Video Game / Sea of Stars

Valere (left) and Zale (right)

Sea of Stars is a video game developed by Sabotage Studio, the team that was behind The Messenger. Initially launched via Kickstarter on March 19, 2020, the campaign was successfully crowdfunded, raising over $1.68 million. The official website for the game is located here.

A chronological Prequel, Sea of Stars is set in the same world as The Messenger, but billions of years in the past. The player takes control of Zale and Valere, a pair of Solstice Warriors — members of an Ancient Order of Protectors empowered by the sun and moon to keep a horrible evil at bay, confronting their latest and greatest threat.

Whereas The Messenger is a Homage to Retreaux Metroidvania Platform Games, Sea of Stars is heavily inspired by turn-based Eastern RPGs, specifically Chrono Trigger, with sprite artwork, a turn-based battle system, Timed Hits for both attacking and defending, the cooking and consumption of Medicinal Cuisine, music that deliberately samples the Super Nintendo Entertainment System soundfont, and guest compositions by Yasunori Mitsuda.^note Eric W. Brown composed the bulk of the soundtrack. There's also plenty of Lampshade Hanging to keep things fun.

The game was released on August 29, 2023 for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. A DLC storyline, "Throes of the Watchmaker", was announced that would tie the game to The Messenger.

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Sea of Stars contains these tropes:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Once you activate the Chronophage, starting on the Golden Ending path, Garl is brought back to life, and gains his ultimate skill that can break any lock. By then, there's only one more optional dungeon to go to and the True Final Boss to fight.
• 100% Completion: The game keeps track of the player's accomplishments, even on consoles that don't have an Achievement System. Clearing them all upgrades the in-game quest log to have golden trim.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The level cap in this game is 30. You can take on the Final Boss at around level 20 if you just go through the story without doing any additional grinding, and even the Optional Bosses and Superboss fights won't get you close to the level cap if you clear them. It'll take quite a few hours of Level Grinding if you want to reach the cap on a single playthrough.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Medicinal Cuisine replaces all in-game healing items, meaning characters will stop mid-battle to eat a sandwich. Even better, knocked-out characters can be fed food to revive them, even though most unconscious people are unable to chew or swallow.
• Action Commands: If the player can press the action button at the right time during their attacks to increase damage done to the enemy, or reduce received damage when being attacked by enemies. The Sequent Flare relic will display a star flare to make it clear when a successfully timed hit and block occurs.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
  • This is lampshaded by Yolande, who talks about how the party can expect each successive town to have better blacksmiths than the last, and that the best smiths will sell you a dagger for 25,000 gold despite living in a random shack.
  • The game itself mostly averts this. Equipment upgrades are steady and affordable, and there's even an item which can be purchased fairly early into the game which gives the player the option to have a discount at all shops. When you do start getting better weapons, it's often justified, such as when the party travels to another world with more advanced technology.
• After-Combat Recovery: The game has "Relics" which can be purchased from merchants and make the game easier in various ways. The effects of the Amulet of Storytelling are "Max HP +100% and auto-heal after combat."
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Valere and Zale's sacred weaves are normally on their right shoulder and right hip respectively, but their sprites that face left or right tend to keep the weaves close to the camera. Also, Garl is missing his left eye after an incident in his childhood, but his sprites which face west show this eye as functional.
• Ancient Order of Protectors: The Solstice Warriors are an order of heroes who fight Dwellers to keep the world safe. Valere and Zale, The Protagonists, are the two newest members of such an order. The order is also known worldwide, as everyone the party comes across knows what the Solstice Warriors are. Also, each Solstice Warrior is a member of The Chosen Many, since every Solstice Warrior was born on an eclipse. However, such children don't get a choice as to whether or not they'll become Solstice Warriors. This is the source of the Face–Heel Turn of Brugaves and Erlina, Valere and Zale's mentors — Brugaves and Erlina rejected the idea that they "had to be" Solstice Warriors, and so they're open to the manipulations of the Fleshmancer's minions.
• And the Adventure Continues: The story ends with Valere and Zale, as Luana and Solen, respectively, taking down a World Eater, then flying off to continue protecting the multiverse.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When continuing after a defeat, you restart close to the same encounter instead of the previous save as with old-school RPGs, and fully healed.
  • Once you unlock a character for your party, they'll be included in the level-up screen from that point on so you can continue to tailor their stats to your preferences for the rest of the game, even if the story separates you from other party members for a while.
  • Seraï's Venom Flurry skill is rhythm-based, where you have to hit the attack button as she throws her knives in order to keep going. To ease into the rhythm, the first two throws will always work, even if you miss the timing.
  • The Falcon-Eyed Parrot relic unlocks a parrot on the Map screen. When selecting an island and activating the parrot, it will tell you which collectables are still on the island and where to find them, which is very helpful when looking for missing Rainbow Conches and Treasures. That being said, it will only tell you one missing collectible at a time, which means that if there is, for example, a treasure and a conch left on an island, it will only tell you one of these when called, and the player may need to call the parrot several times to get all the answers about the missing content.
  • Once you've done everything there is to do in a location — found every treasure chest, collected every Rainbow conch, cleared the boss fight, etc. — that area will be marked with a silver star next to its name so you know that there's nothing left to find there.
  • During "The Swan Song of the Warrior Cook" chapter, the party gets split into three groups of two, which means that for the following segments, the player has a weaker party, loses access to a significant amount of Combos, and the special accessories those characters have. To help things out, new Combos for those duos can be found during the segments, including one which is just given to the player automatically, and enemies have their vulnerabilities tailored to the two party members of the segment.
  • Party members can use any of their possible Combos regardless of who's on the field, even if the other necessary party member is in reserve - it will just put them out in the field.
  • After sailing the eponymous Sea of Stars and making it to Seraï's world, the player can go back to the home world whenever they want. What's convenient is that you never need to go through the short dungeon ever again or directly sail the Sea of Stars to get between each world, which would have made transversal between the two areas a mighty slog. Even better, once the moon and sun are back in place in Seraï's world, you can teleport between the two worlds instantaneously as part of a fast travel option.
  • After Garl perishes at the end of the second act, his equipment is returned to the inventory averting So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear, but additionally, when he's rescued in the process of getting the Golden Ending, he's automatically equipped with the best weapon and armor he can use, and automatically gets whatever combo skills he can use with B'st, a party member who was introduced some time after his initial death.
• Anti-Hoarding: The cap of ten cooked dishes of Medicinal Cuisine and the ease at which new dishes can be created encourages the player to consume items as needed.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only three protagonists can be fielded at once. However, an active party member can swap out for a reserve member on their turn.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Zigzagged with Duke Aventry. He started as a beloved Reasonable Authority Figure, but was driven to madness by his destructive battle against an evil sun warrior. Thanks to some prodding by Two, Aventry plunged Wraith Island into darkness and paved the way for the Dweller of Woe. He died deeply regretting his actions, but then was resurrected by Romaya and forced to guard her lair, fighting for evil as an Apologetic Attacker.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Solstice Warriors are taught that, if they show exemplary power and dedication to protecting others, they will one day ascend to becoming Guardian Gods. However, it's been a very long time since this has last occurred, to the point that Brugaves and Erlina consider it to be a false promise. Zale and Valere achieve it at the end of the game.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Enemy monsters will periodically sprout a graphic indicating their weak points in terms of both weapon types and elemental attacks. They do this when they are preparing a Charged Attack, which can be interrupted by striking them via those weak points.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Very early in the game, Zale and Valere recall how their childhood recklessness led to Garl losing an eye and lament the fact that he didn't show up to see them off. We're then treated to a scene with several mysterious Obviously Evil figures discussing Zale and Valere setting out on their journey. A savvy first time player may assume that Garl has grown to resent them over his lost eye and become a villain. However, as soon as the flashback is over, he jumps out of a nearby bush to give the heroes freshly made jam before joining the party.
  • When you first run across the pirates in Brisk, they’re standing next to an impressive ship, clearly intending for you to believe it's theirs. When you actually throw your lot in with them, they reveal their vessel is actually a small raft.
  • Moraine's toughness and habit of telling Burgraves and Erlina to keep quiet early on when they muse on the aspects of the Solstice Warrior life they don't like leads the player to believe Moraine isn't on the up-and-up. But he is a genuinely good, caring man, and it's Burgraves and Erlina who pull a Face–Heel Turn.
• Bare-Bottomed Monkey: A trait the gorillas all have (despite being called gorillas and not monkeys), which is lampshaded when the party encounters a group of baby gorillas sticking their butts up while peering through holes in the ground — both Valere and Zale are dumbfounded, while Garl thinks it's Actually Pretty Funny.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Essentially every single word out of Yolande's mouth is a reference to typical RPG tropes. For instance, she mentions how Adam Smith Hates Your Guts as you go further into your adventure. However, the Solstice Warriors aren't amused — either they don't know what Yolande is talking about, or they don't appreciate her talking smack about tropes in their game. Either way, Yolande's lampshading is frequently met with awkward silence. When Yolande ends up accidentally being right that their mentors turned on them, Valere and Zale are genuinely upset, to which Yolande quickly apologizes.
• Beyond the Impossible: This is actually the Central Theme of the story. At multiple points, the playable characters are given updates on their destiny that establishes a course of action they are going for is impossible to see through; they can't beat the Dweller of Strife, they have no hope against the Dweller of Torment, and Garl will put into place the potential for everyone's salvation too late for it to mean anything. Despite every setback and destiny itself trying to interfere with their quest, the Solstice Warriors continually try to accomplish their goals anyway because they know those goals are righteous and that a task supposedly being impossible doesn't mean they should give in to apathy when they can at least try to change things for the better. Because of their dogged determination to buck the odds, other factors become interested in the heroes and assist them, or the heroes themselves find some other means of coming as close to accomplishing their goals as possible, continually invoking this and overcoming what should be impossible odds in their quest to save the world. Meanwhile, the apathy and nihilism Brugaves and Erlina, respectively, assign to this and their unwillingness to try to still overcome the odds are painted entirely as poor choices on their part. The primary villains in the story aren't evil out a sense of ambition or moral righteousness, but because they're just too lazy and convinced of their failure to try to buck the odds - Erlina causes most of the game's conflict because she's told by the Acolytes the Solstice Warriors cannot overcome the Dweller of Torment, and instead of trying to find some alternate means of victory, she just decides to give up to satisfy Brugaves' cowardice and her desire to protect Brugaves and nothing else.
• The Big Bad Shuffle: Although the Fleshmancer and the Acolytes are introduced early, their role in the story is unknown, and the central goal of the story is that the protagonists must defeat the Dweller of Woe. And once that is done, the Acolytes present themselves, take the core of the Dweller, and reveal that their mentors have joined forces with them. And then the heroes finally get to them and defeat the Acolytes, but intervention from Seraï causes the Fleshmancer to join the story as the true final villain of the game.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The Haunted Mansion is abandoned and filled with hostile ghosts. It's also filled with non-hostile ghosts, but you have to clear an area of enemies before they show up.
• Blow You Away: The party eventually get the Mistral Bracelet, a tool that provides a small gust of wind, primarily used as the way to solve certain puzzles by pushing blocks or activating small propellers.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Invoked — during Yolanda, Valtraid, and Keenathan's adventuring days, enemies apparently had a habit of reducing them to 1 HP and then leaving as though they'd won the battle.
• Bonus Dungeon: Downplayed. There are a few areas that are optional to explore in the game, but in actuality, none of them are that big that they can be considered a full fledged dungeon. Some, like the Solstice Shrine and the Sunken Docarri Shrines are also just puzzle areas that lead to a single boss fight. The closest the game has to this is the Half-Sunken Tower, which is rather small compared to other areas in the game, but still holds new enemies and an optional boss fight with Romaya.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • You'll be using Valere's Moonerang from the tutorial dungeon all the way to the Final Boss. Moonerang can hit all enemies regardless of their proximity, and if you're good at the timing, it will do more damage than any other skill. Even better, if the enemy has multiple Moon locks, this skill can break them all in one go. Seraï's Venom Flurry does the same, except with Venom.
  • Seraï's Disorient delays an enemy action by two turns, and no enemy is immune to it, including bosses. Delaying a spell cast by two turns makes it trivial to break all locks during any cast, but even in normal combat a delay can give much-needed breathing room, or with more investment can lock down a boss indefinitely.
  • Resh'an's basic attack can, with a timed hit, do damage to all enemies on the battlefield. When revisiting older dungeons, this allows you to one-shot entire encounters.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Garl's Ultimate is a multi-hit attack that strikes every elemental weakness, which is extremely useful for lock-breaking. But in order to get it, you have to be well on your way to the Golden Ending, including defeating multiple Superbosses without this move, and basically getting 100% Completion in finding all of the treasures and Rainbow Conch shells. The only thing left to do once you get this attack is fight the True Final Boss. It doesn't carry over to New Game Plus, either. Since using an Ultimate attack is limited in nature, you might use it once against the last boss just to see it and then never use it again, especially since other Ultimate moves have more utility and it's possible to break locks perfectly fine without it.
• Call-Forward: Obviously as a prequel to The Messenger, these are littered throughout the game. On the whole, the entire game is the backstory of the Guardian Gods, and to a lesser extent the Sunken Shrine. This means that despite Sea of Stars ending on a high note, at least in the true ending, the fate of the protagonists is ultimately a sad one. But on the other hand, it's also shown that for all of the things that the villains seemingly get away with in this game, they will ultimately get their comeuppance.
• Cardboard Prison: This is another thing experienced by Yolande's party during their many Noodle Incidents.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first two acts can have their dramatic moments, but it's usually punctuated with Bathos or a Determinator attitude. But the end of the second act sees things take a very dramatic turn when Garl is shot by the Fleshmancer and ends up Living on Borrowed Time. He dies after doing one more thing to help Valere and Zale with the Sleeper, prompting his funeral in Mooncradle, the Solstice Warriors taking a few weeks to grieve his death, and a renewed sense of purpose to stop the Fleshmancer's plan. After that happens, Valere and Zale's portraits change from smiles to determined looks, the story goes in a darker direction (including some And I Must Scream territory for the Fleshmancer's victims), and the pace kicks up to a breakneck speed to get to the final confrontation quickly.
• Charged Attack: Both enemies and allies get them:
  • Enemies prepare charged spells, during which time they display a panel so that you can Attack Its Weak Point. Getting all of them means cancelling the spell entirely, while getting some of them means reducing the power of the spell. Some weak points are the same every time, but others are chosen randomly from a set pool, and there will be times where you cannot break the enemy because the Random Number God frowned at you.
  • There is a meter which shows how many Combo Points your party has stocked. The points can be used to unleash a Combination Attack, which can take up to three depending on the attack. Combo Points are lost upon battle's end, so there's no reason to hoard these attacks.
  • Eventually, you gain access to an Ultimate meter, which lets characters unleash their fourth and most powerful skill. Ultimate skills are granted via plot progression.
  • Finally, hitting enemies with the Attack action will cause them to drop "Live Mana," little glowy orbs which sit on the ground until specifically absorbed by a character by holding a shoulder button during their turn. A Live Mana buff causes their next physical attack to apply some of the character's innate element and deal extra damage according to their Magic Attack, or enhances the power of their next ability. A maximum of three Live Mana charges can be left on the field.
• Chekhov's Gun: Resh'an's talk with Aephorul right after the fight with the Dweller of Strife appears at first like Resh'an simply trying to get through again to his old friend, with him callously doing nothing to actually stop the laser beam moments away from hitting Garl. This persists all the way up to the end of the game and past the credits, at which point the Chronophage opens up. It turns out that Resh'an wasn't just trying to get through to Aephorul - he very specifically guides the conversation and awes Aephorul with his ability to functionally stop time so that Aephorul doesn't notice when the Solstice Warriors and B'st return later via the Chronophage to snatch up Garl from right under Aephorul's nose - meaning he doesn't realize he shot B'st, who could actually take the hit.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Hydralion is a sea monster that Stormcaller calls for a charged attack during his boss fight. It returns as a solo boss fight later in the game.
  • The Soul Curator. Initially presented as a character in Seraï's flashbacks, he returns in the Fleshmancer's Lair as a mid boss.
  • Verlot, a wing mage that the characters meet at the Sacrosanct Spires. He returns in the Fleshmancer's Lair to cut down a device as gratitude to the protagonists.
  • Teaks initially seems to be following your party just so she can acquire new stories and tell them to you around the campfire. Then she and her magical book become a critical step in getting information to the Artificer so the party can cleanse the Sky Base.
• Chokepoint Geography: Several points on the map can only be accessed by traveling through another area, at least until Zale and Valere learn to fly. Mooncradle is stuck behind the Forbidden Cavern, while Docarri Village is stuck behind the Jungle Path.
• Circling Birdies: When characters are knocked out, stars orbit around them, with each star representing a turn they'll spend KO'd.
• Collection Sidequest:
  • The Rainbow Conches. There are sixty of them spread out around the world. They can be exchanged in Docarri Village for a few relics, the plans to build Mirth, two of the best recipes in the game (Poutine and Pouding Chômeur), and an item required for the Golden Ending.
  • The Question Packs. There are eleven spread out around the world. Collecting all of them and then taking them to the Quiz Master gets you several small rewards for participating, but completing all of them grants you one of the Flimsy Hammers.
• Combat Pragmatist: Despite each being an Animalistic Abomination that the Fleshmancer implies lack a conscience, all the Dwellers fought in the game are shown to understand the rules that make them vulnerable and go out of their way to avoid a fair fight where they could conceivably lose:
  • The Dweller of Woe hides within the ground of the Haunted Mansion itself so that she can't be targeted by her foes, requiring Moraine to drag her out with magic. Even with that in mind, she fights within the Haunted Mansion so that the light the Solstice Warriors get from the eclipse isn't terribly powerful, forcing Garl to blow a hole in the roof.
  • The Dweller of Strife doesn't do much to hide from the light of an eclipse, but recognizes at some point that, currently, the Solstice Warriors it's fighting are only dealing Scratch Damage to it and need a special laser to harm it. Once the Dweller of Strife actually starts to weaken, it destroys the tower the Solstice Warriors are fighting it on, wrecking the laser beam.
  • The Dweller of Dread is very clever indeed. Though it's ultimately the Fleshmancer's machinations that obscure the sun and bury the moon in Seraï's world, and continue to feed the Dweller of Dread with the immortal cyborg bodies of the people of Repine, it's the Dweller's choice to gatekeep the moon so that, even if the sun were to be exposed, the moon couldn't possibly reach it for an eclipse to occur. Unfortunately for it, at that point, Valere and Zale had nearly ascended and were already deemed Luana and Solen, so they were so powerful that just being near the moon and having the sun unobstructed gave them the might to overcome it.
  • The one that takes the cake is the Dweller of Torment. First, the island it's on has a curse on the mountain of Torment Peak that causes anyone who enters to instantly forget anything they learned when they exit the region. This already stymies any attempt by the Solstice Warriors to form a posse to overcome it, since they can't fight it individually and can't remember to bring in more people to defeat the Dweller. However, the true beauty of this is that the Dweller of Torment has a baby gorilla birthing program that gives it a self-sufficient supply of food it can use to become a World Eater in secret, meaning there's no possible way anyone can learn of its actions without outside assistance. If everything else fails, it's located in the heart of a mountain, meaning the light of an eclipse cannot reach it. It takes divine intervention from Resh'an for the party to learn of the Dweller of Torment's existence and Seraï's portal technology to open a "window" to the outside for the eclipse to stream in from to dispatch the Dweller of Torment.
• Combination Attack: By filling up the Combo meter in battle, two party members can perform combination skills that have powerful effects. Logically, you need both characters in the party to perform the attack. If one is knocked out or out of party due to story reasons, the combo becomes unavailable. However, you first need to learn the combo skill first either by finding scrolls hidden throughout the game, or by advancing the story. There's a combo skill for each party member combination, except for Valere + Zale, which has three skills.
• Continuity Nod: Once the party reaches Mesa Island, and even a bit before, references to The Messenger start flooding the game:
  • When Zale and Valere are sent by Resh'an to retrieve the Solstice Amulet, they are sent to Glacial Peak, an area that exists in The Messenger. To further drive the point home, the song that plays in that area is a remix of the one that plays in The Messenger's Glacial Peak, and Resh'an flat out tells the party when they return to him that they just were in Mesa Island, which all but states that Mesa Island is the setting of that game. Once you reach the island proper, you are even greeted with some of the areas that appeared in that game.
  • Like in The Messenger, the boss of Autumn Hills is the Leaf Monster, which Zale and Valere have to bring the moon forth to draw out of hiding. Also like in The Messenger, it's invulnerable to the party's attacks until it shoots its leaves, leaving itself fully exposed. To hammer home the point, the boss flashes red as its life drops, and its death animation more closely resembles the death animations bosses in The Messenger had than anything you've seen up to this point.
  • Aephorul rewards his acolytes for reviving the Dweller of Strife by calling them to his fortress along with said Dweller, telling them they and the Dweller will fuse into a new form. Meaning you now get to know how the Big Bad of The Messenger, the Demon King, to which the Fleshmancer is the Greater-Scope Villain, came to be.
  • Just after the above happens, the Fleshmancer promises Brugaves that he will be the fastest and most efficient at his task, which is exactly what Barma'thazël, who Aephorul turned him into, is in The Messenger as he stalks the Ninja.
  • The Cloud Kingdom and its region happens to be the Cloud Ruins and Elemental Skylands the Ninja would visit eons later to confront the Demon King.
  • The sleeping dragon of Sleeper Island is given the name "Wentworth" after awakening, which the developers stated was the name of Manfred the dragon's first ancestor four years before this game was released.
  • Turns out the Artificer that leads the Order of the Blue Robes is actually five or six different beings fused into one machine, courtesy of Caël fusing his conscience and that of his assistants into the Catalyst's AI Core so they can leave Clockwork Castle and help Seraï deactivate the Sky Base. And yes, "Arty", as Seraï nicknames the new being, was the one who started the whole "Do the thing" stuff, as a mimic of the Solstice Warrior time of day control pose.
  • The World Eater that's fought as the final boss in either ending is shown to be the same as the unexplained indestructible monster in the Corrupted Future seen in The Messenger.
  • The ending shows an aged Teaks and the Artificer, and an aged Garl in the Golden Ending, discussing the new addendum to the Ancient Crypt, as well as its Ragnarök Proofing, that contains an altar dedicated to Zale and Valere. The altar looks the exact same as the one in the Sunken Temple the Ninja visits in The Messenger, which also implies that Zale and Valere were the ones who used the last of their power to provide the Ninja with one of the Musical Notes needed to open Phantom's Music Box.
  • There's an extra-hidden secret with one more reference: collect all four Flimsy Hammers and you can find a hidden room with a cabinet, just like in The Messenger's shop. After trying to open it a few times, the Shopkeeper herself comes out.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: The Abacus ring has the description "Displays non-boss enemies' HP in combat". This is downplayed as, in other aspects, bosses have vulnerabilities just like normal enemies and the game has no status effects.
• Cooking Mechanics: You can gather ingredients all through your travels and cook them into numerous Medicinal Cuisine meals, with a variety of effects.
• Cool Boat: The Vespertine, a Ghost Ship trapped in a cursed sea. The party must defeat its former captain before they can claim it for themselves.
• Creator Provincialism: As Sabotage Studio is based out of Quebec City, the game features a few bit of French Canadian culture:
  • A NPC in Brisk speaks in French written with a strong Quebec accent.
  • Two of the secret unlockable recipes from Mirna, the Rainbow Conch merchant, are Poutine and Pouding Chômeur.
• Cryptic Background Reference: When referring to the previous generation of Solstice Warriors, Moraine sometimes mentions "the twins" with little elaboration.
• Cutting the Knot: In the Fishing Dungeon, there's a puzzle where you have to "catch" the golden fish inside the pond. But no matter what you do, it will never bite onto your lure. So what's the solution? You literally jump into the pond itself and pick it up. It was never a fish at all, but a golden key in the shape of a fish!
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Almost literally, in a roundabout sort of way. The denizens of Seraï's home world have been converted into cyborgs so that they cannot die, and the Dweller of Dread can feast on their souls forever.
• Dark World: You could say Seraï's world, taken over by the Fleshmancer, with its population converted into Cyborgs, the sky covered by dark clouds and the moon sank into the ocean, is this game's idea of this.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: KOs are handled quite differently than typical JRPGs. A character reduced to 0 Hit Points is incapacitated with Circling Birdies over their heads. For each turn that passes, one star falls off, and when they're all gone, the character stands back up with 50% HP. However, the length of the incapacitation increases for each time a character has gotten knocked out this battle, and some food as well as one of B'st's skills can bring a party member back from KO.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Captain Klee'shaë's pirate crew will play "pirate" versions of the game's music in any tavern you visit after you've made allies with them. If you stop to talk to any of the pirates, that pirate will stop playing, and their instrument will cut out of the mix until you aren't talking to them anymore. Additionally, each character will wait to come in on-beat after the conversation ends, which synchronizes to the music. Also, when you head below deck to find the band jamming, the navigator will pop in and grab their instrument before joining the band.
  • Holding down a button on the world map will let your characters enter camp, where you can cook, save, talk to party members, and hear stories from Teaks. Should you attempt to do this in one of the few areas that are underwater, your characters will still set up camp, with them finding an air pocket among a bed of coral.
• Developer's Room: Unsurprisingly, given the game it takes inspiration from:
  • The Ancient Crypt, an immense location filled with graves and statues, each containing a message from the game's Kickstarter backers. You need to go there once, but the sole NPC there will immediately tell you that the location is completely optional.
  • Inside the Ancient Crypt itself there's another secret. Among all the graves, there's a broken one that you can push, revealing a secret passage. In the passage there are walls you can break with the Flimsy Hammers. At the end of it, you can enter the Sabotage Studio office and talk with the game's developers.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Before the Golden Ending final boss fight, Garl provokes the Fleshmancer by calling him out, then throwing an apple at him to goad him into fighting the heroes himself.
• Difficulty Levels: Handled in a Modular Difficulty fashion. Most stores sell various Relics which can be turned on and off in the Party menu. Most of them straight-up lower difficulty, but a couple make the game harder in certain ways, and a few provide trade-offs by making the game harder in some ways but easier in others. These can be handy during the late-game when you're doing things like the Collection Sidequest and have to revisit every location: even if you've already beat the Final Boss, your characters never get to the point where they can just breeze through an encounter. That's what they have the relics for.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Dweller of Woe. Defeating it just results in Erlina and Brugaves performing their Face–Heel Turn in the game's Wham Episode.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Haunted Mansion, the Clockwork Castle, and the Sky Base all qualify.
• Discount Card: The Gold Tooth relic reduces shop prices by 10%.
• Do Not Spoil This Ending: The game's digital artbook initially released with only eighty pages that cover the first four chapters of the game. It will be updated to cover the entire game alongside the release of a physical artbook, "to give enthusiasts time to play the game without encountering any spoilers that would be revealed by the artwork".
• Doomed Hometown:
  • Averted. No matter how many Solstice Warriors the Dwellers kill, Mooncradle is never targeted directly. This is an early sign that the contest between Aephorul and Resh'an has rules they must both follow.
  • This is played straight concerning Seraï's hometown of Repine. It's a Death World, with everyone being turned into a cyborg so that the Fleshmancer can forever feast on their souls.
• Dramatic Unmask: Double subverted with Seraï. She does this to herself after the party reaches her home world, revealing the cybernetics she has instead of a jaw and neck. She had already admitted — and the game made no effort to hide beforehand — that she was secretly Captain Klee'shaë the entire time. So exactly what's under her mask is a twist, just not in the way that a player might first think it's a twist.
• Dual Boss: Brugaves and Erlina. They're also a Duel Boss in that the party stand back and let Zale and Valere take on their Mentors and their Broken Pedestals alone.
• Elemental Powers: There are six damage types in the game: Sharp, Blunt, Solar, Lunar, Venom, and Arcane. The latter two don't start to show up until you've obtained (or about to obtain) party members that can deal that damage type.
• Endgame+: After getting the first ending for the game, you're informed of a new point of interest, and some new quests will open for you, allowing you to get the Golden Ending.
• Eternal Engine: Clockwork Castle is a fortified locale filled with perpetually moving machinery.
• Evil Is Visceral: The Fleshmancer, naturally. The Clockwork Castle and especially the Fleshmancer's Lair are covered with thick layers of veiny Meat Moss, with the latter featuring giant eyeballs that can be rolled around and what appear to be monstrous fetuses inside the walls, and his minions are monsters made from Body Horror and masses of boiling flesh.
• Evolving Title Screen: The title screen always shows the party around a campfire. Who precisely is present, and what they're looking at in the distance, changes depending on the events of the game.
• Exact Words: The Oracle of Tides determines that no matter what outside help the Solstice Warriors get, whether it be Resh'an, the genius children, or Seraï, they will go into battle with but will not defeat the Dweller of Strife. As it turns out, this is technically correct - just as the Dweller of Strife begins to weaken, it wisely decides to destroy the laser beam doing actual damage to it and takes the fight out of the Clockwork Castle and over to Mesa Island's hills, where Valere and Zale can only deal Scratch Damage to it. However, that doesn't mean that the Solstice Warriors will necessarily lose, either - the Oracle of Tides never says the Dweller of Strife will go on to destroy the world, and when Seraï fudges the fight by indirectly involving Resh'an, thus calling in Aephorul, Resh'an's counterpart takes the Dweller and the Acolytes away to refine them, setting up the events of The Messenger. So, really, the fight can conservatively end up being called a tie.
• Experience Booster: The Tome of Knowledge relic increases experience gained from battles.
• Eye Scream: Garl is missing his left eye, and a flashback of the trio's childhood shows exactly how he lost it. That being said, he's still Big Fun in the party.
• Fast Travel:
  • While initially just the method of leaving the initial island, the three golems and one of the Sky Giants become this later in the game, with the Solstice Warriors able to quickly travel between Evermist Island, Watcher Island, the sea by Mesa Island, and the Cloud Kingdom upon learning their respective names.
  • Later in the game, the Speedball Network serves a similar function in Seraï's world.
• Final Boss: The final boss of an initial playthrough is the Fleshmancer's new enforcer, Elysan'darëlle. Yes, it's Erlina.
• Fishing Minigame: There are fishing holes all across the world where you can catch a variety of fish. You have to keep the fish in a highlighted zone as you reel it in, or the line will break.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The first location you enter in Seraï's world is shrouded in complete darkness. However, the design of the dialogue boxes becomes more detailed and tech-like, just before it's revealed that her world is much more technologically advanced.
• Floating Continent: The Cloud Kingdom is a series of floating landmasses. The Fleshmancer's Lair also floats in the sky.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Teaks's stories will serve to hint to future developments or to sidequests:
    • "The Vespertine": Explains the story of the Vespertine ship. This story is obtained way before the Vespertine actually becomes a plot point.
    • "The Three Sisters": Explains the story of Moyara, Yomara, and Romaya. Yomara is introduced way after this. It also states who is Moyara way before the story actually explains it to you.
    • "The Vampire Rose": Explains about the existence and powers of the Vampire Rose. The item is being used by the Acolytes to keep themselves alive.
    • "The Nomads of the Sea": Explains the story of the Doccari. Among the bits of the story, it reveals that there is a giant Sea Slug sealed away. This is an extra boss that can be fought to obtain a better weapon for Resh'an.
  • When the party arrives at Lake Docarria, they're initially flummoxed by how they'll manage to meet with the Oracle of Tides given how deep the realm of the Docarri is underwater, since they obviously can't hold their breath long enough to reach such depths. Though they soon manage to empower an item to let them breathe underwater indefinitely, Seraï's first response when the conundrum comes up is to awkwardly mention that she has something she wanted to eventually reveal to the party, implying it would allow them to reach the Docarri. About ten to twenty hours later, the player finally learns what Seraï was getting at - most of her body is robotic, including her spinal column and her lungs, meaning she doesn't actually need to breathe. If all else failed, she was intending to simply swim down herself.
  • Right before the final party member officially joins, Resh'an asks them to do a favor for him, stating he'll know when the time comes and that "only the three of you can enter the portal". On the path to the true ending, it's revealed that Resh'an was referring to the ritual to revive Garl.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: Autumn Hills is a forested region where the foliage is in various states of red, orange, and yellow.
• Framing Device: The game is initially prevented as a story being told by the Archivist, about one of many potential timelines in a multiverse; it even cuts back to him on occasion when some details need to be explained. Then things take a twist when the party ends up in the Archivist's library, learn he's responsible for creating the multiverse in order to deal with the Fleshmancer, and convince him to no longer remain a mere observer.
• Friendly Enemies:
  • Brugaves sees himself as trying to free all the remaining Solstice Warriors from slavery. He continues to reach out to Zale and Valere throughout their encounters, encouraging them to defect and save themselves... and let this continuity die, which is where the main characters take some objection.
  • Resh'an, the Archivist, and Aephorul, the Fleshmancer. While they have clear ideological differences that they cannot overcome — indeed, they are essentially the Big Good and Big Bad of the game, respectively — their decades of friendship allows them to slide back into their old roles as though no time has passed whatsoever, and they clearly respect each other as people even as they Agree to Disagree on certain matters.
• Friendly Fire: The Toadcano boss can summon Firecracker enemies to his side that can attack the player. Its main spell, Tremor, can also cause damage to anything but it on the field, which includes its own allies.
• Genre Throwback: To SNES-era JRPGs, with Chrono Trigger being a major inspiration. That being said, the game has modernized and streamlined significant parts of the mechanics of the game. For example, less stats to mind and having only one level for the entire party avoiding having under-leveled characters, and visually, it's clearly made using modern technology, especially in regards to the time-change mechanics, which uses lighting on the pixel sprites as if they're 3D objects.
• Ghost Ship: The Vespertine is an ancient ship whose crew have long since become ghosts.
• Golden Ending: Completing the game once will allow you to restart the game with a warning that something appeared in the Moorlands. By going there instead of fighting the final boss, you can find hints of all the leftover sidequests that you can do, and completing all seven of them will set the plot into gear for the real ending of the game, as well as the True Final Boss.
• Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: In-game sprites for characters have larger heads than in character portraits and cover art of the game.
• Grappling-Hook Gun: The party gets one called a Graplou, which aids in traversal, as well as pulling certain objects and grappling into an enemy before fighting them.
• Green Hill Zone: Mountain Trail is the first area of the game, filled with basic enemies and paths to ease you into the adventure.
• Guest-Star Party Member: The original mission, charged to Zale and Valere by Headmaster Moraine, is to help defeat the last Dweller; he musters the entire Solstice Warriors corps — himself, the two Player Characters, and Mentors Erlina and Brugaves — for this battle. When you finally confront the Dweller, Headmaster Moraine is a party member, with Erlina and Brugaves present as AI-driven combatants who contribute to the battle in your favor.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The timed hits. In this game, pressing the confirm button at the right time during an attack animation will strengthen it. For most attacks and skills, the right timing is simply when the attack connects. But there are several skills with unconventional timing. For example, Zale's Sunball timing is releasing the button when the fireball is at the largest stage, Garl's Nourish timing is just before he pulls out the item from his bag, and Resh'an's basic attack is timing it so the second potion he throws hits the first. The game never tells you about any of these.
  • One Rainbow Conch in Brisk is hidden in a building with an entrance at the back at the building i.e. hidden from player view. Especially egregious because every single building in the game has a visible entrance, except for this one.
• Hand Wave: Why would a Trauma Inn have a campfire in any of its rooms? Because it's geothermally controlled for your comfort!
• Hard Mode Perks: There's an actual achievment tied to the 'hard mode' relic of the game, Artful Gambit. To get it, you have to beat ten bosses with the relic active, and this is necessary to get 100% Completion. Artful Gambit cuts your party's HP by a debilitating 95%, and gives enemies invincibility while they're casting. However, as a caveat to this, all the player's attacks do double damage and all successfully blocked attacks only deal one damage to the characters. Bosses are certainly more challenging with Artful Gambit equipped, but the relic is meant to test the player's timing, not their resilience, so the fights at least go by quickly.
• Healing Checkpoint: Campfires are typically found near a Save Point. Resting at a campfire restores your HP and MP to full, and you can also cook Medicinal Cuisine at campfires. However, it's possible to use a relic to have a campfire restore less HP and MP as a form of Modular Difficulty.
• Hidden Elf Village: Docarri Village is hidden under a lake, and requires a special power for outsiders to enter. Some of the Docarri themselves are even more reclusive, spending all their time in chambers that can only be accessed by swimming.
• Hijacked by Ganon: A rare case of this being set up in the course of a single game. The final boss is normally Elysan'darëlle, a new villain who arises over the course of the story. However, in the Golden Ending, Aephorul brushes her aside and takes over as the end boss himself.
• Humongous Mecha: The golems that fling your characters long distances. Bonus points for one of them being named "Y'eet."
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Besides the typical treasure chests, there are picnic baskets whose food products, some cooked and some raw, are still in consumable state.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The second-best weapons of each character can be found in treasure chests inside The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The endgame content includes a handful of sidequests that serve to deliver the player the best weapons for each character:
  • Valere and Zale get the Moon Bo and the Solar Blade. To get this, they must unlock and solve the five Solstice Shrines spread around the world. Doing this will unlock a portal in the Mountain Trail of Evermist Island. Going in there, the two alone must fight on a rematch against the Elder Mist, who is now much harder. Upon defeat, he will gift them these weapons.
  • Resh'an gets the Aetherwood Cork. To get it, the player must activate giant crystals on the world and use their time-changing powers to unlock certain whirlpools to sunken Docarri shrines. Upon solving the puzzles in three of them, the keys obtained will serve to unlock the fourth shrine. The fourth shrine has the extra boss Sea Slug, and upon defeat, the player will find a treasure chest, only for it to be empty. Resh'an's puppet will then reveal that it had the Aetherwood Cork on their person the entire time.
  • Seraï gets the Star Shard. To acquire it, before the final dungeon, the player must talk to her at a camp and she will tell of The Queen That Was, a remaining threat to her people, and give the player an artifact, knowing Teaks may be able to use it to locate her. Using the clues to find her, she will drop this weapon once she is defeated.
  • B'st can't change his weapon, so instead he gets his best armor instead, the Vitric Simulacrum. To get it, the player needs to enter the Dweller's Fall Arena and beats all the bosses inside it. It will be given to you by the final boss you fight.
  • The Eclipse Armor is the best armor in the game, and it can only be equipped by either Valere or Zale. There are two of them. One is found in one of the Solstice Shrines scattered around the world, the other rewarded for completing the Duke Aventry sidequest.
  • Garl automatically gets his best weapon, the Mooncradle Boy's Lid, and his best armor, Garl's Apron, when you start the true ending route.
• In Medias Res: The game begins with Zale and Valere on their way to meet the Elder Mist after completing their training, before they set up camp and reminisce about how they went on their first adventure as kids ten years ago and had to part ways with their childhood friend Garl when they began training as Solstice Warriors.
• Interface Screw: Valere's Moonerang and Seraï's Venom Flurry can cause problems. The animation causes the character to jump to a new physical location, which is calculated based on the position of the current enemies. As such, our hero can be so far off the screen that it's difficult or even impossible to make the timing attacks work if you rely too heavily on the visuals.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Around the time you get to Lucent, enemies start showing up with weak points that you cannot exploit because they require attacks you don't have. It's almost like there's a new party member just around the corner. Because there is.
  • This is subverted in regard to your party composition. When Garl dies and B'st joins, the party menu seems to only have five active slots, plus one cargo slot for NPCs. After you get put on the path to the True Final Boss, the cargo slot disappears and you have all six slots active.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Valere and Zale, as Solstice Warriors, can use magic to change the time of day and activate machinery dependent on sunlight or moonlight. The time-of-day cycle has no other effects, and is largely cosmetic.
• Jump Scare: The council, encountered late-game, has its leader occasionally summon a crow's caw in the middle of his conversation, complete with a sudden flash of the crow's head on-screen and a loud cry of "SILENCE!" most of the times it happens. He can even do this in the boss battle with him, where failing to break the attack's lock will reduce every party member's HP to 1.
• Jungle Japes: Jungle Path is a forested zone that the heroes touch down on, to make their way to Docarri Lake.
• Kidnapped by the Call: The Ancient Order of Protectors that is the Solstice Warriors makes every child born on an eclipse into one of their order. This is the source of the Face–Heel Turn of Brugaves and Erlina — they rejected the idea that they "had to be" Solstice Warriors just because they were born on a certain date, and so they're open to the manipulations of the Fleshmancer's minions into joining the bad guys.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Acolytes of the Fleshmancer. Even more so than their master, who is at least Affably Evil to his counterpart Resh'an. Any time they show up, all sense of lightheartedness quickly vacates the plot. This extends to Brugaves and Erlina as well, once the two of them reveal their allegiance with the Acolytes.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Romaya eventually surrenders to the heroes after she loses the boss fight against her, as she'd rather not die over the soul stone they're after. She surrenders again in the post-game rematch, handing over the locket keeping Duke Aventry bound to the world. She's not happy about it either time, but better give up those than die.
• Landmark of Lore: The Tower of Antsudlo is a mysterious location the Docarri have been guarding for ages and where the Archivist has been residing at the top.
• Lazy Backup: You usually have three characters in the active party, and one or two backups. The backups can be freely swapped with the active characters during combat, but if all of the active characters are knocked out at the same time, then it's Game Over.
• Leaked Experience: Every party member is always the same level as every other party member. In addition, everyone levels up at the same time, no matter how often they're used.
• Lethal Lava Land: Kiln Mountain is a volcano filled with lava and exploding Firecracker enemies.
• Level in the Clouds: Air Elemental Skyland is a zone high in the sky, complete with wind gates that send you flying between landmasses.
• Limit Break: Each party member has an ultimate skill that does strong damage to all enemies. To use it, the player needs to fill out the rainbow colored meter by using skills and combos. When it's filled up, the "Skill" menu will turn rainbow-colored and any character can use their ultimate skill, upon which the meter resets to zero.
• The Lost Woods: Cursed Woods is a forest filled with haunted plants, sprits, and zombies.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: This is lampshaded when the party first arrives in the Stonemasons Outpost:
  Molekin: "EVERYONE STOP PANICKING! SOLSTICE WARRIORS ARE HERE TO FIX EVERYTHING!"
• Man-Eating Plant: The Botanical Horror is a monstrous plant consisting of a huge main body and several smaller plants that accost the heroes all at once.
• Medicinal Cuisine: Food replaces the standard healing items typically found in other RPGs. You'll need to find recipes to create new dishes, find and/or buy ingredients to cook the items in question, and use them as necessary. You can also only carry ten dishes at a time, and can only prepare food at a campfire.
• Medium Blending: When the Vespertine begins to transition to Seraï's world, the game shifts to a 3D polygonal style as the ship blows a hole open in space to enter her world.
• Modular Difficulty: There are relics you can obtain throughout the game. Once obtained, you can activate/deactivate them anytime out of battle. They have effects ranging from beneficial (after-battle recovery, chance to auto-block attacks, etc.) to challenge (more damage taken, one-hit-kill unless blocking, etc).
• Mole Men: There are a race called Molekin that are stonemasons.
• Monster Arena: The Dweller's Fall Arena is an arena in Brisk that has you fighting remixed enemies from the game, with fixed parties.
• Multiple Endings: Defeating the final boss unlocks the option to resume playing from right before then, but with a hint about finding the Golden Ending. In the Moorlands, one of the first levels of the game, there's a ring of standing stones that can be visited; checking each one gives you a single image idea of what sidequests you need to complete to make it light up. Complete them all and the ring of stones turns out to be the Cronophage, allowing Zale and Valere to save Garl from death. Garl rejoins the party, and with his presence, the True Final Boss becomes accessible. Defeating said True Final Boss will unlock the Golden Ending.
• Neglectful Precursors: This is justified in the case of the Dweller of Torment. Solstice Warriors of the past wanted to cleanse it, but due to its power, they forgot about its existence as soon as they left its lair.
• New Game Plus: Defeating the final boss unlocks the option to start a new run while carrying over items from the previous run, including the endgame relics that allow self-imposed challenge modes, one of which is required for 100% Completion. You can also hold down a few buttons to fast-forward through dialogue to make progressing through the game much quicker.
• Nostalgia Level: Autumn Hills from The Messenger is recreated step-by-step in this game but played in a new perspective. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the level in both games.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: The game does not have a journal. The map has a marker for the main quest, but if you forget why you're going there, then you will have to wait for a cutscene.
• Optional Boss: Quite a bit of endgame content involves extra bosses that guard upgrades and rainbow conches. While they're not strictly necessary for plot progression, collecting all rainbow conches is required for the Golden Ending, and so is defeating said bosses. These include: a rematch with the Elder Mist, the Sea Slug, the Gun Goddess, and a rematch with Romaya.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: After some of the major story beats, the scene shifts from the Solstice Warriors to a quartet of masked and robed people named One, Two, Three, and Four, who discuss their plans for the world. They're later revealed to be the Acolytes of the Fleshmancer.
• Only One Name: Every character from Mooncradle, and most of the others. The only exceptions are the pirates, who need multiple names for their puns to work.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Sleeper, a gigantic unnamed pink sky serpent carries the hallmarks of an Asiatic dragon, but with the destructive tendencies of a western dragon. Should it ever wake from its sleep, it is said that its rampage will destroy the world. In his bid to open the Sea of Stars, Garl domesticates the serpent with a big loaf of bread, fulfilling the prophecy of soothing a tormented soul with his warm heart.
• Palmtree Panic: Coral Cascades is a tropical cliffside zone filled with all sorts of hostile sealife.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Seraï and Captain Klee'shaë are one and the same, and if you don't recognize the identical hairstyle and face, the game gives increasingly obvious hints. By the time the actual reveal happens, all the other characters already know. The achievement/trophy that unlocks is titled "Who would have thought?"
• Player Nudge:
  • After being told to investigate the Ancient Crypt, which only has perks associated with the game's Kickstarter, the Cryptkeeper notes that the area is optional and not plot relevant, and you don't have to explore it.
  • If you visit Yomara in her cottage, she will say that she can't help you, "but I can't stop you looking in my cauldron." If you take the hint, you will get a clue to an Optional Boss.
• Plotline Death: Garl dies towards the end of the game's second act. There's nothing you can do to save him the first time around; instead, you have to beat the game and start the path to the True Final Boss before you can get him back.
• Pop Quiz: The Quiz Master in Lucent will challenge your knowledge of the game with a variety of questions, using Question Packs found around the world.
• Port Town: Brisk has tropical beaches, pirates, and a roaring trade — though it's not totally clear with whom, as all the other communities are reclusive or inaccessible at first.
• Post-Final Boss: After clearing the normal route, the final challenge is an Unexpected Shmup Level using the fully-awakened Valere and Zale against a World Eater, with access to a Super Beam and the ability to Dive to avoid bullets. Fortunately, it's an easy iteration and losing all health just results in being immediately revived. The True Final Boss has its own shmup section when he hits low health which does not have that mercy, but isn't required to defeat the boss.
• The Prophecy: Three to be precise, as Elder Mist gives each of the heroes their own prophecy:
  • For Zale, he'll reach his full potential once he stares at the night inside. It means Zale will learn how to fly by being confronted with Garl's soon-to-be death.
  • For Valere, when the time comes she’ll create a bridge made of water. It's how she opens the passage to the Cloud Kingdom.
  • For Garl, his heart is warm enough to soothe a tormented soul. This means waking and taming the Sleeper with food. Garl is also told that, at one point, he will need to ask for a Flask of Borrowed Time.
• Punctuation Shaker: Played for Laughs. Early in the game, you meet a pirate called Captain Klee'shaë.
• Punny Name:
  • Early in the game, the party must rely on a giant golem to encase the party in a protective sphere and chuck them to another golem at their destination. The first golem doesn't have its name revealed immediately, as Garl accidentally gets the party chucked before they learn it, but turns out to be named Y'eet.
  • Captain Klee'shaë is pronounced Captain Cliché, and tries her best to act like a very stereotypical pirate. Her crew includes first mate Yolande Fortwal, who frequently comes close to Breaking the Fourth Wall, and Jacko Valtraid, who Yolande claims is a Jack of All Trades.
  • The Sky Giant who provides the Fast Travel system in the Cloud Kingdom is named Puntie, and he punts the sphere to its destination.
• Random Encounters: Averted. In a design nod to Chrono Trigger, almost all enemies are visible before you fight them, and there's no separation between the map and battle screens.
• Really Dead Montage: After completing the quest to wake the Sleeper, Garl gets one of these. He dies on the back of Wentworth as the party flies towards Mooncradle. What follows is a funeral for Garl, along with images of Valere, Zale, and the pirate crew all in mourning for a few weeks, with the player only taking control again in front of Garl's grave, all to confirm that Garl is really gone.
• Red Herring: A certain NPC in Brisk named Gaëtan Piment has a unique sprite and takes a bit of work to find. The player might be forgiven for thinking he's important, but all he does is spout gibberish in French with a heavy Quebec accent.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Zale and Valere counterbalance each other this way, as Valere was born on the Winter Solstice and Zale on the Summer Solstice. It is implied that Solstice Warriors are always paired this way; certainly Erlina and Brugaves are.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The Artful Gambit Relic changes the game into essentially this. Enemies are immune to damage while casting and the player characters have their HP reduced by 95%. In return, a successful block reduces the attack's damage to one, and the party deals doubled damage. With a force that strong behind a maximally boosted Soonrang, any boss will fold like paper, but the player has to be ready to weather a storm to make their offense count.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Cerulean Expanse is a large desert filled with sand in seemingly every direction.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Just before the final act of the game, Garl, along with the sense of levity he brings, dies to open a way to the home world of Seraï and lair of the Big Bad.
• Shout-Out:
  • Chrono Trigger:
    • The first boss is a big shelled monster with a mouth for a face covered in spikes who summon orb-shaped minions to each of his sides, homaging Lavos, the Big Bad of Chrono Trigger.
    • Standing on the far east end of the Moorlands is a peaceful monster who gives the exact dialogue of a Kilwala from Chrono Trigger's Denadoro Mountains: alternating between "Mountains're nice" and "This is the life" before declaring the party "nosy" and giving them an item.
    • A major plot event causes a character to be Killed Off for Real performing a Heroic Sacrifice to allow the heroes to escape an unbeatable Big Bad, with an important sidequest allowing the party to go back in time to the exact moment of death and avoiding it by using a substitute body in their place.
    • The Final Boss you face on the normal route takes on a form similar to Queen Zeal's final form.
  • The boss in the mines has an attack "Shovel Might," suggestive of Shovel Knight.
  • One enemy, the undead Gulgul zombie, uses a fleeing ability called "Sulsul", which is what The Sims say when wishing each other goodbye.
  • A major sidequest character that helps to rebuild a destroyed community was originally known as Jirard the Constructionist, named after and whose appearance was based on The Completionist, who formed a friendship with the developers after falling in love with the initial demos for The Messenger. Due to a controversy in late November 2023 involving Jirard being accused of charity fraud, his name and likeness would be removed in a later update to the game, being replaced with a generic NPC named "Bob".
  • The final party member's Ultimate Skill is called Altered B'st.
  • The game has several design cues out of the Golden Sun series. Valere wears her special garment as a half-cape in the exact same fashion as Felix's own, even down to the same side, Zale's character portraits make him look like a darker-skinned Isaac, and climable walls share the same imprint as those found in The Lost Age, and even the character sprites fit pretty closely to what an HD remaster would likely do for the Golden Sun cast. Zale's Ultimate is also pretty much a horizontal Megiddo, the signature Unleash of the Sol Blade from The Lost Age.
  • The Gold Rank Champion of the Dweller's Fall Arena is a man named Sylgain. He actually has voiced grunts when he's hit, and the animations for his attacks and being hurt look pretty familiar. He's overall a huge reference to the earlier Punch-Out!! games!
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Glacial Peak is an icecap region filled with ice and snow.
• Solar and Lunar: The two main protagonists of the game are Valere, a lunar monk who walks the path of the Guardian Goddess Luana, and Zale, a solar blade dancer who walks the path of the Guardian God Solen.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Characters will do this as they are taken in and out of the party by the plot:
  • When you get the Shimmering Shard accessory, keep it with one of your Main Characters; likewise, the next set of dungeons have a replacement character (Seraï) whose gear you probably shouldn't mess with for now. By the time you get your first vehicle, everyone settles down and stops ducking in and out.
  • Averted in the case of Garl's death. Unlike the prior times where Garl is forced out of your party, once Garl gets his burial, his gear is dropped into your inventory.
• Story Difficulty Setting: The game does not have a difficulty setting, but equipping the Amulet of Storytelling will significantly reduce the challenge by doubling max HP and fully healing after battles.
• Thinking Up Portals: Seraï is a portal assassin and has the ability to create portals to various places, and is capable of using them in combat such as hopping between to go to both sides of the battlefield and fling attacks at enemies.
• Time Skip: The post-credits scene takes place long after the main adventure ends.
• Title Drop: The Sea of Stars is mentioned halfway through the game as being the only way the party can track down the Fleshmancer. When they actually go through it, it's revealed to be a passageway to a parallel world that the Fleshmancer has already ruined.
• Took a Shortcut: Teaks always manages to show up to the party's campfire, no matter how deep in monster-infested or inaccessible territory.
• Training from Hell: Solstice Warrior training is implied to be pretty intensive — Zale and Valere disappear for ten years, looked over by Headmaster Moraine, who is a Drill Sergeant Nasty; and even after that, the Solstice Warriors are something of a Mutant Draft Board and the members' actions are strictly controlled. This is part of why Erlina and Brugaves go rogue.
• True Final Boss: Completing the game and defeating the regular final boss will mark the player's save file with a silver star and enable New Game Plus. However, loading that endgame file unlocks various new sidequests and Optional Boss encounters. By completing them all, it changes the final boss fight, and defeating it shows a new ending, upgrades the star to gold, and rewards one of the four Flimsy Hammers.
• The Unchosen One: Played with in regards to Garl, the childhood friend of Zale and Valere. Garl doesn't have the attributes to be a Solstice Warrior, and thus is forced to watch his friends leave for the academy for ten years, only to promise they'll reunite and adventure together when the time comes. Garl spends the next ten years training himself as a Support Party Member for them, learning cooking, survival and foraging skills, and other such things so that while he might lack magic like the pair, he can help them along their journey in his own way. Garl's effort is enough that the Elder Mist decides to let him through the secret trials because Garl's warm personality might prove to be an ace in the hole. By the end of the game and the true ending path, Garl ultimately proves to be the most important person in the party even over the Solstice Warriors.
• Underground Level:
  • Forbidden Cavern is a cave near Mooncradle that the Solstice Warriors and Garl visit when they were young, and where the former make their way through once they finally set off on their journey.
  • Wind Tunnel Mines is a network of tunnels in a mountain, carved out so that the sounds it makes keeps the dragon wrapped around it asleep.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The Post-Final Boss of the normal route is a shmup fight using the fully-awakened Valere and Zale against a World Eater, with access to a Super Beam and the ability to Dive to avoid bullets. Fortunately, it's an easy iteration and losing all health just results in being immediately revived. The True Final Boss has its own shmup section when he hits low health which does not have that mercy, but isn't required to defeat the boss.
• The Unfought:
  • The Fleshmancer is never confronted in the standard ending, with the Solstice Warriors instead fighting Elysan'darëlle, Erlina's demonic form.
  • Once Garl is revived, Elysan'darëlle is never summoned and the party confronts the Fleshmancer directly. The Golden Ending shows her reuniting with Barma'thazël, the demonic transformation of Brugaves.
• Variable Mix:
  • Some themes segue between two different versions depending on the time of day.
  • Some locations transition to a more intense version of the area theme during battle, as opposed to switching to the standard battle theme.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Fleshmancer's Lair. Exactly What It Says on the Tin, it's the castle of the Big Bad himself. It's a floating castle covered in creepy flesh tendrils, and the enemies are monstrosities similar to the Dweller minions.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Several foes, after they are defeated, just exit out of the story because they canonically show up in The Messenger. Examples include Brugaves, the Acolytes, and the Dweller of Strife.
• Villain Has a Point: Elrina and Brugaves aren't exactly wrong when they say that the Solstice Warrior system is heavily flawed. As shown throughout the game, Solstice Warriors are torn from their families at birth, forced to endure grueling training at a young age, are cut off from almost all social communication with anyone outside the order, and are essentially forced to live a life of constant training and fighting against deadly forces regardless of their own desires or wants. As bad as their crimes are, it's hard to blame them for wanting an out to such a miserable existence.
• Visual Initiative Queue: Instead of a big UI element, each monster has a countdown timer next to it which tells you, numerically, how many turns will pass before it does its next move. This is because "turns" are interchangeable; if you're on Valere but Zale hasn't done an action yet, you can switch to him instead; and, after either of them has acted, all the timers decrement by one. Additionally, the game will start showing countdown timers with fast forward icons. Normally, after performing their attack, enemies will not ready another action until the current round of turns have passed. Enemies whose attacks have this fast forward icon will instead queue up another action immediately after they attack.
• Visual Pun: The biggest secret of the game invokes this. To access it, you need to use the four Flimsy Hammers in a very specific location inside the Ancient Crypt to knock down barriers, meaning you literally broke the fourth wall in the process. The Shopkeeper you encounter shortly after breaking down the last wall even says that if you're about to complain, to "consider that it was you who just broke the fourth wall". Once she leaves, you can visit the office of Sabotage Studio.
• Walking the Earth: Teaks travels from place to place to gather her stories, having no fixed abode.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Valere, Zale, and Seraï use pretty standard weapons — staves, swords, and daggers, respectively. Garl, however, fights with pot lids, while Resh'an equips corks for his potion bottles.
• Wham Episode:
  • Not for nothing that the Dweller of Woe's mansion is an equivalent of the Fiendlord's Keep. It's home to the first major antagonist you fight, but just when you think you have the game wrapped up with the Dweller's demise, Erlina erects a barrier cutting you off from the core - after blasting Seraï off of Brugaves - and then the four masked men emerge from a triangular portal. Naught remains but to watch the core launch to the blood moon to resurrect the Dweller of Strife, which drops right on to Brisk and raises hell immediately. The six then leave, Moraine's proverbial spirit is shattered, and your adventure just got that much longer.
  • Following in line with Chrono Trigger comparisons, if Wraith Island is the Fiendlord's Keep, then Clockwork Castle is the Ocean Palace. Despite the best efforts of the party, the Dweller of Strife is too powerful for them to defeat. In a last ditch effort, Seraï grabs Resh'an's weapon to attack it. This violates an agreement between him and the Fleshmancer, who then shows up and not only usurps the other antagonists as the main villain, but also kills Garl for good measure. In order to save him, Valere and Zale awaken to their divine potential, and Garl is granted an extra day to give his friends a fighting chance.
  • Both of the previous episodes happen in just the first half of the game. The second half is basically one long continuous Wham Episode.
• Wham Line:
  • The Framing Device takes on entirely new context at the end of the Antsudlo dungeon. The party reaches a giant sealed door that's purported to have an ancient civilization's greatest mystery on the other side, but have no clue how to open it until Garl suggests that they just try knocking. The scene then suddenly cuts to the Great Archives, and the Archivist narrates how when these events first occurred, the door remained firmly shut and their quest was unable to proceed, leading to the Dweller of Strife becoming a World Eater and killing everyone. He then wonders aloud how much their fate would have changed if that door were to have opened... and then Garl's knocking is heard from inside the Archives:
    The Archivist: Come in.
  • The game provides a rare example of location that's this in the interface. When Resh'an joins the party, you already know he's a vital character for the game's lore. Then you use his ultimate attack for the first time and the words "The Great Eagle" appear on the screen, revealing it was Resh'an who invented the entire institution of Solstice Warriors.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The game works hard to avert this, with just about everyone and everything that seems to be a dangling plot thread addressed at some point. The few characters who aren't are clearly meant to reappear in a future story. There is one major exception: The Gorilla Matriarch, the last surviving Divine Spirit, isn't seen again after her storyline. There's not even a sign of her and her children if you go back to her island.
• The World Is Just Awesome: One of Garl's main roles in the story. As the only party member without a solemn duty, a dark past, or a guilt complex, he frequently takes time out to marvel at the incredible sights everyone else is too driven to notice.
• Wormsign: Ant enemies called Bruisers travel underground and leave visible trails.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Averted — the whole point of Solstice Warriors is to destroy Dwellers before they evolve into World Eaters. And it seems they do, by defeating the Dweller of Woe in the Haunted Mansion. But then the Wham Episode kicks in, and the mentor Solstice Warriors reveal that they were in league with the Fleshmancer's minions the entire time.

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