For those of you out there that bother to read my stuff you probably already know that it is very rare that I complete a game or even enjoy them. I am a very pessimistic gamer and I fall out of love with the hobby very easily. For various reasons I decided to re-up my PS-Plus account and rather than head towards a complicated AAA game I decided to go for something that was more in my "roots." When I was at the peak of my gaming interest in life, RPG's were just becoming a thing. This was the days of Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy on 16-bit systems. So when I saw Sea of Stars was highly rated, indie, and also a JRPG with simple controls I figured that would definitely be in my wheelhouse. I was correct and ended up playing the entire way through the main story.
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Just like many gamed in the days past, you control a 3 person team in turn-based combat across a decently large world. You start out with 2 people in your party and the game gradually introduces you to more and more types of enemies and even though the game is linear in nature, you do have some ability to go back to previously visited areas once you get additional items. I didn't do this a great deal because I am not a completionist, but it was available to people that want it.
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There is IMO just the right amount of enemies in this game and you need some level of strategy because your various characters have different elements that they attack with and one of the major parts of the game is "breaking" an attack by completing certain elemental attacks that will shut down big attacks.
The overall game is a bit on the easy side, but you can always change this in the settings.
I would say that the game is actually a little bit too long though, so later on in the game at one particular series of fights that I kept dying at, I took the difficulty way down so that I could continue. This is a blessing and a curse because once I stepped the difficulty down it was meant to be just for that one section but I ended up keeping it down for the remainder of the game. I would highly advise that people DO NOT do this though, because once I did that I was able to blaze through the remainder of the game without even coming close to dying including on the final boss fight. I didn't really even need to have much of a strategy at this point either because on the easiest setting, the game is remarkably easy to the point where you can probably win all the fights by simply doing basic attacks and not really having any strategy at all. So don't do that if you can help it.
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While Sea of Stars did include a great many elements of games of the past, there was one element missing that I was really happy it didn't have. While I really enjoyed JRPG's like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star one thing that I truly despised about those games was how the attacks that would happen to you in most of the game were decided by RNG and sometimes you would walk for 2 minutes without being randomly attacked and other times you would go for 2 seconds. It was quite annoying at times and thankfully Sea of Stars when you are walking around in the map world, you are NEVER randomly attacked. You won't enter battle ever in the open world exploration and this encouraged me to actually explore all the areas rather than seek out the path of least resistance. I likely would have quit the game if they did have this random encounter "feature" and I am really glad they didn't have this in the game.
Between the music, the story (which I normally don't like big stories but this one was really good, cute, and engaging) and the combat system that is easy to pick up but difficult to completely master, I think this is one of the best RPG's I have played in a very long time.
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It seems as though I am not the only person that feels this way because almost all ratings for this game are very good no matter where you look. I don't think that it is necessary that you are familiar with the old school RPG style to enjoy this game but if you are older like me, it certainly does add to the overall experience because a trip down good memory lane is always a win/win.
So if you have a PS-Plus membership or a bit of cash to throw around, I think that most people are going to enjoy this game. It is very rare that I complete a game and the last time I did so was with Resident Evil: Biohazard. So that's a pretty good sign that a game is good in my world. Maybe check it out!