Sea of Stars Review (Chu)
The graphics are phenomenal. The sprites are expressive and lovingly animated. The environments are beautiful. The soundtrack is amazing, and has everything from catchy battle tunes and atmospheric songs that really sell you the areas you explore.
Others found the gameplay to be too simple, but I didn't have a problem with that. I appreciated that it was a breezy, polished experience. I thought the lock mechanics and timed hits were fun.
However, why do I not recommend this game? The writing. The writing is awful. It sucks to see such high production values in service of such a nothing story.
The only writer credited for Sea of Stars is also the director and co-designer, and I think he should have asked for more help. Why is it that people are willing to hire artists for their art, and musicians for their music, but they won't hire writers to help them write?
I believe that French is his first language, and he wrote it in English with the help of a team of proofreaders. However, even the proofreaders did not do as tight of a job as I would have expected. Improper comma usage is all over this game from the very beginning. Sometimes they get the words for things plain wrong. For example, they keep calling a certain type of vegetarian sandwich a "tomato club" when a club is a specific type of sandwich that contains meat. What they meant was a "tomato sub". They also keep calling the act of making cloth "sewing" when they are clearly talking about "weaving". This is just from the very beginning of the game. It does not get better.
Also, one pet peeve is that it feels like a lot of names were not "localized" into English. This could just be a personal preference thing, since I know people get up in arms about changing names from their original language. But since I don't know French, I wonder how many monster names had jokes and references in them I didn't recognize?
However, I can overlook a rough translation. My problems with the writing go much deeper than that. Here's a spoiler-free list:
- The characters all have very little personality (except for Garl, who is a one-note character, but that is more than the others have). They often don't voice opinions, disagree with one another about anything, or react to the environments they run around in. Somehow Valere and Zale, two protagonists who speak, feel more flat than silent protagonists from other RPGs, such as Mario (and Luigi), and Ludger from Tales of Xillia 2
- Bland dialog with no wit. There are a handful of funny moments, but they are few and far between. Characters often react with "!!" "..." or Zale's infamous "Ha ha ha!" Yolande the Pirate has an awful bit where she lists common RPG tropes. That's it, that's the joke.
- If some powerful being states there's a rule they can't break, they'll probably break that rule within the next couple of sentences. This happens multiple times. It was cute at first, but if everything is an exception, it stops feeling special or funny. It's just lazy writing.
- No setup, no payoff. Nothing in this game feels like it was building to the next moment. It may feel like it at first, but usually, the results are anticlimactic or feel random. It ends up feeling like things are happening arbitrarily.
- Always telling, never showing. Characters reminisce, through dialog, about events we never get to see. There's an optional mechanic in the game where you can items that give you an exposition dump about the events you ALREADY experienced. Sometimes, it's necessary context for a conversation you already read. Shouldn't that stuff be IN the story? Was this a decision made with speedrunners and other text box-skippers in mind?
- The story relies heavily on prophecy by using several different prophets to tell the characters what to do. Each prophet's instructions are completely literal, with no room for creative interpretation or metaphor. This, to me, is the writer struggling to find a way for the characters figure out what to do on their own, and have the story unfold naturally.
- Talking to NPCs for flavor text ends in disappointment every time. There is literally no reason to bother talking to anyone who isn't offering to sell you something.
- Completely underwhelming ending because, they couldn't think of how to make a self-contained story that was ALSO canon with their previous game, this game's chronological sequel, The Messenger. Because it has to be canon with The Messenger, a few plot threads are simply left unresolved.
- But even if you did play The Messenger, these connections are too superficial to really matter anyway.
- The "true" ending is locked behind having to find every single Rainbow Conch in the game. They are found in treasure chests and held by NPCs across the world, and there are about 60 of them. That sucks.
- The "true" ending still does nothing to resolve a major issue with the first ending, leaving you just as unfulfilled. I also don't agree with , but since I shouldn't say that in a review... I'll just express my personal opinion is that a decision like this was made by someone who prioritized pleasing the audience with low-hanging fruit instead of their own integrity. But that's my personal taste.
I am disappointed because the poor script of this game drags everything down. It's a shame because the developers clearly love their world and their games. The artists and composers and everyone did an inspirational good job with everything else.
But this is an RPG. To me, a good RPG should have a good narrative. If it isn't, then hopefully it's got an interesting hook like a mystery or it's a funny comedy. And if it doesn't have that, then it should have deep gameplay that with interesting, preferably innovative, mechanics. Somehow, this game won all its critical acclaim and industry awards with a completely lousy story and a simple and derivative game. People either don't mention the story in their praise, or they admit that it sucks and recommend it anyway. That's a shame and I don't agree. I think the art of writing deserves more respect. I think an award-winning game should be more than good graphics and a nice soundtrack. If you're looking for a good RPG, look elsewhere.