Sea of Stars (Steam) Review

A fantastic love letter to console RPGs of the past

This year has been good to fans of RPGs. The industry has unveiled new additions to existing franchises as well as innovative IPs making their mark in the space. However, sometimes gamers want a touch of nostalgia to remind them of what made gaming special in the first place. Sabotage Studio set out to do just that with their turn-based retro RPG, Sea of Stars. Bringing a classic, pixelated look to a modernized combat and exploration system while still maintaining the traditional feel of RPGs from the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sea of Stars offers a beautiful and engrossing tale that keeps players engaged from the first minute onwards.

The world of Sea of Stars consists of a variety of islands each with its own nation of people. Players control both Zale and Valere, twins that were brought to the island of Evermist during the summer and winter solstices, respectively. Their arrival marked them as wielders of solar and lunar magic, destined to become protectors of the realm known as Solstice Warriors. Together with their childhood friend and master chef Garl, the trio takes on the duties of eliminating ancient evil during a time of upheaval and danger. Each warrior is tested and trained to become something of legend during this roughly 30-hour adventure.

The visuals blur the line between hand-drawn and pixel art

Though this game has a more light-hearted look to many of its NPCs and locations, the main characters themselves have quite a bit of depth to them. Storytelling in Sea of Stars is one of its main draws, as the main and supporting cast contain complex motivations and character-building throughout the game. Several times, the action is broken up with warm pauses of narrative content meant to give the player a deeper look into how these characters are feeling. The writing is inspired, which gives this game much more gravity than one might anticipate from a retro-inspired title. Coupled with the script is incredible artwork for the characters. Sabotage’s artists have combined dense pixels with hand-drawn character models to portray these characters in a variety of emotional states. I could see smiling, anger, and shock on the character models in real-time, not just in their dialogue portraits.

As a fan of the pixel art style, I love the attention to detail here.

Islands, villages, dungeons, castles, and more populate the world of Sea of Stars and these areas offer just as much detail and intrigue as the characters do. Care was taken in designing levels that reward the player for exploring without offering too much open and empty space. For an RPG of this style, there is a surprising amount of platforming and puzzle-solving in the world. Players are given special tools throughout the journey to open up more exploration, such as the ability to manipulate day and night to suit their needs. Characters have complex animations as they leap and climb on different terrain. The world invites players to leave no path unexplored.

Combat is turn-based, with perfect pacing to strategize

Where this title shines is in its combat. As mentioned before, this is a turn-based combat system, meaning players can take as long as they need to make a move for each character. Battles are initiated by any contact the player makes with the enemies in the area, and these enemies are out in the open at all times. This means encounters can be avoided most of the time, provided the player can maneuver away from the enemy. A cool touch to these fights is that they all take place in the exact same area you find the enemies in. Therefore, there are no transition screens, map transformations or arena creations; everything happens in the space you wandered into. During the fights, each enemy has a small counter above them as a countdown to when they can attack. Beyond that, sometimes these foes will charge up, or “cast”, special attacks which can be canceled using certain combinations of attack types that are also displayed on that enemy. There are also attack types and magic that enemies are either resistant or vulnerable too, and all this comes together to drive strategy and planning on which order your characters act in.

Beyond the strategy of the fights, the attacks themselves are just cool. Sabotage Studio designed these fights with a button prompt to increase attack damage if you time the press with the character’s attack motion. The same goes for blocking; characters can decrease damage dealt if this button is pressed at the right time. Zale, Valere, Gale and other characters can learn special combo attacks to perform with each other that have an anime/cinematic look to them and can strategically turn the battle in your favor. My only gripe with this system is that, at least when I played on mouse and keyboard, I found the timing of blocks and attacks with the space bar to be difficult at times. The pixel animated combat can be deceptively slow or fast, and more often than not I’d miss the blocking animations or hit the bar too late. So, if you play this on PC or console, doing this on a controller could alleviate this.

Players can attack, cast spells and perform combos

One other surprising feature I took advantage of was special in-game items called relics. These items can be purchased or found and act as gameplay modifiers. One relic auto-heals the party after every battle, while another gives a visual indicator on-screen every time you hit the attack/defense boost button correctly. I feel these relics were a great touch to the game, showing how in touch the developers were with the player base of 2023. Using these relics can act as both an accessibility feature and a difficulty setting, and of course, they are optional to activate. After 10 hours of playing without them, I decided to flip a couple on to ease the burden of the battles and allow me to enjoy the story more seamlessly.

In closing, Sea of Stars not only delivered its promise of retro-inspired RPG gameplay, but it also crafted a touching tale of friends attempting to shift the balance of good and evil for the better. Sabotage Studio delivered a heartfelt passion project thanks to both the talent of the developers as well as the Kickstarter campaign that aided its development; there’s even a cool tribute to backers hidden in the game.

With engaging combat, nostalgic music and visuals, and a campaign without much bloat to it, Sea of Stars commands the RPG space in a year of heavy AAA titles dropping all summer and fall. In addition, with this game being available to download for free on Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra, you owe it to yourself to give this title a shot as an RPG fan.

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 9/10

VISUALS - 9.5/10

SOUND - 9.5/10

CONTROLS - 9/10

REPLAY VALUE - 8/10

OVERALL - 9/10

For transparency, a review code for this game was provided for us to play. Screenshots were taken both in-game and used from the game’s site. In addition to the above-mentioned services, Sea of Stars is available on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam. For more information on Sabotage Studio, including behind-the-scenes videos on the artwork, check out the game’s site here. If you play this, let us know what you think in the comments!