Sea of Stars / YMMV

Accidental Aesop: Science is not evil, but it can be used for evil purposes. Once the more sci-fi elements are introduced to the plot, the Death World that is Seraï's homeworld is very mechanical, but the technology itself is not the problem, just the fact it's controlled by the Fleshmancer. The Catalyst that brought so much misery to Seraï's people ends up saving the lives of the children of the Clockwork Castle, offering them a body immune to the rapid aging that would kill them otherwise. The Sky Base was being used to keep the sun away, but in actuality, it had been originally built to help maintain the weather.
Awesome Art: The game's pixel art has received universal acclaim due to its gorgeous character sprites and locations with a bright and varied color palette. The game manages to capture the style of the time of the games that inspired it while also utilizing a lot of modern technology (especially the lighting effects) to bring it to a new level. What especially stands out are the beautiful anime-style cutscenes that happen throughout the game and the massive amount of stills following the death of Garl, which convey so much emotion and beauty with only sporadic usage of text.
Awesome Music:
- The boss theme, "Encounter Elite", was one of the first pieces of music revealed during the game's pre-launch publicity. Using a minimum of chords and percussive instrumentation, it sets the stage for every boss you fight. It also comes in futuristic and bardcore versions.
- "The Frozen Peak" (Day) and (Night), which are remixes of "The Frozen Light" from The Messenger. Not only do the tracks have a Background Music Override so that you can hear them through the whole level, but they definitely invoke a strong feeling of nostalgia from those who played The Messenger. They are more-modern versions of the song, with instrumentation to match, adding an icy touch to what are already extremely catchy songs in general.
- The battle theme for the second fight against Romaya, "Might of the Necromancer", is a fast paced synthetic heavy metal song with pipe organs that illustrates just how well and truly pissed off she is that the heroes didn't heed her warning not to come back into her territory with the fight she puts up this time around increasing in difficulty to match the music.
- Stormcaller's boss theme, "The Storm Calls for You!", is a fast-paced, somewhat ominous song that manages to make an accordion sound epic. It even returns when fighting Hydralion!
Base-Breaking Character: Depending on who you ask, Garl is either the best character in the game and his loyalty to the protagonists carries the story hard, or an annoying and forced Creator's Pet that keeps speaking over the real main characters.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Pretty much no one uses the Knight once they begin getting more pieces for the Wheels minigame. It does good damage at a moderate pace but has no counter to even the bare minimum Bulwark height, making its attacks even more of a Luck-Based Mission than its allies' own attacks given how easy it is for the opponent to set up a wall just as you ready a Knight's charge. Ironically, it happens to be initially paired with the Mage, the piece the player will usually use for the rest of the game, making this a twofer instance of this on both sides of the spectrum.
- There are a ton of amazing combos out there with a ton of use cases that can help the player get through the game, but three stand out as the clear leaders of the pack given just how strong they are;
  - Soonrang is everything amazing about Valere's Moonerang, only Zale is joining in to contribute his own monstrous magical power for the blow. It is the ultimate Finishing Move for boss fights - once any stray targets are dealt with Soonrang can easily two-shot or even one-shot bosses if boosted properly. Like with Moonerang, the only caveat to Soonrang's sheer power is that the player needs to get the timing down for reflecting the projectile until they can get by on button-mashing.
  - Resh'an's Petrichor is powerful but expensive healing, and Garl's Nourish is cheap and effective but can only affect one target. With this in mind, when it comes to emergency healing during a tough boss fight, the easy answer is Mending Light. Since it doesn't cost any mana to use it's incredibly reliable and automatically calls in the two biggest damage dealers in the cast. Mending Light is as powerful as Nourish but targets everyone. Its prime use cases even offset the combo meter cost of using it, since the player can typically build Mending Light back up again by just hitting whatever is hurting them some more before the enemies can even come close to finishing the party off. It is incredibly likely that for the majority of the game, this and Solstice Strike will be the go-to combo options since Valere and Zale can already dole out incredible damage with just their skills.
  - It's only acquired about halfway into the game, but Arcane Moons is easily one of the best and most reliable combos in the game. The ability's cost is not commensurate with what it can do - it's a massive AOE explosion attack by Valere and Resh'an that deals ludicrous damage, even unboosted, and hits some very useful locks. It costs one combo meter, and can pretty much carry the player through random encounters and deal with any adds or options brought into a boss fight. The battle with the Catalyst, Meduso, and the Dweller of Dread are almost made effortless as a result of how easily Arcane Moons strips the bosses of their multi-target gimmicks, which is made even better by how it can be chained into Soonrang effortlessly by Valere and Zale to finish off the singular entity hiding behind all the adds.
Complete Monster: The Soul Curator manages the army in the Fleshmancer's Lair, and is concerned only for his own safety and the power of his creations. In the past, the Soul Curator forced the humans in Seraï's homeworld to graft their souls onto immortal robots using a sapient and unwilling AI core so they can be fed on indefinitely by the Dweller of Dread, slowly driving them into despair and hopelessness. When the party storms the Fleshmancer's Lair, the Soul Curator attempts to corrupt Zale, Valere, Seraï, and B'st into his minions, with the implication that he's done this before. When confronted, he runs away to the portal room where he orders four servants to sacrifice themselves to summon the Phase Reaper, who kills two more to intimidate the rest into following the Soul Curator's orders. When the Phase Reaper is killed, the Soul Curator attempts to summon Barma'thazël in a last-ditch effort to save himself, which would have violated the Fleshmancer's agreement with Brugaves to never have to fight the Solstice Warriors again.
Friendly Fandoms: With Chained Echoes, another pixel art RPG that takes heavy cues from Chrono Trigger and was also funded through Kickstarter.
Game-Breaker:
- Seraï’s Disorient skill, which not only breaks both Poison and Blunt locks, but also delays an enemy’s action by two turns, which can often mean the difference between eating a boss’s Charged Attack and getting away scot-free. With enough MP and good timing, certain bosses might not even get to touch you with anything but their basic attacks. With bosses that require damaging appendages before being able to damage it like the Botanical Horror and the Dweller of Torment, it stretches the time said boss is vulnerable.
- Resh'an's Ultimate Skill, The Great Eagle, is broken from the moment you get the character in your party. It does damage to all enemies, heals and revives the party, and delays the enemies' turn by four or five. While not half as abusable as Seraï's Disorient due to being a limited-use skill, it's often a fantastic way to turn the tides of a fight and outright demolish boss fights.
- Garl doesn’t get his Ultimate Skill until after he comes Back from the Dead in the Golden Ending path, but it’s well worth the wait. Sleeper’s Fury might not have the healing utility of The Great Eagle, but it makes up for it with one key feature: it hits every elemental weakness at once multiple times. While it has the same limited drawback as any other Ultimate Skill, any elemental locks on the field are completely obliterated by this attack.
- The Magic Pocket is an accessory obtained around the mid-point of the game. Once per round it allows any character to use a food item without counting as a turn. While you can only carry ten items, it's more than enough to ensure you never need to worry about healing ever again nor ever need to choose between healing and attacking or lock-breaking.
- Valere chose the staff because she thought it would give her brute strength, and she was right. Valere's Moonerang is overwhelmingly powerful for one simple reason; the player dictates when it ends. Seraï's Venom Flurry will eventually stop by itself, but as long as the player has the skill's timing down, they can keep Moonerang going for ages, dealing stupendous amounts of damage and being the offensive option of choice until the player gets the Vespertine. Once the player does get the Vespertine, this distinction instead goes to Soonrang, which the player can get with a quick jaunt off to Sleeper Island to get a path back to Evermist Island. Soonrang is everything amazing about Moonerang, but Valere lets Zale join in to make the attack even better, massively increasing the total damage of the final tally. The only things holding Valere back are bosses with multiple targets (all of which, besides the Acolytes, can be reduced down to one target for Valere to focus fire on) due to damage dispersion and timing the skill or combo right to coincide with having three orbs of Live Mana for the max damage possible, the latter of which most powerful offensive options need to get the most out of them anyway.
- Wheels minigame:
  - The Mage is widely considered the most powerful piece. It always fires two attacks at a time, and while the first attack is easily blocked if the enemy has a Bulwark up on the field, the second one will always do damage. This means if you just concentrate on filling up the Mage's meter, you can usually but not always knock your opponent's HP down to 0 in just a few turns. The kicker: the Mage is one of the two pieces you're given at the start, the other being the Warrior. The drawbacks are its low attack and the big amount of energy it requires to attack, but it still more than justifies focusing your strategy on using it, since it partly ignores the enemy's Bulwark.
  - The Assassin. While it's likely the last wheels hero figure you'll get, it makes the remaining champions a joke. Cheaper to activate than the Mage, saps energy from the opponent so they can't activate, and deals low but unblockable damage. With some lucky rolls, an Assassin will prevent the opponent from doing anything at all while whittling their crown down.
Ho Yay: During the 2018-2019 ARG that involved characters from The Messenger and Sea of Stars briefly visiting the official Discord and roleplaying with the members, the Archivist states that he has a tale of "forbidden love", to which he and another alchemist made the Elixir of Life to wait out a society that would be more accepting. Sea of Stars pretty much outright spells out that this refers to Aephorul and Resh'an.
Moral Event Horizon: While the Fleshmancer committed several atrocities throughout the game, genociding a race simply to make a gift of transformation for Resh'an and forcing the survivors to serve him has got to be the earliest chronological example. Also counts as one in-universe, as learning this truth compels Resh'an to re-evaluate his friendship and deals with Aephorul in near-complete isolation afterwards.
One True Threesome: By far the most popular ship in Sea of Stars is Valere with Garl and Zale. There's some prevalent fan works that also favor Valere with Teaks and Garl with Zale, but thruple fics with the first three party members are abundant. This mostly comes from their status as True Companions; Valere and Zale tend to run on a similar wavelength and overcome the death of Garl by finding comfort in each other. Meanwhile, despite losing an eye goofing off with the duo and having to wait ten years to see Valere and Zale following the start of their training, Garl never once lost his devotion to his friends and trained himself day in and day out to work with them on their journeys as a Badass Normal. Must fanworks take this and run with it, alleging they begin a proper relationship shortly following the start of their journey.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Valere's Moonerang and Seraï's Venom Flurry cause the character to jump to a new location based on the position of the enemies. However, this will sometimes cause Valere or Seraï to jump to a location that's obscured by the background, behind another character, or (in Seraï's case) completely off-screen. Since these attacks are rhythm-based and get faster as they go on, it can result in these moves dropping through no fault of your own, simply because the game wouldn't let you see what you needed to see.
- In place of standard buffs or debuffs, the main way Sea of Stars shakes up combat is by getting the player to respond to enemies casting spells by stopping the cast through breaking elemental-themed locks. Generally, this is a pretty fun mechanic when the RNG doesn't screw you into a situation where you can't stop the cast - and even then, you can at least weaken the incoming attack - but what is a little rough is the presence of Solar locks, especially against late game enemies that have tons of locks on their spells. The issue isn't the ease of hitting the lock, since you always have access to Zale, but unlike Valere and Lunar locks, Zale doesn't have any normal skill or attack that hits a Solar weakness multiple times. This is a massive issue in late boss fights, especially Aephorul, who love to have two, three, or even four Solar locks on them. There are abilities that can hit Solar locks multiple times, but they're all fraught with problems. ^{To go into detail...} Considering how three entire characters exist to hit bashing weaknesses, it would make a bit more sense for one of those three to also hit Solar to make up the deficit, though story reasons make Valere and Zale special in this regard being Solstic Warriors. Having Zale have something similar to Valere's Moonerang could also alleviate the issue.
- It's possible to sell the gray/silver trinkets of which two can be equipped on a character at any given time, but they aren't available to purchase at any equipment shop (they're always found in treasure boxes scattered throughout the world). This makes it a very common trap for players to sell excess trinkets without any means of buying them back. The only means of re-acquiring these items is to go through New Game Plus and obtain these items in the new playthrough.
Tear Jerker: Garl's death at the hands of the Fleshmancer hits pretty hard. It doesn't help that he doesn't die quickly, but rather spends several sections visibly getting worse and worse until he kicks the bucket.
That One Boss: A lot of players have trouble with the Dual Boss fight with One and Three on the Jungle Path. This has everything to do with the major gimmick of their fight - One is a Stone Wall dedicated to powering up the Glass Cannon Three, who has a painful multi-hit attack that targets two characters in succession. One themselves doesn't really hit hard, but adds a massive wrinkle to the fight with their spell. This spell is a massively painful multi-hit team assault with Three that functions similarly to the combos the playable characters use. One is more than happy to spam this spell if given the chance, and can easily down multiple party members with only two or three casts. The obvious answer to this problem is to stop One's cast - only the actual gimmick of the fight is that One can counter attack any attack made at them in melee range when they start readying their spell. This gimmick is not spelled out to the player until they have Zale gore himself on One's blade, which is basically bound to happen given how slashing attacks are always needed to stop the cast. This means either Zale has to use Dash Strike to get a hit in, or Valere needs to set up Lunar Shield. The MP for both is still very tight at this point in the game, and these methods still face problems - Zale needs to somehow get off multiple to stop One, or Valere needs to hope Three's turn doesn't come before One's lest Three break the barriers early. The only feasible answer then is to try to damage-race Three so they can't combo with One anymore, but that can end up being a Luck-Based Mission if One is frequently trying to set up the combo. The irony of all this is that One and Three return to harass the party with Two and Four in tow at the Clockwork Castle, only by the time all the Acolytes are working together, the player will be so much more resilient that One's dreaded combo with Three ends up looking rather pathetic.
Underused Game Mechanic:
- At some point, you need to upgrade the Coral Hammer into the Cobalt Hammer, allowing you to break crystal walls that block your progress in the current dungeon. Except that, outside of this dungeon, there's only one other crystal wall in the game. Egregiously, there are further locations where you need to use the original Coral Hammer, making the upgrade seem relatively pointless in the bigger scale.
- One of the biggest issues with the story is that characters often drop terms or names without any prior explanation or understanding on the player's part on what the heck the characters are talking about. While some of the terms are explained eventually in Teaks' stories, it still comes off as this when solutions and explanations for things that occur in the story just get name dropped due to a "such and such" item that was never mentioned before in the game.
Vanilla Protagonist: Valere and Zale have very little personality besides The Hero played completely straight — virtuous, upstanding, morally righteous, The Chosen Ones that fulfill ancient prophecies, and all-around good people who are doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. They have almost nothing that differentiates the two of them as characters beyond a few easy-to-miss lines of dialogue and their respective movesets, very little is explored about their individual wants and desires, and not much is made about them besides the fact that they're heroes who want to save the world. This is an intentional choice by the developers, who made Valere and Zale characters without much complexity that can fill the protagonist role quite well, since they provide a center for supporting characters who are more interesting than they are. Early on, the only other party member is the gregarious Big Fun Garl, who tends to talk a lot more than Valere and Zale in conversations. All of this doesn't necessarily make Valere and Zale bad characters, but they're intentionally written to be overshadowed by the larger personalities and more complicated histories of the other party members.

YMMV / Sea of Stars

Edit Locked