CR5ZY
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1 review liked by CR5ZY
Sea of Stars
2023
Immaculate pixel-art and a nice soundtrack met with an aggressively mediocre and flat storyline filled with one-dimensional characters and uninteresting dialogue. Sea of Stars never really feels engaging beyond its strong visual presentation, banking on nostalgic atmosphere to appeal to its player base. I genuinely do not understand the level of praise this game receives, I've seen squirrels fighting outside that were more entertaining than this. People love to put this game and Chained Echoes on such a high pedestal when those two are just having the biggest mid-off of my life.
The combat is pretty satisfying on a surface level, but never develops much past the first few hours, which ends up feeling repetitive without a lot of skill variety or new mechanics to play with and adapt to. Party building is practically non-existent. There is some leeway to let you optimize your party with stat increase selection upon level ups and rudimentary equipment diversity, but overall every single character ends up being a glorified default attacker suited for whatever color element you need at the moment. Characters pretend like they're different from each other, but the game never asks you or gives you the ability to build strong magic attackers or bulky defensive units, or come up with niche party compositions, leading every fight to feel exactly the same.
The story and character writing was so poor that I couldn't even laugh at how bad it was. I felt like I was staring at blank walls the entire time. Nothing the characters did, said, or experienced ever mattered to themselves or their surroundings beyond superficiality. Every other line was a meta joke or quip about overused tropes and stereotypical JRPG writing, I felt like I was reading some Redditor's idea of an #epic D&D campaign. I swear I was only one step removed from reading a "Well, that just happened!" but at the same time I had to read a "Yeet" joke in 2023 with a straight face so, yeah. In spite of all this, Sea of Stars still has the audacity to bring out plot points of such grand scale that just don't feel earned due to its writing.
Frankly, I tried to give Sea of Stars more chances than it deserves. I so badly wanted another Chrono Trigger that I lowered my standards to convince myself I was having fun until I just couldn't take it anymore. I was kept bored the entire time I was playing, desperately continuing to see if it gets better... but it never did. I played up to right before the final boss and did every side quest I could out of curiosity but ultimately dropped this game because I simply wasn't enjoying my time.
Sea of Stars is a game that fundamentally does not understand its inspirations. I'm dangerously close to feeling like I was scammed, to be honest, given its marketing. "Aggressively mid" is probably the best way to describe this game. You're much better off playing the classics that inspired this game (Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Breath of Fire) and admiring the artwork from afar.
The combat is pretty satisfying on a surface level, but never develops much past the first few hours, which ends up feeling repetitive without a lot of skill variety or new mechanics to play with and adapt to. Party building is practically non-existent. There is some leeway to let you optimize your party with stat increase selection upon level ups and rudimentary equipment diversity, but overall every single character ends up being a glorified default attacker suited for whatever color element you need at the moment. Characters pretend like they're different from each other, but the game never asks you or gives you the ability to build strong magic attackers or bulky defensive units, or come up with niche party compositions, leading every fight to feel exactly the same.
The story and character writing was so poor that I couldn't even laugh at how bad it was. I felt like I was staring at blank walls the entire time. Nothing the characters did, said, or experienced ever mattered to themselves or their surroundings beyond superficiality. Every other line was a meta joke or quip about overused tropes and stereotypical JRPG writing, I felt like I was reading some Redditor's idea of an #epic D&D campaign. I swear I was only one step removed from reading a "Well, that just happened!" but at the same time I had to read a "Yeet" joke in 2023 with a straight face so, yeah. In spite of all this, Sea of Stars still has the audacity to bring out plot points of such grand scale that just don't feel earned due to its writing.
Frankly, I tried to give Sea of Stars more chances than it deserves. I so badly wanted another Chrono Trigger that I lowered my standards to convince myself I was having fun until I just couldn't take it anymore. I was kept bored the entire time I was playing, desperately continuing to see if it gets better... but it never did. I played up to right before the final boss and did every side quest I could out of curiosity but ultimately dropped this game because I simply wasn't enjoying my time.
Sea of Stars is a game that fundamentally does not understand its inspirations. I'm dangerously close to feeling like I was scammed, to be honest, given its marketing. "Aggressively mid" is probably the best way to describe this game. You're much better off playing the classics that inspired this game (Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Breath of Fire) and admiring the artwork from afar.