chrisrin
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Played in 2024
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This review contains spoilers
OVERALL THOUGHTS
After putting 42 hours into In Stars and Time I can walk away and say I'm happy I played it. The game was deeply charming, filled with well-written characters and used its character-driven narrative to a full and fulfilling extent. While the combat was simple and often lacking in areas, the game makes up for its shortcomings by fully taking advantage of the unique gameplay aspects that revolve around the timeloop mechanic. The attention to detail when it comes to interactions and new monologues/dialogues you get as you go forward in loops is very well done and makes the world feel a bit more alive and reactive to your actions as a player.
As an RPGMaker game coming off the backs of things like Omori, Undertale, and OneShot, ISAT manages to stand out amongst them due to its unique premise and gimmick. It deserves in some ways to stand among some of these iconic titles with accolades of its own.
(huge spoiler warning from here on out!)
POSITIVES
As I said, the game is incredibly charming. The characters feel real and fleshed-out. The writing feels mature especially for the topics it tackles, and it feels real in a way I think a lot of games like these tend to fall short in.
the characters.
The Friendship Quests were truly standout moments. Mira's internal conflict about her religious values vs. her sexuality/romantic orientation. Odile's discussion about identity and being biracial and how our origins may or may not affect us. Isabeau's everything. It was all very well done, incredibly so. I feel though Bonnie's Friendship Quest tells us more about Siffrin's own state rather than Bonnie but it services the story and gives important context to Siff's charater so I don't mind that it's in a slightly different direction compared to all the other ones.
I also personally very very much connected with both Mira and especially Isa's stories. I loved them a lot.
On top of that, all the dialogue and little exchanges your party has climbing up the castle is well written. The characters have a dynamic that bounces very well off each other, and you do get the feeling that these characters have been companions for a while. It's just nice, it's cozy.
the art.
The game's art and music is lovely and deeply charming. The sprites are silly and make me very happy! Though I do wish some of the music especially in Act 5 & 6 were able to be better utilized but I'll talk about that more when I get into my critiques.
the gamplay.
And on the topic of gameplay, the general gameplay 'loop' is good. It's solid. It uses the time travel mechanic well, and while it can be frustrating that the game really does waste a lot of your time even with the ability to skip through dialogue, it wasn't egregious enough to me where it stood out as a large issue. I thought that the amount of new content there was when going back and forth around the house was enough to satisfy me.
However, I did have a period of around 3 hours (from hours 10-13) where the game was unfun. This was after I had gotten the ability to beat the King, but found myself actually struggling to kill him. While this could very-much be a skill issue (fair), I think some aspects of the looping mechanic during that small section of the game, combined with backtracking, can mix for a poor experience.
a-ha moments.
But I think it's Act 4 where the game shined the most. I was taking notes for a huge majority of the game, I'm a very forgetful person so it was incredibly helpful to me. I also went out of my way to get every possible side quest and achievment I could. Everything without a guide (though I had friends nudging me when I needed help), I saw every nook and cranny of the game that you can reasonably find without a guide or without a huge amount of luck and coincidence. I saw the secret ending (we'll talk about it), I saw the sus route, I saw the statues, I saw all of Bonnie's stuff, I saw it all. This was by-far my favorite part of the game. This part of the game was a puzzle-solving mystery at its core. You're given hints by Loop and nudges, but early on thinking to myself "Hm, there's a specific sound that plays when I do something 'suspicious' in loops. I wonder if I can do all of those in a row and Odile might call me out on it" and then that happens.
That was an INCREDIBLE feeling. I love love those types of moments in games, the ones where you can craft a theory about a mystery the game lays out for you, and be right about it.
This, to me, was the best part of the game. It's when its gameplay loop and narrative melded the most closely together. Getting the Memory of Sadnesses was also just a lifesaver, and the castle felt much more like a complex puzzle than a dungeon, and that was a very good thing at this point in the game.
It reminded me in many ways of discovering certain mysteries in Outer Wilds, and I really appreciated that from the game. Overall it was just very very well crafted in that regard, and since that part of the game is a HUGE chunk of the game (especially for me, who did it all) I think that alone puts it above many other games that don't have this level of satisfying mystery solving.
NOT-SO POSITIVES
Alright. The game is good. We've established that. Everything I say here on-out is out of love <3
combat.
The combat in the game is deeply, deeply shallow. While I wasn't expecting super high-key strategy in this turn-based RPG, there's a lack of any real creative usage of the combat mechanics. The Rock-Paper-Scissors concept is fascinating, and so is a turn-based/time-based economy over something like mana power, but it's not really utilized to its fullest extent.
Where the combat is good, is when it works with storytelling elements. The way Siff slowly starts to completely overpower everyone else in the party, so that after Bonnie is "killed" and you try to fight the King again, it is noticably harder because Siff is so fuckin' slow. It's how Siff will slowly get every kind of ability, and how when those abilities upgrade they lose their punny names because it demonstrates Siff's deteriorating mental health. It's how Siff gets (Just attack.) and it's the best fuckin' ability in the game. It's how you can kill yourself mid-combat with the dagger as a way to speed shit up.
bosses.
But none of this has to do with the actual combat. The most interesting boss fight was the one on Floor 1, because it forced you to utilize typings and turn economy to the extreme. No other gimmick came even close to this, and this one was still incredibly shallow. The enemies all tell you exactly what their typing is on their hands. There's no difficulty there. The only big difficulty spike is with the King, but it's not nessecarily so hard that you need to be super strategic. You just need to survive long enough to dwindle his health down while using Mira's shields on the insta hits. You target the tears during phase 2, and you're fine.
Now, the King fight doesn't need to be complex. It actually probably serves the game that it isn't too grueling, you have to do it over and over again after all, but I don't think saying "well the game inteded this" is always a fair defense when the criticism is still something that could be addressed. If you intend to make something bad, you still made something bad.
Anyways, the "boss fights" in Act 5 & 6 were also deeply disappointing. Mal du Pays is a nothing boss that offers 0 complexity, it's just there for a story reason. Bigfrin also doesn't do anything interesting, only giving you the choice to hurt your part or hurt yourself while Mira heals you. And the Loop secret boss has (1) attack and heals themselves, I was actually literally unable to die to Loop due to having the Starry Hat which healed me enough per round to make their attacks laughable.
This, kind of sucked. I get that a couple of these are story bosses, and story bosses don't need to be actual proper boss fights, but it does mean that by the time you beat the game you haven't really come to any gameplay conclusions. There's story conclusions, but there's no big capstone on the gameplay which kind of blows!
This isn't addressing these bosses at all as narrative pieces, narratively they were servicable, fascinating even at times, but I think you can do both and the game failed to even make an attempt at it in my opinion.
And there's so much stuff you could do with a Loop bossfight. Like, c'mon! That's you! A previous version of you! Why don't they have your abilities? Why aren't they more powerful than you? Why can't they maybe predict your attacks, or try to lock you in time somehow? You could even break the traditional conventions of the turn-based system even more, with their power of Time Craft!
I think that's the biggest missed potential of the game. I wish it had utilized gameplay just as well in the combat as it did in the exploration/puzzle aspect to serve the story.
Because the latter was done so well.
unsolved mysteries.
Another topic of contention for me would be the unsolved mysteries the game leaves you with. What happened to the country Siffrin was from? What was with the red color we saw in the sky, in Loop's eye, on the ground during the Bigfrin fight, when Siffrin tried to say the country's name?
The game sets itself up as a mystery in many ways, in fact, super directly! The game asks you to theorize about Loop, the game asks you question how the loops work. The game asks you to be clever and think to go back to check the statue, to be suspicious on purpose, to go through the Garden Room 20 times to speedrun touch therapy (just me?), it's asking you in so many ways to think about the game and try to put the dots together.
And then it.
Doesn't.
Answer.
Everything.
The country's existence (and now lack-thereof) is a huge, huge important plot element, to both Sif's motivation and to the King! The main villain for a large part of the story! Why don't we get answers about this?!
I understand the story has more to do with the emotional aspect, the emotional core of Sif's character, motivations, wishes, trauma, etc. but to set yourself up as a mystery and not provide answers to half of those big questions is not that good.
If the game didn't want to answer everything, it shouldn't have set the player up to want to get answers. I also think there's just a lot of areas in the plot you could squint and poke holes at, but that's a given to 98% of time loop/time travel-adjacent media so it gets a pass there.
CLOSING
Overall the game is good, and I'd highly recommend it to 82% of people. The last 18% I'd need to give a few asterisks and a couple warnings to. Those warnings to be "while the game has combat, it stays shallow, don't stress about it too much" and "not everything gets answered, even if the game makes you think it will be, be satisfied with the answers you get and don't think too hard about it"
I feel a bit bad that my critiques sound harsh, and I want to reiterate I really really really really really loved this game, I criticize it because I wish it could be better and the way I process media and my thoughts about it is wrapped in talking about it and figuring out how I feel about it.
8/10
After putting 42 hours into In Stars and Time I can walk away and say I'm happy I played it. The game was deeply charming, filled with well-written characters and used its character-driven narrative to a full and fulfilling extent. While the combat was simple and often lacking in areas, the game makes up for its shortcomings by fully taking advantage of the unique gameplay aspects that revolve around the timeloop mechanic. The attention to detail when it comes to interactions and new monologues/dialogues you get as you go forward in loops is very well done and makes the world feel a bit more alive and reactive to your actions as a player.
As an RPGMaker game coming off the backs of things like Omori, Undertale, and OneShot, ISAT manages to stand out amongst them due to its unique premise and gimmick. It deserves in some ways to stand among some of these iconic titles with accolades of its own.
(huge spoiler warning from here on out!)
POSITIVES
As I said, the game is incredibly charming. The characters feel real and fleshed-out. The writing feels mature especially for the topics it tackles, and it feels real in a way I think a lot of games like these tend to fall short in.
the characters.
The Friendship Quests were truly standout moments. Mira's internal conflict about her religious values vs. her sexuality/romantic orientation. Odile's discussion about identity and being biracial and how our origins may or may not affect us. Isabeau's everything. It was all very well done, incredibly so. I feel though Bonnie's Friendship Quest tells us more about Siffrin's own state rather than Bonnie but it services the story and gives important context to Siff's charater so I don't mind that it's in a slightly different direction compared to all the other ones.
I also personally very very much connected with both Mira and especially Isa's stories. I loved them a lot.
On top of that, all the dialogue and little exchanges your party has climbing up the castle is well written. The characters have a dynamic that bounces very well off each other, and you do get the feeling that these characters have been companions for a while. It's just nice, it's cozy.
the art.
The game's art and music is lovely and deeply charming. The sprites are silly and make me very happy! Though I do wish some of the music especially in Act 5 & 6 were able to be better utilized but I'll talk about that more when I get into my critiques.
the gamplay.
And on the topic of gameplay, the general gameplay 'loop' is good. It's solid. It uses the time travel mechanic well, and while it can be frustrating that the game really does waste a lot of your time even with the ability to skip through dialogue, it wasn't egregious enough to me where it stood out as a large issue. I thought that the amount of new content there was when going back and forth around the house was enough to satisfy me.
However, I did have a period of around 3 hours (from hours 10-13) where the game was unfun. This was after I had gotten the ability to beat the King, but found myself actually struggling to kill him. While this could very-much be a skill issue (fair), I think some aspects of the looping mechanic during that small section of the game, combined with backtracking, can mix for a poor experience.
a-ha moments.
But I think it's Act 4 where the game shined the most. I was taking notes for a huge majority of the game, I'm a very forgetful person so it was incredibly helpful to me. I also went out of my way to get every possible side quest and achievment I could. Everything without a guide (though I had friends nudging me when I needed help), I saw every nook and cranny of the game that you can reasonably find without a guide or without a huge amount of luck and coincidence. I saw the secret ending (we'll talk about it), I saw the sus route, I saw the statues, I saw all of Bonnie's stuff, I saw it all. This was by-far my favorite part of the game. This part of the game was a puzzle-solving mystery at its core. You're given hints by Loop and nudges, but early on thinking to myself "Hm, there's a specific sound that plays when I do something 'suspicious' in loops. I wonder if I can do all of those in a row and Odile might call me out on it" and then that happens.
That was an INCREDIBLE feeling. I love love those types of moments in games, the ones where you can craft a theory about a mystery the game lays out for you, and be right about it.
This, to me, was the best part of the game. It's when its gameplay loop and narrative melded the most closely together. Getting the Memory of Sadnesses was also just a lifesaver, and the castle felt much more like a complex puzzle than a dungeon, and that was a very good thing at this point in the game.
It reminded me in many ways of discovering certain mysteries in Outer Wilds, and I really appreciated that from the game. Overall it was just very very well crafted in that regard, and since that part of the game is a HUGE chunk of the game (especially for me, who did it all) I think that alone puts it above many other games that don't have this level of satisfying mystery solving.
NOT-SO POSITIVES
Alright. The game is good. We've established that. Everything I say here on-out is out of love <3
combat.
The combat in the game is deeply, deeply shallow. While I wasn't expecting super high-key strategy in this turn-based RPG, there's a lack of any real creative usage of the combat mechanics. The Rock-Paper-Scissors concept is fascinating, and so is a turn-based/time-based economy over something like mana power, but it's not really utilized to its fullest extent.
Where the combat is good, is when it works with storytelling elements. The way Siff slowly starts to completely overpower everyone else in the party, so that after Bonnie is "killed" and you try to fight the King again, it is noticably harder because Siff is so fuckin' slow. It's how Siff will slowly get every kind of ability, and how when those abilities upgrade they lose their punny names because it demonstrates Siff's deteriorating mental health. It's how Siff gets (Just attack.) and it's the best fuckin' ability in the game. It's how you can kill yourself mid-combat with the dagger as a way to speed shit up.
bosses.
But none of this has to do with the actual combat. The most interesting boss fight was the one on Floor 1, because it forced you to utilize typings and turn economy to the extreme. No other gimmick came even close to this, and this one was still incredibly shallow. The enemies all tell you exactly what their typing is on their hands. There's no difficulty there. The only big difficulty spike is with the King, but it's not nessecarily so hard that you need to be super strategic. You just need to survive long enough to dwindle his health down while using Mira's shields on the insta hits. You target the tears during phase 2, and you're fine.
Now, the King fight doesn't need to be complex. It actually probably serves the game that it isn't too grueling, you have to do it over and over again after all, but I don't think saying "well the game inteded this" is always a fair defense when the criticism is still something that could be addressed. If you intend to make something bad, you still made something bad.
Anyways, the "boss fights" in Act 5 & 6 were also deeply disappointing. Mal du Pays is a nothing boss that offers 0 complexity, it's just there for a story reason. Bigfrin also doesn't do anything interesting, only giving you the choice to hurt your part or hurt yourself while Mira heals you. And the Loop secret boss has (1) attack and heals themselves, I was actually literally unable to die to Loop due to having the Starry Hat which healed me enough per round to make their attacks laughable.
This, kind of sucked. I get that a couple of these are story bosses, and story bosses don't need to be actual proper boss fights, but it does mean that by the time you beat the game you haven't really come to any gameplay conclusions. There's story conclusions, but there's no big capstone on the gameplay which kind of blows!
This isn't addressing these bosses at all as narrative pieces, narratively they were servicable, fascinating even at times, but I think you can do both and the game failed to even make an attempt at it in my opinion.
And there's so much stuff you could do with a Loop bossfight. Like, c'mon! That's you! A previous version of you! Why don't they have your abilities? Why aren't they more powerful than you? Why can't they maybe predict your attacks, or try to lock you in time somehow? You could even break the traditional conventions of the turn-based system even more, with their power of Time Craft!
I think that's the biggest missed potential of the game. I wish it had utilized gameplay just as well in the combat as it did in the exploration/puzzle aspect to serve the story.
Because the latter was done so well.
unsolved mysteries.
Another topic of contention for me would be the unsolved mysteries the game leaves you with. What happened to the country Siffrin was from? What was with the red color we saw in the sky, in Loop's eye, on the ground during the Bigfrin fight, when Siffrin tried to say the country's name?
The game sets itself up as a mystery in many ways, in fact, super directly! The game asks you to theorize about Loop, the game asks you question how the loops work. The game asks you to be clever and think to go back to check the statue, to be suspicious on purpose, to go through the Garden Room 20 times to speedrun touch therapy (just me?), it's asking you in so many ways to think about the game and try to put the dots together.
And then it.
Doesn't.
Answer.
Everything.
The country's existence (and now lack-thereof) is a huge, huge important plot element, to both Sif's motivation and to the King! The main villain for a large part of the story! Why don't we get answers about this?!
I understand the story has more to do with the emotional aspect, the emotional core of Sif's character, motivations, wishes, trauma, etc. but to set yourself up as a mystery and not provide answers to half of those big questions is not that good.
If the game didn't want to answer everything, it shouldn't have set the player up to want to get answers. I also think there's just a lot of areas in the plot you could squint and poke holes at, but that's a given to 98% of time loop/time travel-adjacent media so it gets a pass there.
CLOSING
Overall the game is good, and I'd highly recommend it to 82% of people. The last 18% I'd need to give a few asterisks and a couple warnings to. Those warnings to be "while the game has combat, it stays shallow, don't stress about it too much" and "not everything gets answered, even if the game makes you think it will be, be satisfied with the answers you get and don't think too hard about it"
I feel a bit bad that my critiques sound harsh, and I want to reiterate I really really really really really loved this game, I criticize it because I wish it could be better and the way I process media and my thoughts about it is wrapped in talking about it and figuring out how I feel about it.
8/10
I wish I was better at platformers so I could understand the depth of the gameplay better, but even as someone who doesn't get super advanced into these types of games I still had an incredible time with it.
The game was solid, though after finishing it I had no real desire to ever come back to it. I loved the narrator, though!