Cosmic Star Heroine is a sci-fi themed, old school JRPG, heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger. On paper, the game is a goldmine of brilliant ideas, but in practice it lacks that je ne sais quoi, that ooph, that pizazz that makes a game special. The characters and story are forgettable. The game is hampered by minor, but annoying bugs (allies not following at the same pace causing battles to be delayed, side quests not triggering properly, etc). And to be frank, the game is simply not that fun to play after the first two hours.

You play as Alyssa L'Salle, a star agent of the Agency of Peace & Intelligence (API). After thwarting an attempt to blow up an office tower, Alyssa is tasked with investigating a terrorist organization named Astrea on the planet Rhomu. While roaming on the planet, she discovers a lab that is researching a mind control device. She takes it with her and to her surprise the head of the API, snatches the device with a desire to use it to bring peace to the galaxy. Alyssa and her friends rebel against the API and join Astrea in hopes of finding a way to counter the mind control device’s effects.

The best thing I can praise about Cosmic Star Heroine is that the developers at Zeboyd Games know how to craft a solid turn based battle system. Combat is strategic and not about spamming the most powerful moves. Most abilities can be used once and are refreshed after defending. There is a Hyper Mode which lets a character do double damage once every two to four turns. There is also a Style mechanic which encourages players to build up their Style to deal more damage or use a Burst ability which trades all of a character’s Style for an extra powerful ability. The battles have a nice ebb and flow, where the general strategy is to build up Style until a character’s Hyper Mode and then unleash Abilities to deal massive damage.

Inventory is smartly designed. Both weapons and armor grant passive effects, such as dealing more damage to robot enemies or improving the success rate of a stun effect. The armor known as Shields in Cosmic Star Heroine, also grants Programs which are one-time use special abilities. In fact, I found some early-game Shields so useful that I had them equipped for some late-game battles at the risk of getting easily KO'ed. There are also Items, which are shared amongst the party and function similarly to Programs.

The game respects the player's time and avoids common JRPG filler pitfalls. There are no random encounters. All characters are fully healed after battle. All treasure chests are useful, with most of them providing unique equipment and items. In fact, the chests will explain who the new equipment is for and its passive abilities. All characters receive the same amount of experience, regardless of who is in the active party or if they are felled in combat. The difficulty can be adjusted at any time in the menu. There are no special save points and the game can be saved at any time.

There are 12 playable characters including Alyssa, each with their own unique abilities and range from a Disco Robot to a Spectral Detective. Unfortunately these characters are recruited at such a rapid pace that there is barely enough time to be acquainted with one character’s abilities before another character is recruited. Other than Alyssa, there is no character development. The only way to learn more about, let’s say the Disco Robot, is to trigger an optional quest by talking with him at a specific time. The problem is that the game never makes it very clear when these optional quests are available.

Cosmic Star Heroine lost my interest quickly. The writing is witty, but the jokes get old fast. The story starts off strong, but then the plot becomes a wild goose chase and forgets about the main villain until the final act of the game. Even the excellent battle system gets stale as regular enemies start taking longer and longer to defeat. Cosmic Star Heroine is like a well done hamburger without any sides or condiments. It’s perfectly edible, but gets boring to eat after a few bites.

I feel like I should be lenient with my criticism because this game was made by such a small team. It really is quite an impressive game, with that perspective. That said, I've decided to share my honest thoughts. Or try to, at least.

Like many other reviews have said, the battle system is unique and interesting. It doesn't play like Magic: The Gathering, but it felt like it. To me, at least. I ended up spending many of my turns in battle managing, setting up and comboing skills. It was fun for a while, but eventually became troublesome. (I played on Heroine difficulty from start to finish. I can't speak for the other difficulty settings.)

CSH's story is paced like a summary. It seemed like Zeboyd Games was afraid of letting any single scene settle in. I would have liked to see some character drama. The story didn't draw me in. I couldn't bring myself to care about what was going on. And, the characters didn't seem to care either. The witty dialog was often funny, but that's all there was. Well, that and some brief heavy handed plot explanations. After clocking in 17 hours, I'm surprised at how empty the game's characters and story are. The setting was interesting, and all of the characters had a lot of potential. It's too bad more effort wasn't put into writing a more extensive script and adding some human themes to the game. CSH's story needed something to make it meaningful rather than just a placeholder. That said, I don't think they were going for anything serious or emotional. But, to me, melodrama is at the heart of JRPGs.

The pixel art looked fantastic and the character portaits (with all the different emotions) were great. I really liked the animated sequences. It's one of the best looking indie RPGs I've seen. Again, it's a shame there wasn't any emotional punch backing any of it up. HyperDuck SoundWorks did a great job on the music. It isn't really my style, but I can't deny it's really good stuff. It fit the game well. In fact, I'm listening to the OST as I'm writing this review. Laura Shigihara's contribution was a nice touch.

Overall, CSH showed me how hard it must be to make an indie RPG, and perhaps an indie JRPG in particular. I'm glad I played CSH, but I'm not sure I'll play it again. I wish Zeboyd Games a successful future in the indie games industry. It's clear they put in a lot of work into this game.

I almost didn't have any problems with bugs. There were a handful of graphical glitches that were no big deal. And, I did have to reset the game once toward the end, but because of the save anywhere feature it wasn't a problem at all.

Rating: 5.5/10

I'm glad I wasn't waiting years for this one like some people. It only came into my life early this year and I just added it to my Wish List on Steam and forgot about it. I actually think it sounded really cool, and should have been up my alley considering I grew up with the RPGs that influenced it the most and consider that era a golden era.

I'm having a hard time getting into it. Just know that it's not an outright bad game, and I am giving it a minor recommendation with a bunch of caveats. If you can handle bugs or something less substantial than some of the other games that have already come out this year, and you need to kill some time... sure, go ahead, play 'er.

The biggest point of contention in the reviews I've seen is regarding the battle system, so that's where I'll start. People either think it's cool and does neat things with the turn-based formula, or they believe that it makes combat unnecessarily long. I'm in the latter camp, but when I was first started playing I was more middle ground; I could see why it would be an issue but I wasn't bothered yet. When I got to the point that I dreaded fighting I realized I needed to check out. I haven't completed the game for this reason, but I won't be going back (so keep that in mind because they may introduce some cool mechanics later that I have missed out on, though I doubt it).

For those who don't know, in an effort to keep the game from being a boring grind in battle, magic points don't exist, instead being replaced by skills that can get used once before they have to be recharged. Some characters have a standard attack that you can spam, but others don't, and that's really annoying. In order to recharge your skills you choose another skill that ends your turn and gives you all your abilities back next turn. So, the defend mechanic that you never used in older RPGs is now central to the experience, basically. There are also combos later on, which are fine but not really needed. One thing I do like is how Dave has a technique that changes depending on the environment. Hell, I think the abilities are varied enough to be interesting but one character is ridiculously so.

I appreciate the effort but when I'm just running around I don't want to have to carefully pick my skills each time. It just adds to the play time, but not in a good way. Others won't feel that way and they will respect that it's more inclusive, though I disagree and think it's detrimental as a whole.

I won't harp on too much about it but I don't like the music. There's a general problem I have with this game where it doesn't pop. I find the soundtrack incredibly generic and leagues below the greats that influenced it. None of it pumped me up or set a good mood; the battle theme is okay but it isn't exciting as something like, say, Chrono Trigger. Mind you, CT had one of the best video game composers in history, but still.

There's also a lack of polish all around. Enemies randomly dying, it being difficult to talk to NPCs (though I feel the outrage is overblown on this one), things getting stuck, not being notified of certain things that other RPGs would notify you of because it only makes sense, etc.

The visuals are good enough. I'm not especially enamored by them, but they're fine. That's about all I can muster for that, except I don't think the map designs are very good. They're simplistic and uninspired.

Same goes for the plot. It's a tale of conspiracy, but it goes exactly as you would think. I won't spoil any of it, but it's pretty basic. It would be satisfactory if the pacing wasn't so fast. I understand that the game "respects your time," and in ways I really respect that; namely when you open the game and it goes straight to the menu, no bullshit. However, you go somewhere, do something real quick, the game doesn't let you digest it and then it moves on. Within the first few hours you have done so much, but there's no reason to care because it takes no time to elaborate on anything. It's quick and dirty.

I couldn't help but compare the opening scene to some of the games in the era that this takes all its lessons from. Older RPGs were varied but regardless of how they began, they all shared one thing in common: it beautifully set the scene and displayed excellent pacing and a narrative that made you care. Cosmic Star Heroine throws you into the action but there's no oomph.

I don't usually say this but the game feels like nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. From the description of the game to how it handles, it hearkens back to the good old years but doesn't add much. As I said earlier, the game doesn't pop in any meaningful way, and while the references were intentional, it almost goes too far.

I'm aware that most of my review has been negative but I still gave it a 5.5. Truth be told, I considered changing it and scaling it back to a 4.5, but I think others will be less hard on it.