Sea of Stars Review

To call Sea of Stars a love letter is trite.

Sabotage Studio’s masterful original work is more than a recreation of the most beloved parts of turn-based RPGs from the Super Nintendo and PlayStation 1 era. Were Sabotage to release Sea of Stars 25 years ago, few would bat an eye if this game ran on a plastic cartridge or multiple discs.

The game’s beating heart is a not only a love for the genre but a deep understanding of what makes it tick and what fans have come to expect after decades of playing these games.

Around the 15-hour mark of Sea of Stars, the game’s world expands a bit further, allowing players to traverse the open waters on a newly-acquired former ghost ship. Almost as if the developers knew I would ignore the next story beat and sail around, I discovered blatantly obvious upcoming story beats. Oh this sea has to sink to reveal these ruins underneath all that blue, right? There’s a floating island… so obviously my crew is going to get some late-game wings, right?

Much like in Final Fantasy IV and VI when I finally wasn’t walking across the map, my eyes widened.

A character would make a bad joke and the next dialog box would pause for an uncomfortable extra couple beats, because hey, we don’t have voice acting and how else do you communicate mood unless it’s through clever use of what you’ve got. Sabotage Studios has the technology to make these pixelated characters emote and even speak with a broad spectrum of animation but still would have their sprites teleport around rapidly to evoke panic like in the old days.

Sea of Stars is not just an amalgamation of this or that turn-based RPG you remember. The nails, screws, wood, brick, appliances, utilities, and mailbox are all things players may recognize but aren’t just cobbled together for the sake of reference. Yes, Sabotage Studios reveres the classics. That much is apparent if you played their platforming tribute The Messenger. But what Sabotage has gotten right is that to make a truly exceptional “alike”, you need clever twists. You need a heart and a soul to make that house of game pieces a true home. And you need a sense of modernity.

Valere and Zale are Solstice Warriors born to use Eclipse Magic, using the powers of the sun and moon to defeat The Fleshmancer, a blooming evil that is wrapped in mystery. As children, Valere and Zale are taken to the floating academy above their village to train until they come of age and are strong enough to eliminate the Dwellers, beings create from The Fleshmancer’s magic.

The storytelling often leans into its fantasy tropes laid out by games before it. The pair has a childhood friend, Garl, who has no magic ability but acts as a grounding force and the true heart of the team. A mysterious character that keeps hinting at even greater mysteries arrives just before the plot becomes too linear. Fetch quests happen for an item to help acquire an even more powerful item.

Sea of Stars seeks comfort in its narrative familiarity by having larger-than-life forces face even deadlier cosmic threats. The journey getting there is not completely foreign. But what makes this instance special is that Sabotage is having fun with expectations.

An early betrayal actually deepens the plot while exploding key character motivations. A surprise reveal is laughed off because while the player knows its coming, the characters shockingly reveal they knew it too, yet never let the audience know.

While Sea of Stars can brush with meta humor and genre pillars, it does so in ways that serve as a boon to the game’s story and mood. Players are going to laugh at the intended humor (hopefully) but never be taken out of a dramatic moment. In fact, several times a serious plot beat is laced with casual humor because the main narrative dives into heavy territory.

Life and death are treated with reverence in Sea of Stars and there were few times a moment didn’t resonate with me. The game has true warmth to it because it plays out like a best friend, knowing how best to foster a sense of familiarity and camaraderie. The core friendship between Valere, Zale, and Garl flows through its peaks and valleys as early on, the Solstice Warriors lament having to abandon their childhood friend who soon pops in at the right moment for levity.

Players are given the choice to have Valere or Zale as their primary character but it does not alter the narrative and can be changed at any time in the game. But it’s done as a matter of preference rather than simplicity. Both characters are unique individuals who never act as saviors, rather just two people who don’t wish to give up on their friends or the people they feel compelled to save.

The entire cast of characters checks nearly any box players may want from a fantasy game. There’s a pirate who has to be blindfolded as it’s the only way he can use his wind magic that helps navigate the open waters. Mole people who had to abandon their magic ways to continuously maintain holes in a mountain that magically play a song to keep a potentially world-ending dragon asleep. A cabal of four characters who only wear masks and teleport in an out of important events. And of course there’s ghosts, sea people, giants, necromancers, farmers, and more.

At times my immersion was broken by a YouTube personality being randomly inserted into a village. Or the game forcing me to go to a crypt that housed what I assume are the elaborate graves of Kickstarter backers… only for me to wander around it for a few minutes hoping it was something else because it contained an amazing NPC and I was enough in love with the world that I was hoping for some actual narrative thing that might exist there but I didn’t have the patience to see.

And Sea of Stars certainly has an exquisite world worth falling in love with. Over the runtime of the game, players will bounce back and forth between a few key locations and islands but never linger in one place for too long.

Discussing what’s in Sea of Stars without hand-waving it away by saying “what you’ve seen in genre staples” is an easy, yet apt, task. Any player who has delved into a number of these games like myself knows what they’re getting. But graveyards, snow-capped mountains, coral-lined beaches, and mystic ruins aren’t just in RPGs. They are in action games, racers, platformers, and shooters.

Like any game worth its weight, Sea of Stars takes the familiar and makes it fantastical. Much of the heavy lifting is done by the breathtaking pixel art Sabotage should be commended for. In terms of character animations, there are no duds because each one is intricately designed to be expressive in a variety of scenarios, despite whatever pixel count their sprites are limited to. You know what’s impressive? I don’t remember there being a palette swap or smaller enemies in a genre rife with the practice.

Levels in Sea of Stars aren’t mere flat surfaces that are broken up with ladders and doorways. An exorbitant amount of work obviously went into designing these spaces to communicate to the player that exploration is key. Tightropes can be walked across, cliffsides are clung to, and players will open up shortcuts and exploration tools that can be used in earlier stages.

Going off the main path is rewarded with treasure and loot. There are some instances where I would wander around the environment to try and find a hidden item but run into a dead end that seemed like was leading somewhere. Considering there’s only one default run speed and some areas aren’t as friendly to backtrack, the desire to be thorough can be frustrating.

Thankfully, there are no random battles in Sea of Stars as players can usually identify nearby enemies outside of the occasional ambush.

As far as modern quality-of-life decisions go, not having random encounters is one of my favorite. And that’s balanced out by having the difficulty in Sea of Stars being moderately straightforward. While it is possible to grind in the game, it’s fairly inconvenient to do so. Plus, the game adapts to the player by never making any engagement a complete cakewalk. Sabotage included a number of relics that players can turn on and off to circumvent mechanics, alter the reward economy, or enable more responsiveness.

Battles in Sea of Stars are turn-based in the sense that players select characters to perform actions with and then enemies will attack depending on the queue. Adapting to modern sensibilities, nearly every action, spell, or defensive move in the game can be enhanced with a timed button press. Press X right when an attack lands and the character will do a second slash for some extra damage. Right before the cyclone of a healing spell reaches its apex, tap the button for some additional health. A particular favorite of mine was Valere’s Moonerang that hits an enemy, heads back to Valere, and can be deflected to another enemy. With each successful deflect, the Moonerang moves faster and faster, making expanding the damage but shortening the timing window.

The game in its tutorials reminds players that not landing these extra moves is okay. Especially when it comes to miffing a multi-strike attack by an enemy that shaves off half your health. It’s okay. It happens. But the stakes truly change when enemies and bosses have stagger bars.

In Sea of Stars, players have the opportunity to reduce or completely negate the attacks of some enemies. During an encounter, a bar will come up with multiple damage types that a players needs to inflict on an enemy. This could be poison, solar, crescent, or blunt damage. Using that damage type will knock one square off this bar, reducing the total damage of the attack. Knock out all the squares and that enemy or boss likely won’t attack and lose a turn.

One of the earlier boss fights was a massive plant creature that had four tendrils. Each tendril had its own health bar and chance to attack. In the first part of the fight, it got some attacks in because each tendril had full health but when revived, would only have half health. However, I was able to stun two of the tentacles using spells and killing them before they could attack. Doing so I was able to leave the boss in a state of perpetually reviving its tentacles.

Not every fight will be easy like this. Simple fights can pose a challenge because multiple enemies may require multiple damage types, meaning the best you can hope for is to reduce the spell power.

There’s a delicate dance of figuring out when to use a spell, when to use a physical attack to regain MP, and who to attack. This grows more complex as combo attacks are introduced with damage given and received and the use of absorbing energy after attacking enemies. Players can suck up to three energy orbs to boost any attack or spell, including giving a basic attack elemental damage, further enabling stagger opportunities.

Over the course of the game, it is possible that players may grow a little exhausted over the mechanics of the game and having to constantly time button presses. I know after a long session my right thumb was hurting over the amount of times I frantically pressed X. But there is a cadence to Sea of Stars where enough small changes are introduced to gameplay that it usually feels fresh and rewarding. And, if you grow tired of the timing, just enable a relic that does it automatically for you!

Sea of Stars’ most nostalgic triumph is undoubtedly its soundtrack. Composed by Sabotage’s Eric W. Brown with contributions by legendary Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger fame, the music here is of some of the highest quality I’ve heard in decades. To say the soundtrack is iconic does not feel like hyperbole. At one point when fighting the ghost pirate captain (pictured above), I had to stop for a moment and let the music play as the battle themed morphed into a electronic theme laced with sea-faring overtures and accordion. When I returned to the starting village, I couldn’t believe how infectiously charming the song was. Hit after hit plays throughout Sea of Stars and I know this soundtrack will be one for the books.

I say that calling Sea of Stars a love letter is trite. Not because the phrase isn’t accurate but because it fails to truly capture the effort Sabotage Studio has put into crafting a game that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the best parts of the JRPGs you may remember and the best modern renovations we have seen in recent RPGs. A love letter is something you write to reflect on fond memories and the qualities you admire in the object of that affection. But ultimately, they are just words and thoughts.

Sea of Stars is action. It’s code. It’s tribute. It’s inspiring. An unfathomably sublime soundtrack capturing the mood of every instance. A world of carefully animated sprites and pixels. Hard-hitting action. A weaving, personal narrative. These are all things to love in their own right. And while not unique to Sea of Stars, it transforms the title beyond a mere letter of love.

Sea of Stars excels on so many levels. Much of Sabotage Studio’s work is homage to the games the developers and ourselves played as children, living in these vibrant worlds of fantasy and magic. But rather than work to be a carbon copy of the past to remind players of the fun they used to have, care was taken to play with expectations and design around an updated vision of those classics. Few games can feel as nostalgic and modern as this, while becoming a classic in their own right. And Sea of Stars is a classic.