Quick review

[luvckay]

So far so good. Enjoying the nostalgic feels.
My only small issue is that the game looks too outdated still. It is 2023 after all, and they can definitely do better. One example: CrossCode. Completely retro pixel art style, but updated visual effects and music.

[Kaisha]

Sea of Star's graphics are better than CrossCode. It's some of the best pixel art I've seen. And while the music wasn't up to, say ORI standards, it's still a solid 8/10.

Story, combat, and characters are where it falls short IMO.

[Gosen]

Originally posted by Kaisha:

Story, combat, and characters are where it falls short IMO.

Literally everything, which makes jrpg good (or bad).

[Kaisha]

Originally posted by Gosen:

Literally everything, which makes jrpg good (or bad).

It's not a bad game, and was worth the price. But its good, not great, as it missed the mark in a lot of places. What it does well, it does very well.

I love the graphics beginning to end (the Sea of Stars bit was awesome), and the music was solid. The movement around the map and puzzle solving was a ton of fun, fluid, clear and clean interactions, lots of variation in puzzle types. Probably a bit on the simpler side for 'hardcore' gamers but still fun. Lots to explore, interesting level design, etc...

The writing was all over the place. Far too much dialog that said nothing, and way too much 'meta-humor' and obvious cliches, but there was some interesting stuff weaved in. They just couldn't seem to get the different parts of the plot working together into a cohesive whole.

For example, zale/val had almost no personality. While Serai, clearly a joke character being a cyborg ninja pirate, had the best storyline, motivation, and character arc. The Resh'an/Apher-whatever story line directly contradicted with other events/storylines from elsewhere in the game. etc...

It felt like they had 3 completely different writers, with different styles/ideas, that were jammed together into a single story.

The combat was just bad though. The lock system just did not work, often being a detriment/noob trap (in most cases it wasn't worth the resources to break a lock, whether that be actions, live mana, real mana, combo points, etc...). If you did manage to break a lock almost nothing happened (no increase vulnerability or down time) other than losing a single action (of which most bosses had another one right away so it didn't matter). What mattered far more was just getting the block timing down. You were FAR better off getting the timing right than breaking a lock; and instead just focus/blast something down as fast as possible, then to hold on to resources and try to be clever about it.

But the second big problem was the regen issue. Your champs have infinite regen, which inevitably means eventually the only way a boss is a challenge is if they have 1-shots or regen as well. Which makes many of the late game boss fights abysmally long, tedious, or gimmicky. This ON TOP of the lock mechanic makes combat just a mess late game. It literally took me 1 hour straight (1 single fight) to beat Apher-whatever (for the 'true' ending). Just ridiculous.

On top of all that 90% of the skills/combos are just useless, so you're using the same 5-6 skill/abilities OVER and OVER for hours on end. It's not challenging, but it is mentally straining on your sanity...

I still enjoyed it and am glad I played it, but it's no ORI (for example, a 'nostalgia' game that I consider to be a masterpiece).

[luvckay]

Disagree on visual effects and music.
Visual effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPQuNmmZgO4
Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsZ31IW_pHI

CrossCode has better music, even just in terms of quality. Not so MIDI like.

[Zelakon]

A lot of this game is clearly inspired by CrossCode (story subversion, parkour environments etc.) and while the pixel art in Sea of Stars is indeed more detailed and impressive (especially the water), it feels emptier as a game because there aren't as many animations. I noticed the same problem as I was playing my way through Chained Echoes...

CC has a game-world in which other 'player' characters are constantly running around (giving it a sense of immersion), while SoS has some towns in which even the NPCs stand stock still without moving. And while you might say that such details take up far too much development time/effort to be worth it, CC still managed to use efficient techniques that both SoS and CE could've employed to generate environmental dynamism, such as having foreground particles flowing across the screen (giving it much more of an animated edge over SoS and CE). Not to even mention the stunning visual effects during combat!

Not to disparage SoS too much, but I'd like to echo all of Kaisha's issues listed above, as well as criticising their puzzle design being way too linear. Every time I came across a 'puzzle' in an area/dungeon (not the solstice shrines; those are clearly designed as actual puzzles to be solved), it was just a case of following the path to activate switches in a set order with no other options, and therefore no thinking required.