Even just looking at Sea of Stars makes one thing clear: it wants to join the ever-growing “I love SNES RPGs” fanclub. We’ve seen a bunch of those in recent years; games that lovingly recreate the irresistible sprites and 16-bit vistas, while slapping on some upbeat chiptunes to feed you turn-based battles for hours. Sea of Stars does that too, sure, but it’s also so much more than that. Perhaps the best compliment I can give to Sea of Stars is that it rewound time and turned me back into a little kid, reminding me of playing those old-school classics nose-to-screen on a CRT, or curled up under the covers with my muted DS well past bedtime.
Sea of Stars reviewDeveloper: Sabotage StudiosPublisher: Sabotage StudiosPlatform: Played on Xbox Series X/SAvailability: Out 29th August on PC, (Steam, GOG), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (Game Pass)
The thing that sets this love letter apart, for me, is just how well-read (well-played?) it is. Sea of Stars rips inspiration from all directions – not just from the obvious Chrono Trigger – tosses those inspirations into a blender, and the resulting cocktail is smart, charming, and constantly surprising. More importantly, the game also never feels derivative, balancing old and new on a knife’s edge.
Let’s take a step back for a second, though. Sea of Stars follows two fated warriors – Zale and Valere – who were born on the summer and winter solstices, and thus, are destined to spend their lives fighting beasts left over from a generations-old conflict. These types of RPGs are often about lost innocence and painful experience, and Sea of Stars follows suit with a cute introduction that has you battling cave critters and skeletons and a weird mole child. The stakes soon get significantly grimmer – no spoilers here – but Sea of Stars only stumbles at those more dramatic turns.
For what it’s worth, the game executes wildly different tones really well, oscillating between pirate ship comedy, spooky haunted house, epic family-friendly fantasy and, err, space-time-bending cosmic weirdness. That’s partly thanks to a staunch attention to detail. Aforementioned pirate friendo rips off his shirt the first time we meet him, and if you look closely enough, you can see his pixelated pecs bulge – not that I was staring. Travelling historian Teaks is so fascinated by our legendary duo that her animation zips all around them, in and out of existence, to examine them from every angle.