I've come to the realization that much how like Triple A studios are so concerned with making games that simply look good, as opposed to being fun, and appeal to the audience that drool over how good Forbidden West looks, indie studios are following the exact same trend. Except to them, they're overly concerned with capturing that "nostalgic pixelated" look …
I've come to the realization that much how like Triple A studios are so concerned with making games that simply look good, as opposed to being fun, and appeal to the audience that drool over how good Forbidden West looks, indie studios are following the exact same trend. Except to them, they're overly concerned with capturing that "nostalgic pixelated" look of past games without any of the magic of those games. It's honestly quite infuriating. Sea of Stars looks absolutely gorgeous as far as pixelated art is concerned, and to compliment how good it looks, it's as dreadfully boring. This game is completely inoffensive yet it does almost nothing to make itself stand out apart from it's art direction. The combat is just Paper Mario but somehow slower with systems that do little to alleviate how boring it quickly gets. I spent a good chunk of time on this and I STILL only have the skills I started with. The feeling of progression is nearly nonexistent as leveling up also takes a significant amount of time. Despite the game telling you it's not necessary to time your attacks for bonus damage, it's practically necessary if you want to get through any battle, normal and bosses included, before you start yawning on account of most stuff being hp sponges. The systems just aren't intricate, deep, or fun enough to warrant making battles taking so long. My honest advice is to just turn on all the Relics as soon as you get them to get through battles faster. The worst part of the game is how non existent the two protagonists are. Every single dialogue and event is moved forward by their friend, Garl, who has no special powers, nothing unique about him, other than he wants to have fun adventuring. It's actually ridiculous how little input the protagonists ever have to the point where I think I completely misread the narrative and Garl is probably the actual protagonist of this game. I'm pretty sure I saw the protagonist's dialogue bubbles consist of "......" more than actual words. Maybe this gets better as game goes on, but I'm frankly not interested in continuing nor has the game given me any motivation to continue playing it. Maybe I'll come back to it, but from what others have told me who have finished it, it really doesn't get any better or interesting.
The only good thing I can say about this game, apart from it's looks, is that it's better than Chained Echoes at least.
