 Let's just get the question on everyone's minds out of the way right away. Is Sea of Stars as good as Chrono Trigger? It's just a bit of an unfair question, but that's what people really want to know about this game before they dive in. Especially since this game very obviously wears its influences on its sleeve. I mean, just take one glance at the pixel art or listen to 10 seconds of music, and your first thought is gonna be, hey, that kinda looks and sounds like Chrono Trigger. But no, Sea of Stars is not as good as Chrono Trigger, but that's like opening a new restaurant and expecting the filet mignon to be as good as the filet mignon at the place you've been going to for 25 years. It's an unrealistic expectation. But if you go into Sea of Stars just looking for a good turn-based RPG instead of the next Chrono Trigger, then you're gonna have a good time. And besides, Chrono Trigger is far from the only influence on display here, despite just about everyone collectively deciding to roll with that as the main comparison. Instead, Sea of Stars is a lot closer to a Game Boy Advance role-playing game like Golden Sun, and you'll see what I mean right away when you start this one. Everyone has a lot to say. And that's the next thing I need to point out about Sea of Stars. It gets off to a really, really slow start. It begins by introducing your two main protagonists, Valerie and Dale, or sorry, I mean Valar and Xael, and they're your typical heroes who have trained all their lives to go on big adventures and do hero things. They possess great magic abilities and overall are very serious about things. That works well with your third-party member, Garl, who's just a happy dude who's fun to hang out with and helps out wherever he can. I want to say right off the bat here, I appreciate a JRPG that's not afraid to be cheerful. That's one big way this game stands out. It doesn't depict this dour, over-serious, save-the-world kind of a story. We got enough of those already anyway. I get why some people are gonna roll their eyes at Garl, but I appreciate the risk involved in daring to make such a cheerful character, and I think he adds a lot to the game as a result. Anyway, you get to know those three, and it goes on for a while. There is a tutorial dungeon that you have to complete, there's lots and lots of dialogue, and I'm not gonna lie, it's kinda dull to the point that I was worried that Sea of Stars was merely a pretty-looking game with great music and not much else. But I was happy to be proven wrong because the combat, the settings, and the story eventually all come together for what's a really good worthwhile play-through. The basic gist of the story is once upon a time this thing called the flesh mancer created a bunch of monsters, and they could only be stopped by the solstice warriors, or people who were trained extensively in magic relating to the sun and the moon. Our story takes place when there's only one monster left to destroy, and as such there's only three solstice warriors left. I guess they needed to downsize and ended up laying off everyone else. I wonder what that office memo looked like at solstice warrior headquarters. But without spoiling anything, the story does offer a couple surprising twists, and it's well told throughout the play-through, which lasts something like 30 hours overall. And it features a few other fun playable characters, and other folks who tag along and add to the game's lore. I particularly like how the traveling historian Teaks is introduced by basically fangirling her way into things by promising to write solstice warrior fanfiction or something. The story takes you in and out of lots of locations that you don't normally see in JRPGs like when you get to the town of Lucent on your way to Wraith Island. That's about four or five hours into the game, and that's when things really start to pick up and the hours start to melt away. And as you can see, the settings, towns, and dungeons that you are used to seeing in games like this, they've never looked better. I mean, look at this, I could stay here all day and just wander around. Despite appearances, however, the combat is not your typical turn-based fare. See if Starz gets around the limitations inherent to that by making everything tempo-based a la Mario RPG. The key component is parrying. Defending yourself adequately is crucial in this one because the game does not waste time throwing you into some tough battles with some really annoying enemies like these scorpion things that keep spawning. Ugh. Thankfully, enemies will often display a sequence that you can follow and ruin their day like this annoying enemy in the lower right here. If I hit it with two moon strikes and three poison strikes within the next couple turns, it'll just sit there vulnerable waiting to be defeated. This is especially key with boss fights. Like a bit later, you fight Medusso with each hair follicle head tentacle thing, giving its own criteria. You need to prevent its biggest attacks. The game does a nice job mixing and matching things, so you got to adjust accordingly as each battle unfolds. Unfortunately, the game doesn't get much deeper than that when it comes to combat. Of course, all the normal JRPG turn-based stuff is here in spades, including a combo system that rewards you for successfully timing attacks in parries and this gold stuff that's generated from regular melee attacks that you can use to buff each party member. If you're looking for more depth beyond that, you won't find it, but I was okay with that because the basics here for the most part are all done well. My only issue is with the timing involved when it comes to parrying. Every enemy is different and it's its own challenge trying to remember every enemy's rhythm on the spot without taking huge damage first. That's pretty frustrating. Although maybe this is just B, but I also found it frustrating that the game started so slowly and held your hand through the tutorial dungeon because it made me think, okay, there must be a lot more to this that the game is going to show me later, but no, not really. That's probably just a me problem, but I got to say, if you've played a ton of JRPGs, you might get a bit annoyed and frustrated that both the combat is so simple and that the game coddles you for so long at the beginning. I just want to make sure the expectations are in check. But thankfully, there's a lot more to see of Starz than just the combat. This is a very puzzle-heavy game and it reminds me of how Lufia 2 is structured. So if you liked that balance between combat and puzzles, then you'll love how it's done here. The dungeon design is well done throughout, often taking advantage of your ability to climb around and scale walls and ledges. Of course, there's a fishing game, there's always a fishing game. Man, why can't these heroes find another hobby like bowling or something? But yeah, there's lots of climbing around and exploring towns, lots of side quests, and you can eventually unlock an alternate ending, so there's plenty of depth here beyond the combat and story. The wheels minigame alone is a lot of fun. The puzzles and settings are where this game really shines, though. The clock tower in particular is tricky, but it's so satisfying when you get something right and everything clicks into place. There's also a day and night cycle that you can control yourself, which is pretty cool. There's cooking, which is very useful, and again, to reiterate, the wheels minigame is really fun. I think I've put a few hours into that alone. See if Star's biggest strength, in my opinion, is the visual style, and there's not really much else that needs to be said about the graphics. This game takes the style that we're used to seeing in Super Nintendo games and gives it the same kind of updated boost that the Game Boy Advance did in the early 2000s. Everything just looks so dang clean. They took no shortcuts here. The music is outstanding as well, thanks to Eric W. Brown and Yasunori Mitsuda, also known as the guy who did the music for Chrono Trigger. So yeah, See if Star's is really well made, developed by people who loved the JRPGs of the 90s and 2000s, and it shows in every moment of this one. It's made by Sabotage Studio, who also made The Messenger a few years ago, and this feels every bit as polished, if not more so. When it comes to the characters, the dialogue and the overall tone, I was pleasantly surprised to find this a more upbeat and cheerful romp, and the game throws in lots of gags like naming the Ninja Pirate character CLEE-SHAY, for example. The biggest negative about this game is that it gets off to such a slow start, which is really a shame, and some JRPG veterans might be put off that the combat doesn't offer much outside of surface level stuff, but really, just as Golden Sun felt like the next evolution of the Super Nintendo RPG on the Game Boy Advance, See if Star's feels like a continuation onward. It's the next logical step the genre can take in order to thrive in this day and age, and it keeps lots of improvements made by previous games, like the elimination of random battles while adding its own flavor with puzzle-heavy dungeons. Is it as good as Chroner Trigger? Nah, but it doesn't need to be. It's a great game on its own. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.