual elements together to create a unique, magical adventure with their follow up to The Messenger that easily makes Sea of Stars one of the best games of 2023.
How Sea of Stars Creates New RPG Memories
When trying to create a hybrid game that blends retro and modern influences, most developers stray too far towards the two possible sides of the spectrum. The first is by changing too much, which ultimately leads to a game that just uses the IP and doesn’t evoke the same memories of the original. The second is by not changing enough, with a result that feels stuck in the past with limitations and surface deep gameplay. Sabotage Studio are now, proven masters of walking the tightrope between both past and present. The result with Sea of Stars is an incredible journey.
Sea of Stars feels like reliving an RPG memory from the 90’s as it proudly wears it’s influences on the sleeve with combat and exploration inspired by genre classics like Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG, but also draws inspiration from adventure games of the era including Link To The Past with character abilities, dungeon exploration and puzzles that are always fun to solve as you aren’t bound to the grid. There are plenty other influences but it’s best to let you experience those.
Epic Journey
At the beginning of Sea of Stars, the plot was enjoyable, albeit formulaic and served as more of a compliment to the gameplay. You’re a group of misfits, who are going on a grand adventure to defeat evil while the world hangs in the balance. What made it fresh, was that it had plenty of wit and self aware writing that poked holes at the genre and some of the tropes over the years in the same way that made The Messenger stand out from the crowd. Just like the gameplay in Sea of Stars constantly evolved throughout, the story blossomed into something that goes far beyond what was expected, became the star of the show and stuck the landing.
At the exact moment where most games overstay their welcome, Sea of Stars shifts gears with new locations, new party members, new upgrades, new plot details to unravel, new gameplay, new skills that kept it feeling fresh throughout it’s 30 hour story that constantly engaged the player in one way or another.
One of the best ways that the player is engaged is how progression works throughout. There is never a point in Sea of Stars where the scales tip and you become overpowered, which completely removes the challenge. Skill points are hard earned, which give them more meaning, feel more rewarding and make deciding how to spend them, a more thoughtful process.
Combat
Akin to Super Mario RPG, combat is active and requires you to hit attack or block at the right moment to achieve maximum results. However, the highlight of the combat is how members of your party ebb and flow like a river with characters coming and going frequently. The enemies have weakness to certain elements, which leads to you spinning a lot of plates at the same time between making sure the right members of your team, with the right skills are on the field and you need to know when to use the right move.
When you factor everything in, including the challenging but fair difficulty that ramps up perfectly, there was never a battle in Sea of Stars that felt like auto pilot. Not only are the combat mechanics excellent, but the enemies are inventive and the boss fights were epic. It wasn’t uncommon to battle the worst evils for 20-30 minutes as the Sea of Stars chess match unfolds with healing, attacking and making sure the right pieces are on the board.
During my journey, I only felt like there were two issues and to be honest they are more preference. Attacks could have had status effects as that would’ve added another layer to the already deep combat systems. Ultimate skills get unlocked towards the second half of your journey, which deal devastating damage, but they also trigger a cutscene. Although they are visually delightful, after the seeing them dozens of times, it would have been nice to have a skip feature.
Shooting Sea of Stars
Sea of Stars is another shining example of how Sabotage have quickly become the masters of making retro feel modern and one of the best indie studios around with their ability to transcend genres. Story, art, level design, score, sound direction, combat, progression, puzzles, exploration, pacing, boss fights and every other element in the game are done to perfection. Sea of Stars is an easy candidate for game of the year