And check out Yahtzee’s other series, Extra Punctuation, where he recently talked about why Baldur’s Gate 3Romance isn’t very interesting, and you don’t want to save the world anymore.
In these turbulent times, with neo-fascism pinching our toes and climate disasters shaking our hair like an obnoxious relative at a wedding, it’s no wonder we so often turn to nostalgia. He is like a big, relaxed family dog that sits in the corner and constantly eats his illness. How fitting that shortly after the community asked me to review Chrono Trigger, an indie game heavily inspired by it should come out. Sea of Stars, developed by Sabotage, the guys who make The Messenger, is a retro-inspired action-platformer that I think was fairly good, if overwritten with a touch. It might have been better if they moved to classic JRPGs, I think. No one complains when this touch is overwritten. If anything people complain if I get to the end and God hasn’t spoken for three hundred lines about the futility of our struggle and how he certainly isn’t about to hand over his papal orbs to him by force of friendship. Also, The Escapist recently released a documentary on the development of Sea of Stars, so I thought I’d better take a look at it and make sure it’s not full of sick old dogs. Or we’d all have a half-digested ponyo on our face.
Sea of Stars tells the story of two young men who, despite the many hours we spent together, will now have to Google to remember. Zell and Valer, here we go. Valerie? Why not Valerie? Did she get traumatized by the message I sent her on the set of Sesame Street or something? Anyway, one has the power of the sun and the other the power of the moon, and they’ve both been trained almost from birth to be the new generation of Solstice Warriors at a strangely defined academy that’s strangely close to where they live. . On the eve of their graduation, it had already become apparent that something fishy was going on behind all of this. Why is there only two students in the academy and about sixteen empty beds? Why do two Solstice Warriors from the previous generation keep pointing at the Headmaster behind his back and making weird throat-cutting gestures? Then there’s the matter of Jarl, a childhood friend of Zelle and Valer. There are flashbacks where they got into trouble in a dungeon together when the kids and Jarl lost an eye and this is the last they saw before he was locked into the academy, and he is mysteriously absent from their graduation ten years later.
And at this point there was an ominous scene depicting several plotting villains wearing masks, so I thought I knew where this was going. Oh, they’ll take one of the masks off, Garl will be wearing an eyepatch and he’s bitter about being abandoned by his friends, a sword fight in the rain, lots of shouting, the final episode of Cowboy Bebop and so on. That’s what I thought. But after a couple of minutes Jarl shows up “Hey guys! I hope you have a nice necklace! Can I be a member of the third party? I made sandwiches. Then he does. I was a little freaked out, but over time I came to appreciate Jarl because he’s in this By this point, Zyl and Valir were eccentric monks who spent their formative years away from society and learn how to break up monsters by using sign language on them, and Jarl is the only party member with a real personality and social skills.It becomes a running joke how often he makes friends with his boss fights Now that we’ve watered it down enough.He’s like an infuriating D&D player who’s like an 18 Charisma Paladin and insists on trying to downplay every combat encounter.So the DM ends up going after sixteen Auxiliary NPCs and is seriously considering committing a suicide-murder with Dice bag as an impromptu paddle.
So the three of you set out on your usual quest to defeat the Evil God, but while I thought the plot of Chrono Trigger suffered from a loss of personality once the whole Evil God act unfolded like a zeppelin in a plank-twisting contest, Sea of Stars keeps the focus on the dynamic of its three main characters for the most part, though. Although a lot of the additional NPCs have the bad case of “the authors seem to think this character is cool/funny/interesting but they just don’t convey that very well.” Like the three heavily over-designed pirates who pop up every now and then to do in everything. And there’s a ninja pirate who made his way into the party at one point. Maybe with some complicated backstory or whatnot, but honestly it wasn’t interesting enough to make me pique my interest. Also a ninja pirate? What is this web humor of the early 2000s? As for the plot, once it gets going, it reverts a little too often to the old chestnut “Prove your worth to the gods, ye mighty warriors”, as we move from one ancient dungeon to another to get the magical mugvin that unlocks the next dungeon.
I don’t see why we can’t ask for a validation certificate after the first time like it’s a CostCo membership, but no, you just have to keep proving your worth like you have a bachelor’s degree or something. The gameplay is still solid. Well, the core gameplay is solid, there’s a catch-a-bit that I suppose aligns with the UN indie gaming dogma, and it’s probably the most archaic catch-a-game I’ve ever encountered, and it’s like being the least interesting true crime channel on YouTube. But the combat managed to find ways to spice up the turn-based combat without making it non-turn-based anymore, which for me was the sticking point of Chrono Trigger’s Active Time Battle approach. Now you’ve got the fairly standard version of Mario RPG-style timed hits, but there’s also a cool little idea where you can dodge certain enemies’ attacks by hitting them with a random sequence of certain types of damage. It avoids battles turning into endless repetitive strikes of attack, heal, and heal, and requires a bit of quick strategizing. It’s so satisfying when the boss has to lose a turn and sit there helpless to voice objections because you’ve successfully coordinated three strikes in the pan and a knee in the blocks.
But if I’m going to mark the main hit against gameplay with my big, chunky permanent marker, it can be a little tricky to get to. This might only be an issue if you’re one of those genetic lottery winners who throws their copy of Atlus Shrugged out of the stroller when anyone brings up the easy mode addition to Dark Souls, but I never felt particularly challenged. The game can be quite generous allowing us to return to the campfire to fully heal between each fight. Perhaps that’s why we’re only allowed ten healing items lest we break the difficulty further with the endless treasure trove of steak sandwiches right there in our inventory leaking juice all over the settings menu. There are also a bunch of equippable relics that act as easy optional modes, in the style of Final Fantasy XVI, such as a mode that automatically performs timed strikes for you or a mode that reduces damage. And that brought a philosophical moment. reduce damage? It’s just a shield, right? Does using a shield play the game on easy mode? Where is the boundary between using the standard tools the game gives you, and using the child mode workaround for Crapouts? Well, I know what Ayn Rand would have said if she were alive. You will say why am I in this coffin? It’s very dark.
