Sea of Stars - A retro-inspired turn-based RPG (29/08/2023)

[darksnowman]

Lavos @ 0:48.

A demo went live after the recent Direct. It gives you a short and very sweet look at how the game is shaping up. 

Tl;dr, it can be summed up as Chrono Trigger X Mario RPG.

Yet clearly drawing inspiration from these as it does, SoS seems to be very much its own thing with its own identity in spite of the amalgamation. Much more a love letter to RPGs of the past than a heartless rip-off. Combat itself blends Chrono Trigger (no battle transition, attacks can hit multiple enemies if they're positioned close together, combo attacks) with Mario RPG timing and interaction. I was even reminded of Star Fox Adventures though not by the battling. Not sure if it's just for the purposes of the demo—because this is not just a slice of the game; it's very aware that it's a demo portion of it—but when characters are k.o'd in battle, they are just downed for one turn before getting back on their feet. No need to revive. Interesting. Signs point to there being decent depth to the combat not least because I reckon it took me far too long to finish the boss here so there must have been some trick to it that I wasn't picking up on.  Btw, the first battle I got into, I thought I was approaching a merchant NPC!  

Exp goes to the party as a collective, then when you level up you select an attribute to boost for each character like in Mario RPG. Physical attack, defence, magical attack, defence, health, mana points and all that. 

You can also climb up ledges, hop off things, use your Sorcerer's Ring equivalent to blow blocks around... you can even swim! Sounds like a lot of the usual RPG barriers are removed though sadly, in the demo town, you can't enter any of the homes.  Might not matter in the full game but in the demo I wanted to look around, talk to people and get a feel for the place. Hoping for a run button as movement on the overworld in particular is extremely pedestrian. 

These small niggles aside, Sea of Stars is shaping up quite wonderfully. Walking down the overworld path to get a listen to one of the tracks from guest composer Mitsuda was well worth it. Nice and Chrono Triggery!  

info gleaned from the dev:

• game will be breakable in NG+.
• protip for speedsters: R + A to skip through text.
• no mini map quest tracking.
• levelling. if you fall behind, beating more difficult enemies will pull you up; if you try to grind, the exp returns will lessen. the story is designed to be the driving force. if you're up to date with equipment and there's still a difficult battle, they want you to puzzle it out (weaknesses and that kind of thing). earlier in development, enemies would not respawn so exp and levels would have been finite!
• they will look at movement speed. the overworld area in the demo is one of the largest islands in the game so they understand people might have been eager to move faster to get to the action. they want you to take it in.
• no missing! no crits!
• you cannot cancel enemy spells indefinitely because they want you to see the cool spell effects and heal yourself or it'd be boring.
• ultimate attacks have the production values of summons in other RPGs.
• Switch will have performance parity with other versions. 60fps, etc. 
• doors will be openable if there's a (inventory) prompt, otherwise houses and whatnot cannot be entered.
• rainbow conch collectables can be traded for helpful items. possibly even eventually, game-breaking. 
• they don't think anything meaningful was cut or left out.
• battling (timing, breaking locks, etc) will be tutorialised. (the demo just throws you in)
• stats can be maxed out however it's "a low numbers game". max level is 30. should be around level 20 when you finish then pick up more levels in NG+.
• cannot respec.
• Protip: if there's a fish up back you want to catch, you can swim and usher it down near to the fishing dock!
• ~10 tracks from Mitsuda: town, boss, something cursed, melancholic...
• attention to detail with the in-game band. band members will not animate when their instrument is not par of the music. if you talk to a band member who is playing, their instrument will stop during the conversation.
• sound limitations imitate the SNES.

https://seaofstarsgame.co/
If you scroll down to the dynamic lighting section you can turn the dial to see how the lighting renders.

Try the demo!
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Sea-of-Stars-2090490.html

 

[Glen-i]

I played the demo yesterday. You're right in that it's Chrono Trigger meets Mario RPG, but the dungeon you got to explore gave me mad Golden Sun vibes. Very puzzle focused. It's promising so far.

I kinda dig the demo structure where it jumps ahead to the point before the dungeon and redacts dialogue at one point to avoid spoilers. It's a nice touch.

Also, it's drop dead gorgeous. The animation is stellar, the only thing that bothered me was that the cook party member (his name escapes me) flips the sprite horizontally depending on which way he's looking, which would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that he has a scar over his left eye, so the scarred eye changes depending on his direction. It's an odd mistake, considering how good everything looks here.

Definitely gonna drop money for this. I've been dying for a puzzle focused RPG like Golden Sun and Lufia II.

[EEVILMURRAY]

28 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

mad Golden Sun vibes.

You son of a bitch. I'm in.

 

I'm saddened I didn't get to experience Lufia II properly, I got the DS remake which turned it into an action style battle game, which just feels weird

[EEVILMURRAY]

Just finished the demo, shorter than I thought, I can feel the Golden Sun -ness with the platform jumping, and also Tales-esque with the queefing ring.

The main glaring thing though... "Tell me layer"

[Jonnas]

I played a chunk of the demo last night, and I liked what I saw. Great spritework, engaging battle system, memorable character design, and ambitious dungeons. Definitely has a lot of potential.

My main criticism is that it's a bit hard to orient yourself in said dungeons. The scenery should be clear enough for the player to traverse, but it's not always obvious which places you can hop into and which ones you can't. When you add that dungeon tiles move around and have perspective and altitudes and shit, it can get very disorienting. It's fine for simple dungeons, but I can see it becoming a nightmare in anything more complex.

Golden Sun often got around this by making every gap the exact same width, and each platforming tile the exact same size. In the demo, two different dungeons seemed to have two different rules for navigation, and that's not a good thing.

I figure Sea of Star could get around this by highlighting hoppable edges with a specific colour or shine. Doesn't even need to be the same colour all the time, they could do a bright yellow edge for dark surfaces, and a dark purple one for brighter environments.

Another criticism I have is regarding turn order. Some enemies show they're about to attack, others don't. Sometimes it's the same enemy, first time they attacked, I was warned, but not the second time. The player never has any idea when it's the playable characters' turn either. Maybe they don't want to copy FFX, that's fine, but they gotta find a system that's more consistent.

If they can get around these issues, I think we have a GOTY contender on our hands. Well, as far as any Indie game can be considered a GOTY

[EEVILMURRAY]

16 hours ago, Jonnas said:

Golden Sun often got around this by making every gap the exact same width, and each platforming tile the exact same size. In the demo, two different dungeons seemed to have two different rules for navigation, and that's not a good thing.

Where was the second dungeon? Did I miss shit?! because all I did was go to town, leave town into floaty dungeon, defeat magic thing, then it told me to go fuck myself and it was over.

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Where was the second dungeon? Did I miss shit?! because all I did was go to town, leave town into floaty dungeon, defeat magic thing, then it told me to go fuck myself and it was over.

I'm assuming he meant the short opening section?

[Jonnas]

Yeah, I was talking about that short opening on the mountain pass. Felt like a beginner's dungeon to me.

[darksnowman]

Quote

Sea of Stars is an RPG unabashedly inspired by the 16-bit era of Japanese RPGs. Even just looking at screenshots of the game recalls the best of the era and that’s not an accident. Developer Sabotage Studio’s CEO and Sea of Stars’ creative director, Thierry Boulanger, is a huge fan of the genre and has been building towards making a game like this for since he started building the fantasy world Sea of Stars and The Messenger takes place in during Elementary school.

Games mentioned in the video: Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Illusion of Time (!) and FF VI. Now I want to replay these.

[EEVILMURRAY]

One week to go if the dates are still solid. Are y'all feels prepared?

[drahkon]

I was kind of excited, but no random encounters, i.e. no grinding for exp/gold/loot...not my thing.

Played the demo and aside from the gorgeous visuals, I didn't enjoy it...Gonna give this a proper go next week, though. It's on PS+ Extra so no harm done if I get nothing out of it.

[Grazza]

I've just completed The Messenger, so am spiritually ready for this.

[EEVILMURRAY]

29 minutes ago, drahkon said:

I was kind of excited, but no random encounters, i.e. no grinding for exp/gold/loot...not my thing.

Unless they confirmed there was a finite number of enemies, I'm not sure how you've made the link of visible enemies = not being able to grind.

The Tales games have proven this to be possible for years, recent Pokémans games too. If anything seeing the enemy makes obtaining desired loot/ingredients/parts easier.

Edited August 22, 2023 by EEVILMURRAY

[drahkon]

1 hour ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Unless they confirmed there was a finite number of enemies, I'm not sure how you've made the link of visible enemies = not being able to grind.

There's also this quote:

Quote

Grinding won't be necessary to progress in the game. However, some enemies will respawn when you go back to previous areas, so you could go back and do these fights again to gain XP if you feel like it.

So yeah, I was wrong. Enemies do respawn and you can grind, but the devs want to make you progress the story to actually become stronger.

Given my experience with the demo, making enemies respawn is a tedious affair, i.e. you have to re-enter entire areas/quit the game.

It's no secret that I like to spend a certain amount of time in a low-level area to power up my teams in (J)RPGs, even if it's not necessarily efficient. With this game it sounds like a purposely tedious affair, to the point where it's not going to be fun for me.

To each their own, but for me this will most likely mean I won't enjoy Sea of Stars and will probably drop it soon after I've given it its fair chance.

Edited August 22, 2023 by drahkon

[Glen-i]

I'm dangerously close to clearing up my backlog now. SMT V and Digimon: Hacker's Memory are the only RPG's left on my Switch. And to be honest? Digimon Cyber Sleuth was a bit rubbish, so I'm not exactly eager to start the sequel.

So yeah, I'm up for this... After SMT V.

[Sheikah]

It's no secret that I like to spend a certain amount of time in a low-level area to power up my teams in (J)RPGs, even if it's not necessarily efficient. With this game it sounds like a purposely tedious affair, to the point where it's not going to be fun for me.

Surely if they say you don't need to grind, it's the opposite of tedious? I get you like to do it to become OP, but any game that actually needs grinding (I'm recalling Dragon Quest VIII here) has fundamentally flawed game design.

[drahkon]

Played this for a while.

It's bloody gorgeous and the music is amazing. Reminds a lot of The Messenger (obviously).

Enjoying my time with it...even though they made grinding tedious

[drahkon]

7 hours in.

No idea how I'm feeling about this.

[EEVILMURRAY]

As I restarted Stardew Valley a week ago (coming to the end of year 2, so good progress), I'm going to hold out for a physical release.

[drahkon]

Best thing to come out of this so far are the references to

Spoiler

The Messenger

 

[drahkon]

Finished it.

Pretty but shallow. That's basically it.

Started NG+ with a certain relic that makes the game more difficult, but you are so overpowered that it doesn't matter. Need to progress a few hours for the final trophy and hope that enemies scale fast enough for the battles to become more challenging.

Not sure if I'll push through, though, as it's even more boring than the first playthrough.

Hope the devs get back to their fast-paced 2D ways for their next game.

[Sheikah]

I finished this game last night, doing all but the final trophy (which requires you to basically play on NG+ up to a certain point).

I really loved it. They absolutely nailed the look, feel and tone of an old-school RPG - it really does remind you of Chrono Trigger. The way battles are triggered (i.e. non-random battles) is exactly like Chrono Trigger and works just as well here.

The story, gameplay and characters are all really top notch, it definitely scratched the 90s JRPG itch. Really pleasant surprise for it to drop on Extra.

[Happenstance]

9 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

I finished this game last night, doing all but the final trophy (which requires you to basically play on NG+ up to a certain point).

I really loved it. They absolutely nailed the look, feel and tone of an old-school RPG - it really does remind you of Chrono Trigger. The way battles are triggered (i.e. non-random battles) is exactly like Chrono Trigger and works just as well here.

The story, gameplay and characters are all really top notch, it definitely scratched the 90s JRPG itch. Really pleasant surprise for it to drop on Extra.

How long would you say it took you to complete?

[Sheikah]

How long would you say it took you to complete?

I think my in-game clock was about 44 hours at the point of completion (including all side quests and trophies, except for the one that has you starting again).