It’ll take me quite a while to get through Sea of Stars, but if my first impressions are anything to go by, it’s going to be a hell of an adventure. This latest indie RPG comes from Quebec’s Sabotage Studio, the developers of the acclaimed The Messenger.

The developers were kind enough to send over a review key for me to look at the game. I’ve been plugging away at it over the past couple of days, with about 12 hours of progress done. Given that I’m not even halfway done, it’s easy to expect the review will take some time.

But one thing’s for sure: Sea of Stars is living up to the hype and then some. It’s a grand and engaging adventure that’s satisfying in its combat and enticing in its story. And despite a few incredibly minor issues that will hopefully be patched out, it’s set its hooks deep into me already.

Fire of the sun, light of the moon

Let’s talk about the combat first. I already had an idea of how this played, thanks to the demo released back in February. In practice, it’s already been a consistently fun and rewarding combat system, and I can see it appealing to both retro fans and newbies.

Much has been made of the game’s comparisons to games like Super Mario RPG, Illusion of Gaia, and Chrono Trigger. And they’re certainly warranted; any fan of 90s RPGs will be right at home here. I also got a substantial whiff of Mario & Luigi in it, especially with the combo moves. You have to juggle a few factors at once, including elemental weaknesses, enemy positions, charging enemy attacks, and available magic points and boost power.

While it’s a deep and layered combat system, it’s also very approachable. If you’ve never played an RPG before, Sea of Stars would be an excellent first choice. You can grasp the core concept very easily, and there aren’t so many mechanics and meters to keep track of that it’s overwhelming. The biggest challenge is determining the optimal strategy, which requires paying close attention in the heat of battle.

Feeling like a star

Sea of Stars immediately made a stir thanks to its wonderful aesthetics. You’ve probably already noticed the lovely pixel art through these screenshots, and in action, the game looks absolutely stunning. With beautiful color palettes and some excellent music tracks, it’s already a heavily absorbing adventure.

More than its aesthetics, though, I’m also really into the story and characters so far. With a wacky pirate crew, some excellent party members, and an old order of the Solstice Warriors to talk to, there’s plenty of love and care into these characters. I’ve gotten quite a bit ahead of the introduction, so I won’t be writing any story spoilers here.

Just know that the game takes maybe an hour or two to get going, and then a couple more hours to REALLY get going. For a game that’s expected to take about 25 to 30 hours with no side content, there’s hopefully plenty more great story bits and characters to come.

If there’s one aspect I can criticize Sea of Stars for, it’s that the dialogue needed a bit of a tune-up. Not the words themselves, but rather the grammar; there’s a few typos that needed ironing out. That’s something that could easily be fixed with a few patches, although of course, it’s not the most important factor. I haven’t encountered any other bugs so far, and hopefully that will remain the same throughout the rest of my playthrough!

Sea of Stars shines in its first impressions

I’m happy to report that my first impressions of Sea of Stars are highly positive. The combat is engrossing for both RPG veterans and newcomers, and it’s a beautiful game filled with charming characters and storylines. And while the text perhaps needed one last proofread, it’s hardly enough to take you out of the adventure.

Sea of Stars is developed and published by Sabotage Studio. It is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Steam. You can also play it via Xbox and PC Game Pass. A free demo is available to play right now.

The digital version costs $34.99 USD. A physical version for Nintendo Switch is on the way, but Sabotage Studio hasn’t announced a price yet.

Thanks to Tinsley PR and Sabotage Studio for providing a review key!

The post First Impressions: Sea of Stars [PC] appeared first on Mega Visions.

Over the last year or so, I’ve inexplicably joined the ranks of people collecting big, bulky vinyl soundtracks. Albums are enjoying their second coming in a mostly digital era, and initially, I picked up a few with the sole intent of hanging them on a barren bedroom wall. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, I wound up with a record player listening to the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack. It gives me a sort of haunted, pinky-out ambience.

Anyway, I’ve got no technical reason for it. My vinyl expertise doesn't extend beyond 'that sounds good' or 'that sounds bad' — and I don’t own any albums that could fund my retirement or make them worth all the fuss. Really, I just like how holding the unwieldy discs feels, and I'm especially into the ones that look a bit like vintage splatter art. I like looking at the sleeves, blowing away the dust, and using a medium society had long aged out of by the time I was born.

A lot of people making games seem to share that sentiment, too. I recently spoke with Sabotage Studio president and Sea of Stars creative director Thierry Boulanger, who seems inspired by what drives us to revisit those little rituals with older media. In the interview, Boulanger offered Destructoid a peek into the studio’s process. It's a look into making something both new and retro, maintaining integrity between mediums, and how you decide where Yasunori Mitsuda slots into all of this. 

It’s all about touch

“From the get-go, it was a must,” said Boulanger, in reference to the decision to give Sea of Stars the retail and vinyl soundtrack treatment. The studio released its first game, The Messenger, in the same nostalgic vein back in 2018. They were already familiar with the path to getting something tangible made, and with Sea of Stars, Boulanger says it was always part of the plan. 

“We want there to be intent in everything that we do. We don’t wanna just move plastic. It’s not so much about the units. It’s that we make something people want to touch, they want to own, they want to be able to keep. They want it to exist in their lives, more than the abstract, digital part of everything.” 

The holding, the touching, that’s all part of the retro experience for plenty of enthusiasts. It’s, mostly, a good-intentioned longing for different times or something comforting and familiar. For me, it usually boils down to some combination of childhood favorites and just wanting something a little simpler to manage. However, working within the limitations of yesteryear doesn't merit praise by default, despite what my nostalgia insists, and by no means is the process truly easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YP8_dlYv78

Sea of Stars gets that, I explained as much in my review, but eschewing what’s needlessly obtuse doesn’t detract from recreating classic RPG designs with modern sensibilities. The limitations, however, still exist when you move between mediums  — like making the jump from a limitless digital library to the more restrained, plastic discs.

Sabotage’s Iam8bit vinyl collaboration is a 2xLP collection, so it doesn’t contain the entire, hefty 200-song tracklist from Sea of Stars. Instead, it has to work as a sampling representative of the OST’s best pieces, capturing the work of composer Eric Brown and his legendary collaborator, Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger and Xeno-series fame, in a curated format. It’s a gauntlet of bangers already made within a limited framework, and for the vinyl, they’d have to be culled again. 

“In capturing retro, we do like to work with the limitations because we sort of aim for the type of experience or the type of things that emerge from really harsh boundaries,” said Boulanger. 

“So, any track has to be a two minute loop maximum. You need to have a hook in there in like three sections, you know? You can't do this drawn-out intro into a symphonic thing that just goes on. So it's, it's less of a score and more of a classic soundtrack there. But since we don't have the memory limitations of a cartridge, then we can do as many tracks as we want.”

For Sea of Stars, that meant any important cutscene could have “bespoke audio,” leading to its whopping 200 tracks. It’s not the usual setup for many of the games that inspired the RPG, so that meant the vinyl would get picky. 

“The first thing we did was [say] ‘okay, we’re doing 2xLP, right? So, we’re gonna save one side for Mitsuda, because this collaboration is straight-up legendary.” Boulanger laughs describing the process, but that harsh curation left to the rest of the soundtrack was important to get Mitsuda’s 12 tracks on the physical album. 

From there, Boulanger and Brown worked to sample a selection of its more iconic themes into something that could flow outside the larger, digital collection. They needed the basics, like the town and battle themes, but Brown was left to much of the curation process to ensure the round-up was not only representative but balanced. 

“Eric also put care into the idea of the listening experience, trying to pace everything properly. Of course, you want all the heavy bangers, but you also want to sometimes take a bit of a break. So we feel it flows really nicely, but it was really something [of a process] because when you're doing digital, you're kind of boundless, right? You can just do however much you want to do.

And this kind of brings it back to now, ‘but what if you distill your idea?’ It forces you, it puts you in this mindset of like, ‘what's the nugget? What's the, the crystallized form of it that's concise?’ It was a super fun journey to do that, even though it was a bit hard.”

Moving with purpose

I describe my own recent affinity for vinyl with a bit of annoyance. If anything, I’m mostly embarrassed to be so sentimental about just stuff. I’ve already got an untameable retro collection of cartridges, discs, and guides eating away at a finite amount of closet and shelf space. But there’s comfort in holding something, purposefully removing the cartridge, or smashing a physical reset button. It compels me into keeping a sea of N64 games. 

If anything, Boulanger’s enthusiasm for that sensation offers a far kinder look at the type of person hoarding a stash of CDs to unlock creatures in a decades-old PlayStation game. 

“There is this understanding, there is a commitment to being in the moment. If you're just playing some playlist on Spotify or whatever in your Bluetooth speaker, it's like, yeah, you just go back 10 seconds to keep getting the dopamine hit of your favorite spike in the melody, or you hit next the second you're not like 100% vibing with the current track or whatever. 

Whereas when you have a vinyl, it's kind of like, in a way,  it's a presence. It's not just a thing that you consume. And just all the steps that you have to do to even get it to play, I feel like, your entire body understands that you are committing time to listening to music more mindfully.”

It’s a process he sees as almost meditative, or at least shares roots with the grounding, purposeful steps involved in physical media. While there’s no shortage of stories from the director rooted in childhood nostalgia that leads to the creation of games like Sea of Stars, he seems just as compelled by the little processes. “For me, a vinyl is that, I’m going to actually sit down and listen to music. Not on the side, but that's my activity this afternoon, I want to listen to music fully.”

I grew up using CDs, but I’m incredibly nostalgic for the physicality of the whole playing-a-record process. It’s certainly far more cumbersome to pull out the Silent Hill 4 vinyl and listen to 'Room of Angel' on a device drastically bigger than my phone, but I just brood better that way. I’m more emotional.

Ultimately, there's always a more critical read of my desire to buy another SNES game at a pawn shop or order more pieces of plastic to stack on a shelf, and I get it. I don't necessarily need every piece of digital media I own as a tangible, physical item, but there's value in that very purposeful, involved way an old concert or vinyl setup makes me interact with it. It's certainly a commitment, as Boulanger described, and in the attention economy where focus is a constant struggle, I appreciate the occasional game or album that demands I slow down.

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Sea of Stars launches its retail edition worldwide today and is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X. The exclusive edition with a retro game manual, digital game soundtrack, poster, and other collectibles launches in Q2, 2024. The 2xLP vinyl soundtrack is available for pre-order now and is scheduled for release in Q3 2024. A digital download code with the full soundtrack is included with the vinyl.

The post Sea of Stars creative director talks crafting physical game releases and our craving for the tangible appeared first on Destructoid.