I liked the plot and story. There are plenty of unique/memorable moments. It gets off to a lethargic start, unfortunately, though. The first like five hours at least are quite dull, and I don’t blame anyone for dropping the game based on that. But it improves massively after the intro, and the story is what kept me going.

The writing and storytelling are not good. There’s way too much dialogue and it’s constantly changing tone. One second there’s a meta 4th-wall-breaking joke and the next second it’s serious or sad. It takes me out of the world and many moments lose impact because of this.

The characters are mixed. The two protagonists have zero personality, which is partly a symptom of them being entirely interchangeable. But most other characters have great backstory and some are quite interesting

The combat and gameplay did its job, but lacked depth. The weapons and armor were just simple stat changes, and the stats are pretty standard (hp, mp, phys atk/def, mag atk/def), so character progression was uninteresting. The magic/type locks in battle were sort of more tedious than fun, but I appreciate that it requires some thought and is something unique.

I like the world design and the verticality that gives some interest to running around the world. There are unlockable shortcuts so that you don’t have to repeat long sections again, and there are plenty of rewards to make exploration somewhat worthwhile.

The artwork is amazing. There’s a ton of unique detailed pixel art. Admittedly, I do think some animations are a little rough or are simplistic - like a static sprite bouncing up and down - but this is pretty minor.

I’m mixed on the music. It’s technically great, but I don’t really want to listen to the soundtrack again, honestly. One thing that’s impressive is the music changes seamlessly during night/day cycles so actually every song has like two renditions (or something) which is kind of crazy.

The ending is rushed, though I only really felt it’s the last area (the tower) that’s rushed. You get to the top and the final boss is one fight with space shooter mechanics (???) incorporated, and then the game ends right after. It’s too quick. That actually did motivate me to unlock the true ending, because I felt like there must be more. And unlocking the true ending didn’t take me all that long, but it does suck that it’s a collectathon.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, but wouldn’t play through it again. It’s like a 7/10 for me.

Did the true ending (and then the extremely true ending). The game is so full of love for video games that it’s contagious for me and I really appreciated how much the game makers cared about it

Oh, I thought that the conches were entirely a completionist thing, learning that they are required for the true ending puts a damper on my desire to finish this game… It was a fun game, but I got no desire to 100% it. Oh well, guess I’ll just watch the true ending on YouTube instead.

Anyone who says Sea of Stars is in the same echelon as “classic” JRPGs clearly didn’t play all the way through SoS or has not played many classic JRPGs. SoS was an okay game for what it was but I honestly don’t remember much about it a couple of months after finishing it, whereas games like Lunar and Persona will always be cherished gaming memories for me.

I had a similar reaction!

Spending a couple extra hours wrapping up quests and collecting conches (on the recommendation of a friend) wound up being well worth it for me, the true ending felt much more satisfying.

For what it’s worth, all the quests take somewhere around 20-40 minutes each, if I remember correctly. Even the collection quest wasn’t too bad, thanks to the treasure finding parrot.