Sea of Stars – Zero Punctuation

Sea of Stars tells the story of two youngsters whose names, despite the many hours we spent together, I’m now going to have to Google to remember. Zale and Valere, there we go. Valere? Why not Valerie? Did she get traumatized by a letter I on the set of Sesame Street or something? Anyway, one of them has the power of the sun and one of them has the power of the moon, and they’re trained almost from birth to be the new generation of Solstice Warriors at a weirdly specific academy that’s weirdly close to where they live. On the eve of their graduation it was already becoming clear that there was something fishy going on behind all this. Why does the academy have only two students and about sixteen empty beds? Why do the two Solstice Warriors from the previous generation keep pointing to the headmaster behind his back and making weird throat-cutting gestures? And then there’s the matter of Zale and Valere’s childhood friend, Garl. There’s a flashback where they get into trouble in a dungeon together as kids and Garl loses an eye and that’s the last they see of him before getting sealed away in the academy, and he’s mysteriously absent from their graduation ten years later.

And by this point there’d been an ominous cutaway scene depicting several scheming villains wearing masks, so I figured I knew where this was going. Oh, they’re gonna knock one of the masks off and it’s Garl wearing an eyepatch and he’s all bitter at being abandoned by his friends, swordfight in the rain, lots of yelling, last episode of Cowboy Bebop etc etc. That’s what I thought. But then two minutes later Garl just shows up “Hey guys! Hope you had a nice decade! Can I be your third party member? I made sandwiches.” And then he just is. So I was a bit thrown, but over time I came to appreciate Garl because at this point Zale and Valere are basically weirdo monks who spent their formative years locked away from society learning how to atomize monsters by doing sign language at them, and Garl is the only party member with actual personality and social skills. And it becomes a running joke how often he makes friends with the boss fights after we’ve duffed them up enough. He’s like that one infuriating D&D player who’s like an 18 Charisma Paladin and insists on trying to talk down every combat encounter. So the DM ends up having to keep track of sixteen helper NPCs and is seriously considering committing murder suicide using the dice bag as an improvised flail.

So the three of you set off on your standard quest to defeat evil god, but while I thought Chrono Trigger’s plot suffered from losing the personal touch once the whole evil god business hoved into view like a zeppelin at a plate spinning contest, Sea of Stars keeps the focus on the dynamic of the three leads for the most part, although a lot of the additional NPCs have a bad case of “The authors seem to think this character is cool/funny/interesting but aren’t conveying that very well.” Like the three severely overdesigned pirates who show up now and then to do sod all. And there’s this ninja pirate who just sort of elbows her way into the party at one point. Probably with some complex backstory or other, but frankly they weren’t interesting enough to make me give much of a toss. Also, ninja pirate? What is this, early 2000s web humour? As for the plot, once it gets going it falls back a little too often on the old “prove your worth to the gods, destined warriors” chestnut where we go from one ancient dungeon to another to get the magical maguffin that opens the next one.

Don’t see why we couldn’t ask for a cocking certificate after the first time like it’s a CostCo membership, but nope, just gotta keep proving your worth like you’re on the Bachelor or something. Still, the gameplay’s solid. Well, the primary gameplay’s solid, there’s a fishing minigame I assume in accordance with the doctrine from the indie games united nations, and it’s probably the most vestigial fishing minigame I’ve ever encountered, and that’s like being the least interesting true crime Youtube channel. But the combat successfully finds ways to spice up the turn based battling without making it not turn based anymore, which was the sticking point in Chrono Trigger’s Active Time Battle approach for me. It’s got the now fairly standard issue Mario RPG-style timed hits, but there’s also a rather neat little idea where you can parry certain enemy attacks by hitting them with a random sequence of specific kinds of damage. It avoids fights turning into endless repeating slogs of attack heal attack heal and requires a bit of strategizing on the fly. And it’s very satisfying when the boss has to lose a turn and just sit there impotently mouthing objections because you successfully coordinated three frying pan hits and a knee in the bollocks.

But if I were to mark the main strike against the gameplay with my big chunky permanent marker, it’s possible that it tries a little too hard to be accessible. Which may only be a problem if you’re one of those genetic lottery winners who throw their copy of Atlus Shrugged out of the pram whenever anyone brings up adding easy mode to Dark Souls, but I never felt particularly challenged. The game might be a touch too generous with letting us run back to the campfire to full party heal between every combat. Probably why we’re only allowed ten healing items lest we break the difficulty further with an inexhaustible hoard of steak sandwiches sitting there in our inventory leaking juice all over the settings menu. There’s even a bunch of equippable relics that act as optional easy modes, Final Fantasy XVI style, like one that automatically does the timed hits for you or one that reduces damage. Which brought on a philosophical moment. Reduce damage? That’s just armour, isn’t it? Is using armour playing the game on easy mode? Whence lies the border between using the standard tools the game gives you, and using the baby mode workaround for crapouts? Well, I know what Ayn Rand would say if she were alive. She’d say, why am I in this coffin? It’s very dark.