We’re living in a pixel-art RPG renaissance, with Chained Echoes and Octopath Traveler 2, the latest to push the genre forward.
Now, Sea of Stars is also throwing its hat in the ring, paying homage to the classic 2D RPG but bringing modern mechanics and ideas to the table.
I do have my issues with the story and combat, but the other aspects of the game shine brightly enough to make up for them.
World
The world-building in Sea of Stars is brilliant, perhaps my favorite aspect of the game. Everywhere you travel there are fascinating things to see and quirky people to meet.
There’s a wind mage that can only do magic while blindfolded, so he goes around with double eye-patches.
A race of mole-people who use the wind, whistling through their mineshafts, to create a lullaby for an enormous dragon.
The ultimate fetch quest for a pirate who sends you to loot a sorcerer’s hideout after besting you in an arm wrestling match.
The world-building is so rich and interesting that it would be a waste to not have more games set within it in the future.
While the world looks gorgeous, there isn’t a huge amount to interact with, and the things that are there often seem pointless.
For example, pretty much every bookshelf in the game reads,’just a bunch of old books…’ when interacted with. A missed opportunity to expand the lore of the world, even with something as simple as amusing book titles.
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Dialogue is really well written and often quite funny. My favourite NPC is this fourth-wall breaking pirate called Yolande that is always making RPG trope jokes that never get old.
Though I do wish the characters were voiced, as it adds so much more character and emotion than you can get from text alone. (Not something I would ding the game on, just me being spoiled after Octopath Traveler 2 earlier this year!)
Enemy design is excellent and varied, each new area with its own enemies to match. Be it mushroom warriors in a swamp, skeletons in a crypt or giant worms in an underground cave.
There are a few fast-travel points across the map, and the method of transport is ridiculously cool! You climb inside a giant stone baseball, where an equally massive golem pitches you to one of its brethren. Never before have I travelled via a game of catch!
The game would benefit from having a few extra golems around though, sometimes just getting to a fast-travel location is too much of a chore to even bother.
Story
The story of Sea of Stars was a bit hit-and-miss for me, starting off rather straightforwardly, the world building does the heavy lifting to keep things interesting.
We follow Zale and Valere, the Children of the Solstice, born with the power of the sun and moon, who are being trained to fight the minions of the Fleshmancer.
They pass their trials and head out into the world, with their best friend Garl, on a quest to defeat a powerful adversary.
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There are some cool little story beats here and there – like sneaking into a necromancer’s lair to steal an artifact and lift a mind control curse – but it’s around the halfway mark, where things begin to get really interesting. The story kicks up a notch, and we get a major setting change with some pretty satisfying plot twists. It definitely goes places I would never have guessed.
Unfortunately, I found the ending to be anticlimactic and unsatisfying. It’s hard to go into detail, without stomping right into spoiler territory, but basically it left me thinking ‘Oh… Is that it?’
Graphics
Pixel art is easily one of my favourite art styles. There’s something special and nostalgic about the simplified visuals that are such a treat for the eyes.
Sea of Stars is a prime example of pixel art done well. Its bright and cheery colour palette make its fabulous world, and character sprites really pop.
The game is full of detail, great and small, bringing the world to life and making it feel both fantastical and grounded at the same time.
That might be awe-inspiring sights like floating castles and colossal sleeping dragons, or the more mundane like a merchant whose stand is overflowing with treasure, shipwrights hammering away on their latest build, or a couple of mole-kids building a sandcastle on the beach.
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Food in the game is mouth watering! I’d often get peckish when cooking in-game delicacies, a pretty impressive feat using just pixel art.
Not only does the game have a huge variety of dishes, but when you cook, it cycles through different images representing different cooking stages.
For mushroom soup it shows an image of vegetables being chopped and then a pot bubbling away over a fire, but for a roast sandwich we see meat being prepared then sauteed, followed by bread being mixed and baked in an oven.
There are a smattering of animated cutscenes that help build the world in more detail, but they’re too few and far between to feel like a coherent part of the art style.
The more cartoonish look was often a jarring contrast to the rest of the game, and with pixel art this good, you don’t need a different art style in there at all.
Gameplay
The majority of gameplay for Sea of Stars is exploration, combat and puzzle solving. It does two out of three really well.
Unlike many 2D RPGs, Sea of Stars puts a big emphasis on traversal. Moving around the world just feels good, especially once you gain the hook-shot!
Levels often have a lot of verticality to them, and more often than not, you can just jump off a ledge to quickly get down instead of having to backtrack. You can jump, swim, climb, shimmy, tightrope walk, even leap off massive waterfalls… The actions all have their own unique animations.
There are plenty of puzzles to solve, especially in the late game, with a lot of variety, too. Sliding block puzzles, lever puzzles, laser puzzles, and even some quizzes!
My favourites were those using solstice powers to change the time of day, affecting the direction the light shines to activate special switches.
I will admit a few had me stumped for an embarrassingly long time, but I eventually finished all the puzzle dungeons I could find!
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Interestingly the game doesn’t have individual character levels, instead, the whole party levels up at the same time.
On the ‘level-up’ screen, you get to see your stats improve and also get to select a bonus stat such as more attack, defence, or mana.
That’s really all the control you have over your characters. There are no skill trees or ability choices… It’s a pretty shallow system for an RPG.
There are important relics in the game that help with the game’s difficulty in a bunch of different ways. The Amulet of Storytelling doubles your HP and auto-heals you after combat, while the Sequent Flare gives a clear indication of when you successfully time your attacks. Just two of the many relics in the game, which can be turned on or off at any time to tailor the difficulty of your adventure.
As I found the combat to be lacking, I ended up turning on a majority of the relics to get through fights quickly and return to more enjoyable aspects of the game.
There are a trio of stand-out game mechanics that I sunk a decent amount of time into. Fishing, cooking and wheels.
Wheels is a gambling type mini-game where you need to match symbols on roulette wheels to attack and defend, trying to reduce your opponent’s health to 0.
You get three spins and can lock any of the 5 wheels in place to have a bit of control over the game, but ultimately a lot of luck is involved.
It’s no ‘Gwent’ from The Witcher 3, but it was fun enough.
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Cooking is pretty self-explanatory. Throughout the game, you’ll find or buy different recipes. Ingredients for those recipes are found growing around the world, as loot after battle or bought from shops. Once you have all the ingredients needed, you can make the corresponding dish.
Meals are your main source of healing in battle and can restore mana or bring a party member back from KO status. It’s a pretty grounded way of replacing the classic potions.
Then there’s the fishing mini-game; who doesn’t love a fishing mini-game!
This one is super simple, cast your line out towards the shadow of a fish, wait for it to bite, and then reel it in. You’ll need to keep it within the optimal zone, or the tension will break your line.
The game is almost too easy. not that that stopped me from fishing every lake in the game dry!
After catching a fish, you can release or fillet it, which can then be used for cooking!
Combat
Combat is easily my least favourite aspect of the game, which is a bit unfortunate given how much of it there is!
I found it slow, shallow, and boring with a simplistic strengths and weaknesses system. A lot of my issues stem from having too few attacks and abilities to choose from, as little as three per character for most of the game. There are ‘combo attacks’ that combine the attacks of two party members, but it takes time to generate enough combo points to even use one to begin with.
So pretty much every battle would go the same way, using the exact same attacks over and over.
For the same reasons, bosses can be even more tedious, taking much longer to defeat and feeling terribly repetitive.
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There is an element of timing to most attacks, magic and even defence, which involves you a bit more in battle. Tapping X as your attack lands deals more damage, or X as your enemy hits you for a defensive boost.
Valere’s Moonerang attack can be continuously reflected back at the enemy for multiple hits when timed correctly. Though even when I had a good run or 10 to 15 reflections, the damage increase felt minimal.
Zale’s Sunball can be charged by holding X and releasing it at the optimal moment for a stronger attack.
The timing mechanic is novel at first, but as the game progressed, it became more of a chore.
Sea of Stars is a gorgeous pixel art adventure, with fantastic world-building, mechanics and puzzles to solve.
While aspects of the story and combat didn’t quite stick the landing, I still thoroughly enjoyed my 33 hours with Sea of Stars. It’s truly a solid entry into the pixel-art RPG pantheon.
With this and their previous game, The Messenger, it’s clear that Sabotage Studio are a really talented development team. I’m excited to see which genre they tackle next!
Quest Daily scores Sea of Stars:
8/10
Quest Daily was supplied a copy of Sea of Stars by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
