Last week, I finished Sea of Stars, rolling the looooong credits and finally realizing (about half-way through) that you can fast-forward them. It was an overall very good RPG. Now that I’m done, I can focus on enjoying more of Tears of the Kingdom. I might also start my next RPG and juggle between games.
Sea of Stars is easy, casual, and fun. The music and graphics are lovely. Pacing was balanced. There was a decent variety of enemies. And the story was good, though unremarkable. I say that because the characters were simplistic and there were few and minor plot twists. That said, character interaction and dialogue was very well done.
The biggest stand-out traits of the game are its fantastic isometric retro level-design and call-backs to its JRPG inspirations from 16-bit 90s titles. Exploring a somewhat linear world was engaging and fun thanks to the various styled “biomes” or areas, the mild platforming feats, and the Zelda-like puzzles spread throughout. The pixel-art and the lighting engine are superb.
Combat was also engaging thanks to time-attacks and timed-defense. Otherwise, it was a simple and straightforward affair. The battle system isn’t too deep, which is good for a shorter casual RPG. Leaving the game on easy mode also made things kind of breezy — it took me just 27 hours to finish the play-through.
Fights consisted mostly of elemental-based attacks for breaking enemy shields, preventing an upcoming attack on one or more of your party members — you can have three in battle at once and swap between stand-by characters on the fly, which is great.
Cooking is easy, letting you make resourceful meals to replenish yourself in battle. But there were no status ailments to defend against, and there were no buffs or debuffs in the game. These are things I’d expect in an RPG.
Now finished with Sea of Stars, I’m once again fully enjoying Tears of the Kingdom, a fantastic open-world adventure. I was about half-way through the main story when I got tired of it and distracted by other games.
So recently, I picked it back up to resume the story. I was stuck on a boss but then renewed my determination to beat it. To do so, I had to reacquaint myself with the controls. I also had to upgrade my armor, weapons, and meals. I’m doing that now by exploring the open-world and completing side-quests and side-adventures.
It’s so fun to be back in TotK. I love the open exploration. I like how huge Hyrule is and how you can immerse into it through the side stories and tasks. Everything is so well done. Sometimes a battle can be too hard or a puzzle too tricky to solve. But it doesn’t take too much grit to push through.
If I decide to start another game to switch between it and TotK, it might be Octopath Traveler II. Still making up my mind; I should probably pick another short game though. March 20th isn’t far away. That’s when I’ll stop everything else to fully restart Xenoblade Chronicles X, the Definitive Edition, on Switch. It’s a huge open-world like TotK, but the battle system is more RPG style than action-adventure. And it has mechs!
Then again, speaking of open-world exploration and sci-fi, I plan to also start playing (for the first time) No Man’s Sky. It is supposed to run on my M1 MacBook, but if all goes to plan, I’ll be able to soon play on my new gaming setup…but that’s for another blog post.
Update 2024-12-30: Tweaked paragraph flow.
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