I do not understand the acclaim this game has received like at all: the writing is 4th grade level at best, the dialogue itself is so dull it gave me a migraine within the first hour, and the plot feels like a bunch of aimless tropes that they couldn't be bothered to flesh out enough to allow for even a little bit of narrative parity between character motivations and the events unfolding (though maybe they expect you to have played The Messenger to understand certain aspects of the game's worldbuilding? idk). The main characters are basically nothing, Garl's whole schtick is annoying and forced, and pretty much every interaction feels like it was written for a Nick Jr. show or something.
The combat is serviceable, and I had fun with the boss fights at least. It isn't enough to say that it's merely inspired by Super Mario RPG; it IS Super Mario RPG, but with a bit of Mario & Luigi mixed in (like literally, from the start the boy has Geno Blast and the girl has the Mario & Luigi koopa shell). Unfortunately the numbers are all so fucked up that even if you're defending every enemy attack perfectly, you end up needing to heal constantly. Not to mention the hapless addition of tedious mechanics like live mana, which kinda just feel like an attempt to say they're totally not copying Mario RPG wholesale while adding virtually nothing of note of their own to the mix. Which is fine, I suppose, but the end result is something much less compelling than any Mario RPG I've ever played.
Really though, don't let the gorgeous pixel art fool you; under the hood Sea of Stars is a grey, formless sludge of an RPG that attempts to limply replicate games like Chrono Trigger and even non-video game media like Avatar: the Last Airbender, without really understanding what made those pieces of media work so well in the first place. I truly wanted to give this game a fair shake and at least appreciate it for what it is, but at only a few hours in, I'm already at the point of not being able to figure out a reason to keep going. There are so many more interesting games out there, especially within the RPG genre itself, that I could be getting an actual meaningful experience from instead.
The combat is serviceable, and I had fun with the boss fights at least. It isn't enough to say that it's merely inspired by Super Mario RPG; it IS Super Mario RPG, but with a bit of Mario & Luigi mixed in (like literally, from the start the boy has Geno Blast and the girl has the Mario & Luigi koopa shell). Unfortunately the numbers are all so fucked up that even if you're defending every enemy attack perfectly, you end up needing to heal constantly. Not to mention the hapless addition of tedious mechanics like live mana, which kinda just feel like an attempt to say they're totally not copying Mario RPG wholesale while adding virtually nothing of note of their own to the mix. Which is fine, I suppose, but the end result is something much less compelling than any Mario RPG I've ever played.
Really though, don't let the gorgeous pixel art fool you; under the hood Sea of Stars is a grey, formless sludge of an RPG that attempts to limply replicate games like Chrono Trigger and even non-video game media like Avatar: the Last Airbender, without really understanding what made those pieces of media work so well in the first place. I truly wanted to give this game a fair shake and at least appreciate it for what it is, but at only a few hours in, I'm already at the point of not being able to figure out a reason to keep going. There are so many more interesting games out there, especially within the RPG genre itself, that I could be getting an actual meaningful experience from instead.
8 Comments
"Feels like it was written for a Nick Jr. show" yea thats sea of stars dialogue. The Messenger devs r truly tasteless
i watched a friend play enough of the messenger to know that even without the Other Thing hanging over it i would not get on with this game but you are i think legit the first person who i’ve seen actually play the game who feels this way and it’s such a relief to even see ONE person being like “hey guys what the fuck is going on here” lmao
my bf loved the messenger and dropped this really fast and seeing him play it i never felt compelled to try it at all. always seemed to be extremely boring in all and every trailer i saw of it, reading this review i guess i'm glad my unjustified hate was kinda justified?
@faea yeah i had been skeptical too, but I've had multiple friends tell me they love it so I REALLY wanted to see the value in it, but nah I guess this is just Sabotage's whole thing
@moschidae seriously, even outside of the whole JP quote thing, I was curious about The Messenger, but now I'm not sure I'll ever really bother with any games they make from now.
@poyfuh yeah i have no idea what other people see in it other than it being simple and people not having played/replayed other RPGs at any point recently. sea of stars feels like it was written by machine learning technology that got fed plot synopses of avatar the last airbender and harry potter and golden sun. it does not feel like Sabotage even likes RPGs
@Mewtsukki I really hate dismissing media out of turn. like, I've shelved some games that I didn't really mesh with at the time like Bug Fables, but I can at least see why people like Bug Fables and it was made by people who clearly love the game(s) they were inspired by, but Sea of Stars feels like a product designed to fulfill a market niche more than anything else
@moschidae seriously, even outside of the whole JP quote thing, I was curious about The Messenger, but now I'm not sure I'll ever really bother with any games they make from now.
@poyfuh yeah i have no idea what other people see in it other than it being simple and people not having played/replayed other RPGs at any point recently. sea of stars feels like it was written by machine learning technology that got fed plot synopses of avatar the last airbender and harry potter and golden sun. it does not feel like Sabotage even likes RPGs
@Mewtsukki I really hate dismissing media out of turn. like, I've shelved some games that I didn't really mesh with at the time like Bug Fables, but I can at least see why people like Bug Fables and it was made by people who clearly love the game(s) they were inspired by, but Sea of Stars feels like a product designed to fulfill a market niche more than anything else
this game seems like it was made in a lab out of [stuff you like] and poured out like pink slime. i liked a few things about the messenger a lot (mostly the soundtrack) but it was a bold choice for these frenchmen to double down on the writing of all things
It is surprising to me just how bad the writing is in Sabotage's work. I generally think games have unimpressive writing as a medium but Sabotage's stuff is just some of the most insufferable I've encountered in any artistic form
@curse yeah i do think the battle music in sea of stars was kinda solid, but tbh it's already faded from my mind so maybe it wasn't actually that good in the first place
@Archagent i was initially alarmed when at the beginning of the game i walked around the dorm in the school that the main characters went to, and every bed that i pressed A on contained the same dialogue where the main dude went like "this is my bed", and they were all like... 20 different bunk beds in the same room. but in retrospect everything was just kinda half-assed, it even starts with this really dry, cheap narrator thing and it just does not work at all
@Archagent i was initially alarmed when at the beginning of the game i walked around the dorm in the school that the main characters went to, and every bed that i pressed A on contained the same dialogue where the main dude went like "this is my bed", and they were all like... 20 different bunk beds in the same room. but in retrospect everything was just kinda half-assed, it even starts with this really dry, cheap narrator thing and it just does not work at all
faea
4 months ago