Sea of Stars

I have such conflicted feelings about this one. On the one hand, the graphics and music are nearly peerless. There are some genuinely touching story moments, many good ones, and a few duds. The pixel environments are intricate, there's a lot of enemy variety, and the character design is cool. The basics of combat are good and the Mario RPG-style hit for bonus damage/block keeps me engaged. The lock system adds variety to battles, even if sometimes they don't seem totally possible. BUT. The gameplay part of this game doesn't feel well thought out. I don't mind it being simplified- a more streamlined approach was one of my favorite things about Triangle Strategy. But IMO this game strips out the wrong things. There's an equipment system, but weapons and armor just have numbers that go up. There are rings which provide a little strategic diversity, but there are a few that are strictly better than everything. The only collectables are food (for healing items) and rainbow conch's (which provide some bonuses, mostly for other side quests). It's a shame, since that makes exploration less compelling than it could be. Each gameplay system seems shallow and disparate in a way that's not satisfying. Worst of all, it's a game that doesn't respect your time. Lengthy ability animations aren't skippable, there's a _lot_ of pointless backtracking, and the boss fights are WAY too long (the final boss took me nearly a full hour and it only had 4 different moves). I feel like the developers were inspired by classic JRPGs, but learned all the wrong lessons from them. The overall package is decent but definitely tries your patience.