Sea of Stars

 Despite the fact that I will be away from my PS5 for a couple weeks as I go on my summer trip home to Boston, I felt the desire to immerse myself in a new game, if only for the evening (and then, presumably, when I get back).

I had heard of Sea of Stars when it came out two years ago - a throwback JRPG (well, not technically a JRPG because its studio is in Quebec, but a Japanese-style RPG) with a 16-bit aesthetic.

The experience I've had with it is one in which the hours got away from me - I sat and played for I think 5 hours (maybe pausing to have dinner).

The premise is that two characters, Valere and Zale, were born on the winter and summer solstices, and have innate magic themed, respectively, around the moon and the sun. The game begins when they are children, playing with their friend Garl, but after Valere's magic (actually, it might be whoever is the active "party leader") allows them to enter a dangerous cavern and Garl loses an eye, the two empowered children are brought to the Zenith Academy, where they are trained for the next ten years to fight and use their magic.

So far, at least, the specifics of the world are left pretty vague - there's some kind of ancient foe known as the Fleshmancer, with various monsters that were set upon the world and that only people with these kinds of powers - Solstice Warriors - can defeat. There is also quite a lot of implication that the story we're getting is an incomplete one. Sinister-looking conspirators simply known as One, Two, Three, and Four are shown in cutscenes at some unknown location, and Valera and Zale's older predecessors at the Academy seem skeptical about the headmaster's methods and strategy.

Gameplay-wise, there's a clear inspiration here, and it's among the best games from which to take inspiration: Chrono Trigger. Battles are turn-based, and begin when you get too close to monsters out in the world, heroes and monsters taking positions that can sometimes become relevant if you're using an ability that can do splash damage to nearby additional targets.

The heroes do have MP, but the way in which this works is closer to a more modern build-and-spend style of gameplay. Your MP cap is pretty low, but whenever you do your regular attack, you generate some of it, and thus you're encouraged to weave magic and basic attacks. Like Mario RPG, your attacks can be timed to be more effective, with the basic attack hitting twice if you do the timing correctly, and likewise, you can mitigate the damage of incoming attacks with a timely dodge (the timing of which can be tricky to get right given all the different kinds of monsters). Granted, this mitigation isn't enormous - Expedition 33 spoiled me by letting me avoid all damage if I was really on top of my parries (but taking full damage here isn't as punishing).

Also like Chrono Trigger, you can get various combo attacks, which are fueled by a meter that builds up as you fight. One of the kinds of treasure to find in the world is the ability to use new combo moves.

Probably the most unique thing I've seen in the game so far is that, when an enemy is preparing a spell, you have an opportunity to interrupt them. Enemies each have a little timer symbol over them that tells you how many of your turns you will get to go through before they make their attack. If they're preparing a spell, they have a display of a few little blocks next to them. Using the correct type of damage - like Valere's blunt damage with her staff, or Zale's sun-magic, will break one of those blocks, and if you can get all of them before the monster gets to act, you avoid their powerful attack.

It's tricky, though, because often multiple enemies have these casting blocks up at a time, and sometimes even if you've already learned what damage types you need to break them, the sequence is long and complex enough that you won't have enough turns to actually successfully interrupt the spell before they get it off, so there's a kind of triage you need to approach this mechanic with.

The game looks gorgeous, and has an excellent, nostalgia-inducing soundtrack. As someone who grew up on SNES games, there's a funny kind of alchemy to this retro approach, where a game like this looks the way that you remember those older games looking, though this game gives away its modernity with realistic lighting effects (your characters can cast shadows when near a light source) or just in the fact that an entire large region will be on a single continuous map, rather than having to break it up so the game doesn't have to load too much at a time.

Anyway, I said to myself in the middle of playing that I felt like I was 12 again, so that's got to be an endorsement.