I was obsessed with this one back then. With the new X-Men '97 show currently blowing my mind, I felt like revisiting the first X-Men-related game I ever played.
As an arcade fighter type of experience, it's still good fun but it feels a bit choppy.
As an arcade fighter type of experience, it's still good fun but it feels a bit choppy.
I have never played Marvel vs. Capcom 2, so this is still the peak experience from that era for me.
I was even more obsessed with this one - and spent way longer playing it - than X-Men vs SF.
I love how good and tight it still plays.
Makes me wish they went back to this pixel-art style with a more modern roster of characters.
I was even more obsessed with this one - and spent way longer playing it - than X-Men vs SF.
I love how good and tight it still plays.
Makes me wish they went back to this pixel-art style with a more modern roster of characters.
2024
Finished the "first tier" on SteamDeck after 9 hours.
Apparently the game has 3 tiers of secrets/things to collect, and I'm halfway through the second one (the first one giving you the credits).
Animal Well is a phenomenal experience, with an eerie and mysterious atmosphere, satisfying exploration and puzzle solving.
I especially loved how the "boss fights" are really tense puzzles instead of actual fighting, as there is no real combat in the game.
I probably won't spend the time it would take to complete the 2nd and 3rd tiers of the game, and I'm OK with that. What I got is already a super memorable and rewarding experience.
Apparently the game has 3 tiers of secrets/things to collect, and I'm halfway through the second one (the first one giving you the credits).
Animal Well is a phenomenal experience, with an eerie and mysterious atmosphere, satisfying exploration and puzzle solving.
I especially loved how the "boss fights" are really tense puzzles instead of actual fighting, as there is no real combat in the game.
I probably won't spend the time it would take to complete the 2nd and 3rd tiers of the game, and I'm OK with that. What I got is already a super memorable and rewarding experience.
2023
Ever since I saw the first trailers for this game, I was excited for it. After ~30 hours and achieving the True Ending on my Switch, I found Sea Of Stars a wonderful yet flawed experience. An ambitious project by an apparently small but evidently capable team.
I played the game in two chunks of time. First when it was released, and then a few week ago until now. There's a reason for the break in between.
The absolute best feature of Sea Of Stars is its presentation; the pixel art is some of the best I've seen. The design of the environments, characters, and enemies is stunning and memorable. And it's all wrapped in beautifully detailed lighting and shadows, and lively particle and environmental effects that make the game a delight to look at.
The UI is minimal and effective, and practically non-existent during exploration, which immerses you further and makes appreciating the visual artwork all the easier.
The soundtrack is captivating too, and it's fun to listen to the interesting differences in instrumentation between the 'day', 'night', and 'pirate' versions of the songs. Yasunori Mitsuda's pieces are mesmerising gifts as well.
Some of the peripherals are wonderful, like the cooking - with the satisfying sound effects of the meal-prepping, the kitchen-ware at work, and the sizzling, coupled with the crisp food pixel art - as well as the fantastic Wheels mini-game, which also boasts amazing pixel artwork, satisfying sound effects, and a plain fun game-loop.
Sea Of Stars very much wears its Chrono Trigger-inspiration on its sleeves, with many aspects both within and around its combat system taken directly from CT, having its aforementioned composer as an invited guest, and even some obvious aspects from the story that parallels CT's. If you love Chrono Trigger will likely appreciate most of these. My mind was racing by imagining what CT would look like with the SoS coat of paint.
However, some of these similarities that the creators tried to replicate were just not properly executed. A particularly jarring instance is the transitions from the dungeons and towns in and out of the world map view, where the loading times would average 10 seconds and then you'd only spent as much time in the world map walking a straight line from one dungeon/town to the next, therefore triggering another 10-second loading screen. The world of Sea Of Stars is an ocean with a two handfuls of islands. Only after getting the means to travel across the ocean does the world feel "open". When you're walking through the islands it's rather an extremely linear affair with no exploration, to the point where sometimes this world view felt rather pointless. This is the one truly annoying thing I can say about Sea Of Stars.
There are other things that, while far from terrible, were not realised to its full potential, just felt flat, or they take too long to fall in place and click.
I felt the battle system had many interesting different mechanics, but at some point it became somewhat repetitive. I believe the pacing at which these mechanics were introduced was not well thought out, so they either came in too close or too far apart from each other, which resulted in feeling overwhelmed or bored, respectively.
Having played and enjoyed The Messenger (the creators' previous game, set in the same universe) I was already invested in this world, setting, and characters. Perhaps I was expecting too much from Sea Of Stars, but I felt the writing was thin for the most part, mainly because of the characters and lack of development thereof. I loved Garl from the get-go and until the end I thought he was most fun character with deservedly a big impact on the story and an earned emotional payoff. But even he felt rather basic at times. The rest of the roster felt thin and one-dimensional - even if their one quirk was fun and interesting. Worst of all, the main protagonists - Zale and Valere - are mostly uninteresting, and borderline robotic at times.
Only thanks to the rest of the characters and the connections to The Messenger that came up from time to time, I was still having a good time continuing. But at some point that wasn't enough.
After some hours, I felt my excitement to continue the game deflating. I guess these unpolished parts of the game started to add up and chop off the fun parts. At that moment I decided I needed a break, so I shelved the game - perhaps halfway through it - knowing that I'd come back to it later.
Months later, I actually felt like revisiting Chrono Trigger, which in turn primed me to pick up Sea Of Stars again. In retrospect, I think SoS requires a bit of patience from players, to go over the most sluggish bits of the story and the combat system.
When I came back to it, I actually felt like the combat finally clicked and became fun again. I also appreciated how the dungeons are full of unique interactions and diverse traversal mechanics, and the amount of puzzles kept exploration engaging. Perhaps the second half of the game is just better paced overall. All in all, I was fully hooked, and it was smooth sailing through some surprises in style to those found in The Messenger, all the way to the ending, and past it.
But it wasn't the True Ending. As is tradition on many games and specially RPGs, the True Ending requires completing some extra activities and side-quests. Fortunately, the majority of these side quests are well fleshed out and are rewarding experiences on their own, with some great battles and slight twists to the battle system. One of them - the trickiest, most time-consuming of them all - did however surface some annoying quirks in the game that would benefit from quality-of-life improvements: being unable to escape a dungeon / skip back to a dungeon entrance, and the map only showing the islands' name and not the towns/dungeons within the islands were the top most annoying things to deal with during endgame.
The reward was worth it overall, though. The final side-quest is wholly wholesome and the True Ending is satisfying and emotional.
Now I feel like revisiting The Messenger to see how they're connected. And I look forward to Sabotage's next project - hopefully in the same universe.
Sea Of Stars is chiefly a labor of passion and love, and a display of technical and artistic prowess that's mostly dragged down by weak writing.
I played the game in two chunks of time. First when it was released, and then a few week ago until now. There's a reason for the break in between.
The absolute best feature of Sea Of Stars is its presentation; the pixel art is some of the best I've seen. The design of the environments, characters, and enemies is stunning and memorable. And it's all wrapped in beautifully detailed lighting and shadows, and lively particle and environmental effects that make the game a delight to look at.
The UI is minimal and effective, and practically non-existent during exploration, which immerses you further and makes appreciating the visual artwork all the easier.
The soundtrack is captivating too, and it's fun to listen to the interesting differences in instrumentation between the 'day', 'night', and 'pirate' versions of the songs. Yasunori Mitsuda's pieces are mesmerising gifts as well.
Some of the peripherals are wonderful, like the cooking - with the satisfying sound effects of the meal-prepping, the kitchen-ware at work, and the sizzling, coupled with the crisp food pixel art - as well as the fantastic Wheels mini-game, which also boasts amazing pixel artwork, satisfying sound effects, and a plain fun game-loop.
Sea Of Stars very much wears its Chrono Trigger-inspiration on its sleeves, with many aspects both within and around its combat system taken directly from CT, having its aforementioned composer as an invited guest, and even some obvious aspects from the story that parallels CT's. If you love Chrono Trigger will likely appreciate most of these. My mind was racing by imagining what CT would look like with the SoS coat of paint.
However, some of these similarities that the creators tried to replicate were just not properly executed. A particularly jarring instance is the transitions from the dungeons and towns in and out of the world map view, where the loading times would average 10 seconds and then you'd only spent as much time in the world map walking a straight line from one dungeon/town to the next, therefore triggering another 10-second loading screen. The world of Sea Of Stars is an ocean with a two handfuls of islands. Only after getting the means to travel across the ocean does the world feel "open". When you're walking through the islands it's rather an extremely linear affair with no exploration, to the point where sometimes this world view felt rather pointless. This is the one truly annoying thing I can say about Sea Of Stars.
There are other things that, while far from terrible, were not realised to its full potential, just felt flat, or they take too long to fall in place and click.
I felt the battle system had many interesting different mechanics, but at some point it became somewhat repetitive. I believe the pacing at which these mechanics were introduced was not well thought out, so they either came in too close or too far apart from each other, which resulted in feeling overwhelmed or bored, respectively.
Having played and enjoyed The Messenger (the creators' previous game, set in the same universe) I was already invested in this world, setting, and characters. Perhaps I was expecting too much from Sea Of Stars, but I felt the writing was thin for the most part, mainly because of the characters and lack of development thereof. I loved Garl from the get-go and until the end I thought he was most fun character with deservedly a big impact on the story and an earned emotional payoff. But even he felt rather basic at times. The rest of the roster felt thin and one-dimensional - even if their one quirk was fun and interesting. Worst of all, the main protagonists - Zale and Valere - are mostly uninteresting, and borderline robotic at times.
Only thanks to the rest of the characters and the connections to The Messenger that came up from time to time, I was still having a good time continuing. But at some point that wasn't enough.
After some hours, I felt my excitement to continue the game deflating. I guess these unpolished parts of the game started to add up and chop off the fun parts. At that moment I decided I needed a break, so I shelved the game - perhaps halfway through it - knowing that I'd come back to it later.
Months later, I actually felt like revisiting Chrono Trigger, which in turn primed me to pick up Sea Of Stars again. In retrospect, I think SoS requires a bit of patience from players, to go over the most sluggish bits of the story and the combat system.
When I came back to it, I actually felt like the combat finally clicked and became fun again. I also appreciated how the dungeons are full of unique interactions and diverse traversal mechanics, and the amount of puzzles kept exploration engaging. Perhaps the second half of the game is just better paced overall. All in all, I was fully hooked, and it was smooth sailing through some surprises in style to those found in The Messenger, all the way to the ending, and past it.
But it wasn't the True Ending. As is tradition on many games and specially RPGs, the True Ending requires completing some extra activities and side-quests. Fortunately, the majority of these side quests are well fleshed out and are rewarding experiences on their own, with some great battles and slight twists to the battle system. One of them - the trickiest, most time-consuming of them all - did however surface some annoying quirks in the game that would benefit from quality-of-life improvements: being unable to escape a dungeon / skip back to a dungeon entrance, and the map only showing the islands' name and not the towns/dungeons within the islands were the top most annoying things to deal with during endgame.
The reward was worth it overall, though. The final side-quest is wholly wholesome and the True Ending is satisfying and emotional.
Now I feel like revisiting The Messenger to see how they're connected. And I look forward to Sabotage's next project - hopefully in the same universe.
Sea Of Stars is chiefly a labor of passion and love, and a display of technical and artistic prowess that's mostly dragged down by weak writing.