Games Beaten

-Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince (Switch)

I played this with my 9- and 11-year-olds and we had a blast with this co-op puzzle platformer. Having three characters with different abilities was great for the puzzles but I'm glad we could all play as all the characters as needed, which alleviated any pressure that one person would have to perform something perfectly for us to advance but there is little penalty for failing. There were definitely tense moments and arguments during this adventure! The graphics and music were nothing to write home about but fit the game really well. The characters are silly in a fun way but don't take themselves seriously and the story is just serious enough.

-Sea of Stars (Switch)

Sea of Stars is a really good RPG and I enjoyed playing it. That quality makes the missteps more glaring to me though.

The developer was pretty vocal about Chrono Trigger being an inspiration and it shows. The sprite work is beautiful and the amount of character animations is impressive. The world and environments look really good across the board too and there is a nice visual variety. I also appreciated the design of the dungeons and areas to explore, which incorporated enough verticality to keep them from feeling flat and artificial. And the Golden Sun-esque environmental puzzles kept exploration from feeling dull or rote.

The game boasts a fun turn-based battle system. You have three active party members at a time and your characters can perform team-up attacks together, like in Chrono Trigger, though the meat of the battle system reminds me more of Octopath Traveler. The various systems—building the combo and ultimate meters and recovering MP from regular attacks—work well together. Some of the later game bosses are tuned really well for some thrilling fights (though a few aren’t). Being able to freely swap your party members without penalty is a nice touch that lets you take advantage of your full team.

I don’t want too much freedom in my RPGs but this game made me realize that just applies to the story. I found myself frustrated with the weapons and equipment options. Other than one piece of armor early on that offered a stat trade off, the game consists of a linear trek from one piece of better gear to the next, taking any tactical choice of how to equip my party out of my hands. I got to choose which stat got an extra bonus when leveling up but that was it and that wasn’t enough.

The developer has crafted an interesting world in Sea of Stars. The concept of solstice warriors and eclipse magic is really cool, not to mention the grater backstory about the Immortal Alchemist and the Fleshmancer, and I really like the individual characters and their relationships together. I found the development of the actual world, however, to be half-baked. It’s not noticeable at first—the early pacing really keeps things moving—but once you get a ship and the map opens up, the amount of civilization just doesn’t feel like enough. And the sky area—cool in concept—seems really poorly thought out if you stop just for a moment to consider who lives there. And the council up there is never explained, who they are or what authority they actually wield.

Once you get to the eponymous Sea of Stars, you discover it’s more of the Corridor of Stars. I know this is an independent team working on, I assume, a tight budget, but the story they’re telling really needs a few more locations, in my opinion, particularly given the vast network of the Fleshmancer. The quality is focused on the characters—as it should be if under constraints—but it’s sad the attention to detail could not extend further out in the world the developer crafted here.

The music is another aspect of the game I feel divided on. The quality of the music is not in question. My issue is with how well (or not) it fits. For example, there is a creepy tower in the ocean you enter at one point and the music starts on a great foot, sounding all creepy and mysterious. Then halfway through the song it turns homey and pleasant, which is fine for a song in a vacuum, but it didn’t fit the place I was in and actively pulled me out of the experience. There were also some songs with up beat, prominent percussion and that was fine for the more technological areas but really clashed with the more fantasy nature environments. I don’t know how much of that is personal taste but they struck me as odd choices that didn’t serve the game well.

I know I sound down on the game but these issues bother me as much as they do because the baseline of quality is so high. Playing Sea of Stars was a good time and I’d recommend it, but that quality makes it easier to see its shortcomings.

Games Bought

The only game I bought with money, specifically, in August was Torchlight II (Switch), the Diablo-like action RPG that is replacing EDF: World Brothers for my little group. I also grabbed the PS+ offerings Dying Light 2: Stay Human (PS5), which seems like one of the more interesting zombie games, and Big Walk (PS+) because my kids were excited about it.

Games Being Played

-Torchlight II (Switch)

At this point all I have done is make a character but we should be starting it in earnest this week.

-Piczle Cross: Rune Factory (Switch)

Jumped back into this once Sea of Stars was finished.

-The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu

Our greedy adventures in South America continue. Sometimes we come back rich. Sometimes the possessed bodies of our fallen teammates murder us O_O