Sea of Stars ($34.99, available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox) is a love letter to classic 16-bit role-playing games like Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. This Sabotage Studio-developed title features gorgeous pixel artwork, engrossing turn-based battles, an excellent soundtrack, and a fantastic world that ties it all together. Sea of Stars has its share of foibles, namely some tedious combat mechanics and bland protagonists. Nonetheless, it's a fantastic RPG that riffs on genre icons from the past, while injecting enough uniqueness to stand on its own.
(Credit: Sabotage Studio)An RPG Inspired by Classics
You begin by selecting a main character from two options: Valerie and Zale. Besides a few unique lines sprinkled throughout your adventure, this choice doesn’t affect the narrative (plus, you start the story with both characters in your party and go through the same story beats). For comparison, the Star Ocean games prevent you from obtaining certain party members and quest lines depending on who you choose as your lead, which incentivizes you to replay the game. In Sea of Stars, it's a mostly cosmetic choice.
Protagonists Valere and Zale are magically inclined children living in Mooncradle Village. After an unfortunate incident early in their lives, they honed their abilities in Zenith Academy to battle supernatural abominations called Dwellers. It’s your standard RPG quest to save the world and defeat evil, though it has a few twists to keep the plot engaging. The game moves at a brisk pace, with a playthrough clocking in at around 20 hours, which can be pushed to 25 or more if you engage in optional side content and quests. It’s satisfyingly concise, like classic SNES RPGs.
Admittedly, the characterization falters a bit. Sea of Stars is relatively lighthearted, and the character development feels deliberately sparse so as to not bog down the plot and pacing. The result is a cast of fairly one-note characters that, while not bad, aren't particularly interesting, either. The main characters are especially bland; Valere and Zale are essentially blank slates that engage in the dialogue to further the plot, but don’t have much substance themselves.
On the flipside, the music has plenty of personality, and it delivers wonderfully catchy tunes from beginning to end. The soundtrack features music from Eric Brown, a composer who also wrote music for Sabotage Studio’s previous title, the side-scrolling Ninja Gaiden homage known as The Messenger. It also includes guest tracks by Yasunori Mitsuda, the composer behind classic RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Shadow Hearts. It’s a fantastic collection that perfectly suits the nostalgia-fueled visuals that Sea of Stars brings to the forefront.
(Credit: Sabotage Studio)Gameplay Is King
Sea of Stars’ greatest strength is its gameplay, which smartly blends combat, exploration, and puzzle solving to produce a game world that feels satisfyingly interactive despite the 2D presentation. Solving puzzles involves magical tools and key items you acquire throughout the adventure, so you can do things like use a hook shot called Graplou to cross wide gaps or fire gusts of wind with the Mistral Bracelet to propel rafts across bodies of water. Of course, you also have important core movement abilities to aid in exploration. You can climb, swim, jump, and hop off ledges with ease, all of which become second nature as you investigate every nook and cranny. There are unmistakable Legend of Zelda vibes while exploring zones, though the puzzles are considerably less demanding.
In addition, there are side quests that flesh out the game world, collectibles to hunt, fish to reel, and even a slots-based board game called Wheels that you can enjoy in most towns. It is a thoroughly entertaining world to explore.
(Credit: Sabotage Studio)Turn-Based Combat With a Twist
You inevitably get pulled into combat as you explore. Monsters roam the maps and act as obstacles within the environment; they engage in turn-based combat as soon as you touch them. Fighting takes place on the same screen (like in Chrono Trigger), so there are no disorienting transitions to a battle scene. The parties take turns attacking each other until victory is achieved, but the combat becomes quite complex as you earn new party members.
You initiate an action with each party member, but each character can only take a single action per turn. A convenient clock icon over each enemy displays their turn order, making it easy to determine which foe attacks next. Sea of Stars makes heavy use of timed button presses, which adds a dynamic, action game-like veneer to combat. Like the Super Mario RPGs, you tap a button in sync with your attacking character to deal bonus damage or a follow-up hit. It also affects defense, so tapping this button when an enemy attacks you reduces incoming damage.
As you damage enemies, you build Combo Points. You spend these on powerful combo skills, which are special attacks performed by two party members (like double techs in Chrono Trigger). These combo skills give your team powerful offensive options, and they're particularly useful when you need multi-hit skills.
Spell locks add another wrinkle to the combat by demanding well-timed attacks, plus a specific sequence of attacks. Monsters can charge special attacks, which usually take multiple turns to cast. While doing so, a set of lock icons appears over the enemy, revealing the attack's weakness. For example, a sword icon indicates slashing damage, while a hammer indicates blunt damage. You're encouraged to use those attacks to break the locks within the indicated number of turns. This often requires swapping between characters and optimizing your timed strikes, which livens up the already energetic combat. Successfully breaking all locks interrupts the enemy’s cast, which is integral to mitigating damage from enemies and bosses. Combo skills are particularly useful for breaking locks, as they often deal multiple hits of several damage types.
The combination of turn-based and action-prompt systems produces a satisfyingly demanding combat system. On the other hand, regular enemies also use the lock system, so breaking locks every single battle bogs down the combat pace. Your characters grow stronger over time, but the challenge is consistent throughout most of the adventure. As a result, you rarely get the satisfaction of crushing lower-level monsters like you do in other RPGs. Although this means that you never have to grind for experience points, it also means that every enemy encounter is demanding. It becomes a little exhausting by the game's end.
(Credit: Sabotage Studio)Can Your PC Run Sea of Stars?
Sea of Stars is not a demanding game, which shouldn’t be all that surprising given the pixel-based visuals. To play at minimum settings, your PC needs an AMD Phenom II X4 945 or Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 CPU, AMD Radeon R5 230 or Nvidia GeForce GT 520 GPU, 5GB of storage space, 4GB of RAM, and the Windows 7 operating system. Sabotage Studio recommends an AMD FX 4300 or Intel Core i3 2120 CPU, AMD Radeon R5 340X or Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 GPU, and 8GB of RAM.
The game ran flawlessly on a test computer housing an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM. Sea of Stars uses a native 640 by 360 resolution, and upscales the image to fit your monitor resolution. The game ran without issue at 60 frames per second on a 1440p monitor. Better still, Sea of Stars ran well on Steam Deck.
The game supports keyboard and gamepad controls. We played Sea of Stars on PC, but it's also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Why You Should Game on a PCA Retro Lover’s RPG
Sea of Stars is a terrific RPG that'll satisfy nostalgia-hungry gamers. Character development is overly simplistic compared with the overwhelming richness of modern RPGs, but that doesn’t detract too much from the enjoyment. Combat is fantastically engaging, if a little long-winded by the end of the game. Gorgeous pixel art, brilliant music, and impressive polish result in an outstanding overall package. If you’re in the mood for a short, concise RPG with an awesome retro look, give Sea of Stars a try.
For in-depth video game talk, visit PCMag's Pop-Off YouTube channel.
