Despite the trend to take role-playing games in a more action oriented direction with more realistic graphics, there’s still a certain excitement whenever a game is revealed that’s designed to be a throwback to the 16-bit and 32-bit eras. Many people consider this the golden age of RPGs and looking at the RPGs that were released in ’90s, it’s easy understand why. Newer games such as Octopath Traveler II and Chained Echoes show that the turn-based formula can still result in memorable and fantastic games. Sea of Stars is an upcoming title that has been highly anticipated by fans of classic RPGs, and with a playable demo dropping on the PlayStation Network yesterday, fans finally got a chance to get some hands on time with Sea of Stars.
Sea of Stars is set in the same world as The Messenger, but thousands of a years in the past. It has two main protagonists, Valere and Zale, who are endowed with the powers of the sun and moon. The player can choose which of the two they wish to be the lead character, but this choice is purely based on personal preference and doesn’t impact the story at all. Like the classic RPGs that inspired it, Sea of Stars combines puzzle solving with turn-based combat in a story that advances primarily through world exploration and dialogue with NPCs.
One of the first thoughts had during the demo was “these people have played Chrono Trigger.” The influence is apparent from the first shot of the overworld map with the clouds lazily drifting over the harbor. The battle system is also inspired from the time-traveling game including a combo attack system but draws influence from other great titles as well. One such example is inspired by Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars where the player can time their attacks to do additional damage or block to reduce damage from incoming attacks. Sea of Stars is patterned after the classic RPGs and throwing in homages to them such as these is a nice touch.
The demo takes place during a quest where the party of three get involved with a group of pirates and end up going on a mission to a wizard’s lab. Many areas are off limits and details are hidden through somewhat humorous attempts to prevent spoilers, but the small portion of the world we were able to see shows off a truly fantastical environment. The mountain range near the starting town has a massive dragon casually snoozing and the wizard’s lab has no respect at all for the laws of physics. The music had a familiar feel to it and sure enough it was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda. The lab had a few traversal puzzles and a modest amount of battles. The battle system gives the player low amounts of resources for their special skills, but it replenishes during the battle so they don’t need to worry about hoarding. There are attack mechanics involved with these attacks as well such as pressing X at the right time to get more hits in with the moonerang attack. The demo ended in a boss battle at the end of the lab which did require strategic use of all techniques.
The demo only provides about an hour or so of gameplay, but that was enough to generate anticipation for its incoming release. It felt like playing a modern version of a 16-bit RPG which is undoubtably what the developers were going for. After only an hour of playtime, making any definite claims about the game would be impossible, but so far the impression is that Sea of Stars is trying to forge its own unique identity, but isn’t afraid to acknowledge the games that inspired it. The short time spent with it was a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to its release. Sea of Stars is scheduled for release on August 29 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
