Sea of Stars

 PlayStation 5
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 186 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 131 out of 186
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 186
  3. Negative: 44 out of 186

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  1. Parannoids
    Sep 10, 2023
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. the game was excellent, receiving top marks for me, until I got to the reconstruction of Brisk, my game freezes and I can't do anything else. I already cleared the cache, recreated my video game database, uninstalled the game and reinstalled it. nothing resolved. For me, a game that I can no longer play deserves a ZERO rating… Expand
  2. Abraham15
    Aug 31, 2023
    0
    Despite this game was very awaited I have to say is not what I expected... I think press have inflated the points on this game. I have been waiting for two hours now and everything I have to say is the main story is a bit of plain "nothing"
  3. Zeon1982
    Aug 31, 2023
    4
    This game doesn't compare to the classic RPGs it claims to be inspired by, not even close.
  4. Dash_Bannon
    Sep 2, 2023
    4
    the amount of glow-up reviews im seeing just boils my blood ; either by fake bot accounts or ppl shilling HARD for this game ; the combat is fun for the first hour and then its very repetitive soon after ; im like halfway into the game and each character still only has 2 abilities with a very limited mana pool so you can only cast basically once each battle , theres team attacks but youthe amount of glow-up reviews im seeing just boils my blood ; either by fake bot accounts or ppl shilling HARD for this game ; the combat is fun for the first hour and then its very repetitive soon after ; im like halfway into the game and each character still only has 2 abilities with a very limited mana pool so you can only cast basically once each battle , theres team attacks but you have to build up a meter to use them but usually the monsters are already long dead before you can even utilize them at all , basically for bosses its only useful for

    I felt at times I was mashing X to speed up the wall of text I was all too accustomed to not wanting to read to progress the story forward , theres no option to unequip accessories only swap them out so if your short an accessory to swap out or want another party member to use it you cant; and accessories and amulets are very missable with areas becoming non-accessible once you've cleared certain story points ; at times it really feels like a playstore android JRPG game behind a 31 $ price tag when those games are for free or very low cost

    I really cant recommend with the limited content the game has , some ppl praise the combat system but really its very shallow and you'll get bored of it almost immediately , how does this draw inspiration from past games when this game has the look, the feel of something you can make out of RPG-MAKER on the Playstation? theres no sidequest, theres a couple of secrets sure but nothing too wow about it , npcs talk on and on and on to the point you just want to progress , the story was so forgettable or barely explained I honestly forgot halfway through what the end goal for the two characers was supposed to be and frankly its a narrative I hardly cared for ; its not worth 30$ for what it is with and that is a very very basic JRPG that doesn't even come close to the 90's JRPG its somewhere in the NES level of content of JRPG and even some NES JRPG's blow this game out the water in content , storetelling, and combat mechanics Collapse    … Expand
  5. ICER1981
    Sep 1, 2023
    0
    This game would have been fun in the 90's, it is not the kind a game I expect in 2023.
  6. Atreus69
    Sep 5, 2023
    2
    Ni sé que le ven con esos gráficos de cartón,gracias al plus que lo he podido jugar por qué no vale ni 10 euros.Se tiene que premiar el esfuerzo y con esos gráficos de los 80 no se puede jugar en el 2023
  7. Mogmog000
    Sep 3, 2023
    0
    Enemies are hard and the tempo of combat is slow.
    The map is monotonous and has little freedom.
    Characters are not attractive.
  8. EndingUpAlone
    Sep 3, 2023
    0
    Fantastic game with an amazing story and a great sense of adventure. The only reason I think it's a 9/10 instead of 10/10 because the puzzles need to be more challenging.
  9. WithFieryTruth
    Sep 8, 2023
    4
    One of the biggest disappointments or 2023.
    It has beautiful pixel art and a nice soundtrack, but that's pretty much all it has going for it. The awful combat system singlehandedly ruined the whole experience for me by turning the game into a tedious slogfest. To make things somewhat easier to follow, I'm going to break it up into parts.
    1. Combat animations are extraordinarily slow,    One of the biggest disappointments or 2023.
    It has beautiful pixel art and a nice soundtrack, but that's pretty much all it has going for it. The awful combat system singlehandedly ruined the whole experience for me by turning the game into a tedious slogfest. To make things somewhat easier to follow, I'm going to break it up into parts.

    1. Combat animations are extraordinarily slow, with long wind-up times even for basic skills. Since there's no way to turn animations off or increase the combat speed, a ton of time is wasted in each battle just watching the same animations over and over and over again.

    2. Another element of combat in this game is a timing system where you deal extra damage or lower the damage you take by pushing a button whenever an attack is about to hit. It sounds like it would add depth to the combat and make it more fun, but it feels like they've also deliberately made the fights slower just to make the window of opportunity for the timed inputs somewhat easier to hit. This obviously means that the whole combat, which is slow enough already, gets even slower.

    3. Many enemies are completely immune or heavily resistant to damage, and you'll need to hit them with regular attacks to make them drop orbs that you can then absorb and use on the next turn to actually deal damage.
    The system seems kinda interesting on paper, but what it really means is that you're wasting time and turns on dealing little to no damage, prolonging the battles even further. You can also only attack once for every time you absorb orbs, so you're forced to waste half of your turns just to make new orbs appear so that you can deal actual damage with a single attack on the following turn.

    4. Bosses have way too much HP. It doesn't really add to the difficulty in any meaningful way, so it just serves as yet another timesink, further adding to the tediousness of the gameplay.
    To top it off, some bosses (and regular enemies) can even heal themselves, making the fights longer and even more boring than they already were.

    5. When enemies are charging skills/spells, they get temporary weaknesses which you can exploit to cancel their turn if you hit them with the right attack. Problem is, they're usually just casting for 1-2 turns, while the weaknesses you need to hit are more than that. What this means is that even if you actually take the time to use attacks that they're temporarily weak against, it's impossible to cancel their attack since it'd take more turns to hit all different weak points than it takes for them to finish the cast.

    6. You can only ever have three party members participate in battle, even if there are others present. That only applies to you, though. Both regular enemies and bosses will often fight you in groups of 4-5, but you'll never be able to utilize your full party against them. I would've understood if the rest of the characters were busy elsewhere or hanging out back at a base, but they're literally right there in the same scene with you, and yet they're not participating in the battle despite the enemy outnumbering you.

    Honestly, I find it baffling that this game has been under development for 5 years, and at no point in time did anyone on the development team consider that "Okay, the combat could probably use some improvements or customization options."
    There are so many things they could have done to improve the situation, yet they didn't, and now we're stuck with this atrocity.

    Combat aside, my biggest issues with the game are probably these:

    1. The story is littered with clichées and lacks a real conclusion (even in the true ending). To avoid spoiling anything, I'll just say that there are a whole bunch of plot points that are never addressed or concluded, and important characters that just disappear without you ever encountering them again.

    2. The text speed is extremely slow and there's no way to increase it.

    3. The dialogue/narration has some serious lack of punctuation, making me think the developer didn't even bother having someone proofread it.

    4. No (or very few) autosaves. I lost a lot of progress once because the game crashed when I'd forgotten to make a manual save for quite some time.

    5. One of the worst minigames in the history of gaming. It's completely reliant on luck, so you'll have to replay the same matches again and again until you're finally lucky enough to get decent rolls. There's also no way to quit a match once you've started it, so if you accidentally start the wrong one or notice early on that there's no way you're winning, you'll still have to sit through the whole thing until you're able to retry.

    I'm going to end this review with a simple recommendation:
    If you're looking for a modern game with a retro JRPG feeling, go play Chained Echoes instead.    … Expand
  10. Eerokina
    Sep 7, 2023
    3
    Nice game, probably 8/10, but 6 hours ng+ rush for last trophy is boring and stupid, devs are using cheap methods to increase playtime
  11. Enyrae
    Aug 31, 2023
    1
    Let's buy last generation consoles to play games with Super Nintendo graphics and still mimicking old classics! This is almost dystopic, for what evolution?!

    What everyone expected at this point was not to have the magic of old games with stories, characters, world maps and brilliant soundtracks, but with modern graphics????
  12. Playstationsuck
    Sep 11, 2023
    0
    Very poor looking, I have this game on my Xbox and it looks and runs way better PlayStation is a joke
  13. Das_Boots
    Sep 11, 2023
    2
    Trash Gimmick

    Sabotage lives up to their name . they took 7 years to develope this and delivered a turd of a finished project. Garl is insuffereable at times I just wanted to punch him in the face through the dialogue he is the ultimate tool and kissass of the group!! , the rest of the party have no identity or personality thats ever shown , plot wise things just... happen.. without    Trash Gimmick

    Sabotage lives up to their name . they took 7 years to develope this and delivered a turd of a finished project.
    Garl is insuffereable at times I just wanted to punch him in the face through the dialogue he is the ultimate tool and kissass of the group!! , the rest of the party have no identity or personality thats ever shown , plot wise things just... happen.. without further explanation or followup; the combat is very very basic the only innovation is the moonorang ability blue haired chick has everything is is just timing the button at the right time ; slow movement and tons of backtracking ; in order to get the True Ending a ton ton ton of backtracking is required to unlock it along with some very very hard minigames ; the story pacing is completely awful and at times you'll just be skipping walls of dialogue that dont seem to EVER end and just go on and on and on; on top of all that I dont know about you guys but I hate puzzles in RPG'S the amount of puzzles you do in 1 dungeon is hair pulling and nerve racking ; you'll do 2-4 tedious puzzles EVERY dungeon some even more! and it completely takes you out of the element. the occasional one would have been fine but why did they think having multiple puzzles that range from simple but time consuming to medium difficult to solve and thought it would be ok??

    The character sprites are not even 16 bit they morely resemble something in between 10 bit -12 bit and dont reflect the jrpg's on the Snes ; think Neo-Geo graphics ; it doesnt even compare to the Snes titles of the Snes like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Breath of Fire, Illusion of Gaia and other Jrpg's that came out that era ; this game is trash worse than a story pacing that was placed on the NES with below cookie cutter story telling, tons of Grammital Errors, no side quests, 1 mini game in the form of a rigged wannabe Might & Magic ripoff that you'll spend hours trying to win at ; this game is an absolute dogturd and it took them 7 YEARS to make this filth ; yeah Sabotage is correct because they are Sabotaging your hard earned money of 31 $ when this game belongs on Google PlayStore for FREEE!!!!!    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

17
#17 Best PlayStation 5 Game of 2023
22
#22 Most Discussed PlayStation 5 Game of 2023

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
87

Generally favorable reviews - based on 27 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 27
  3. Negative: 0 out of 27
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 17, 2024
    100
    The game world looks fairy-tale beautiful and at the same time sufficiently adult and dark. The traversal of the world is then supplemented by small environmental puzzles. It's more of a diversion, nothing that would fundamentally break the game and cause one to get stuck on annoying puzzles while playing. The number of secondary activities is not overwhelming, which is very beneficial to the game's pace. [Issue#331]
  2. PLAY
    Nov 23, 2023
    80
    While it’s not without its flaws, Sea Of Stars is a tremendous love letter to JRPGs and a huge achievement for a studio as small as Sabotage. [Issue#33, p.80]
  3. Edge Magazine
    Oct 5, 2023
    70
    A fine effort, then, but a new Chrono Trigger it is not - and directly inviting such a comparison only highlights the areas in which it falls short. [Issue#390, p.133]
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