Sea of Stars on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG inspired by the classics. It tells the story of two Children of the Solstice who will combine the powers of the sun and moon to perform Eclipse Magic, the only force capable of fending off the monstrous creations of the evil alchemist known as The Fleshmancer.
Sea of Stars is a pixel graphics, jrpg and turn-based combat game
developed and published by Sabotage Studio.
Released on August 28th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 12,213 reviews of which 10,895 were positive and 1,318 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.7 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 33.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Sea of Stars into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7, Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 or AMD Phenom II X4 945
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon R5 230 or Nvidia GeForce GT 520
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 5 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Sea of Stars was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but overall I enjoyed the experience. A highlight is the combat, they created a system that works together really well; using standard attacks to gain MP, using MP for skills, nailing the timing to build up combat, using boosted attacks, switching out party members mid-encounter, etc... It works very well and allows for fun strategic battles. The boss battles are particularly standout. That all being said, the combat still isn't perfect, I wish there was more variety in enemy attacks, and certain enemies and boss attacks in the late game feel like they haven't scaled with the difficulty in a way that creates a decent challenge. Being unable to run from combat scenarios contributes to backtracking being a pain, along with the lack of any fast travel system. The story/writing is also a mixed element. The overarching story was a complete miss for me, but there are individual cutscenes and dialogue with certain characters that are emotional, funny, and stand out. The real issue is the main characters Zale and Valare are super boring. The prologue feels quite dull, in large part because you're just watching these two grow up, and ultimately after 35+ hours and 100% on the game I can't really give you any adjectives to describe them. Side characters like their childhood friend Garl, for example, are far more compelling. So while some of these characters were awesome, the final boss and other main story moments failed to make any impact on me. Sea of Stars is clearly a love letter to old-school JRPGs, and the art, music, and enemy design impressed me. Moment-to-moment exploration could become boring though, as you're essentially walking around until you come across more enemies, or a puzzle. The best moments are when the puzzles are actually thought provoking, and enemies feel like enough of a challenge, but the game is often a little off the mark with this, particularly with the puzzles being super easy. As a whole, the game is extremely linear. Sea of Stars is a good game, maybe my expectations were a little too high considering the praise it had received and my love for Sabotage's previous game The Messenger , but I do think more emotionally compelling main characters, less time-consuming backtracking, and better pacing could've really improved the experience. Ultimately it's a good game that I'd recommend if you're interested, but considering other JRPGs I've played in recent years it's hard to highly recommend Sea of Stars or say it's a must-play title. Recommended If you found my review helpful, please consider following my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44234346/]Steam Curator page , where you can see more thoughts and recommendations
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It gets the narrowest of thumbs ups from me. It is great visually and is obviously loving made and is a quality product. But when playing it I am mostly just meh about it. I find myself looking for a place to save so I can stop playing after like 45 minutes or so. I look forward to finishing it so I can move on to something else. It is weirdly less than a sum of its parts. I want to like it more than I do.
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Great presentation and combat, bad writing Sea of Stars does many things right. The environments are vibrant and varied, the spritework and animations are beautiful, the sound effects hit just right and the music is awesome . It feels good to play (although it will definitely add many, many uses to your A/X button) and it was easy enough to pick up that I kept coming back to it until it was all over. Gameplay is divided into three parts: combat, exploration and puzzles. Exploration and puzzles are pretty straightforward; they consist almost entirely of platforming--that is, hitting A/X whenever a ledge allows you to climb up or jump down. There's a traversal tool later on, but it only works on predetermined spots. The puzzles add mostly standard fare like blocks and levers. None of them were hard and dungeons felt easy to navigate, although some could do with more distinctively designed 'wings' as I occasionally became lost when backtracking for treasure. Speaking of treasure: each area contains plenty of goodies to find, but sometimes you'll also just encounter some dead space. This sounds like a negative, but I actually appreciated it. The combat system is the absolute highlight of the game. The battles are turn-based and take place in the form of rounds where both you and the enemy team can freely decide who acts in what order. The amount of skills you get is modest, but this also means they stay relevant for the entire game. Pressing A/X at the right time increases your damage, makes you score an extra hit, or lets you block to decrease the damage you take. The lock system--hitting an enemy with certain damage types to cancel their upcoming ability--is great fun and keeps you thinking about when to hoard your resources and when to spend them. You can also freely swap party members and this further increases your tactical options. Although very few new mechanics are added as the game progresses, the initial base is so robust that it served me well almost all the way through (it only started to wear out its welcome a bit near the end). The difficulty is also highly customisable. As you play you will unlock or be able to buy relics that make the game easier or harder, or add quality of life improvements. The implementation is a bit odd as some don't become available until later, which is fine for QoL but not so much for accessibility. Still, it's a welcome addition and something I hope more games do in the future. So yeah, it's pretty great! It's just too bad that the writing is all over the place. I'm going to be critical here, but my goal is first and foremost to set your expectations to an accurate baseline. Sea of Stars is a lighthearted adventure about saving the world and helping people along the way, and that's fine. It's not the most original thing ever, but it's not aiming to be and the lore has some interesting stuff in it. The story and characters are built for that lighthearted fun; dialogue is basic, and nothing and no one is very complicated or deep. The story is a means to an end. It's an excuse to explore and fight, to have fun. However, the writing falls apart when the story begins to layer in more twists and turns--ones that, more often than not, ask for emotional investment from the player that it hasn't earned. It wants to have its cake and eat it, too, but all it managed to make was a batch of frosting. Tasty! Lacks substance. You see this very clearly in the character writing of the protagonists: Zale and Valere. The game tells you that Zale is the brash and passionate sort and that Valere is calm and rational, but it neglects to show it. Most of the time their reactions are completely interchangeable, and that's if they react to things at all. It feels like the writer(s) couldn't decide whether to make them blank slates or characters in their own right, and so you end up with two flat protagonists who are overshadowed by just about everyone else in the personality department. Again, this works okay for the cheerful, almost fairytale-like journey Sea of Stars begins as. It doesn't work so well for the parts where the stakes are higher. Those parts are too ambitious for the writing; it wants too much and ends up overreaching. Some things are set up but never receive a payoff. A few characters exit the story and are never seen again. Certain party members get way too much dialogue while others don't get enough. It's not absolutely terrible, but it could be much, much better and it keeps this game firmly in the 'good' category instead of the 'great' it could've been. Anyway, I spent 35-40 hours having fun and stayed up too late playing it, so it gets my seal of approval.
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I purchased this game to play with my 5 year old daughter, she loves this game and was able to play it from start to finish with some guidance from me and with me reading the story to her, and using some in game "Relics" (optional game modifiers) that basically make it easy mode. Reviewing the game from this perspective it is a wonderful game, exactly what I was looking for, something simple and linear enough for my daughter to play, it was her first game she has played (completely, not just messing around with the controller). It required no grinding, and there was always a clear direct path to take. reviewing from the perspective of an adult gamer, I would still say it is fun albeit very linear, the puzzles are very simple so not much challenge there. The combat is similar, although it could be more difficult with certain relics that add difficulty if you want a real challenge. overall a fun experience with great pixel art. This game has the classic bunch of optional "side quests" you can do before the final boss, which include puzzles that are a bit more difficult than the main game and bosses that are more difficult than the main game boss as well. through the entire main game I could for the most part direct my daughter how to complete it, but some optional puzzles I had to take over and actually think about for a bit.
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I don't like JRPGs, so keep that in mind if you're reading this review. Despite understanding my own preferences, I decided to give Sea of Stars a try for two reasons: The first is that I absolutely loved Sabotage Studio's first title, "The Messenger". The second is that I try to stay open-minded with game genres ever since Hollow Knight made me seek and love other Metroidvanias. Unfortunately, I cannot say that Sea of Stars had this same effect on me for future JRPGs-- I will probably continue to generally avoid them for the most part. With that being said, you would have to be blind and deaf to fail to recognize the immense passion that has been poured into this game. My primary gripe with JRPGs is usually the gameplay. Boring exploration, constant random enemy encounters, and turn-based "combat" consisting of selecting menu options are all incredibly tedious to me. This game takes several steps to try to mitigate these issues (I am not claiming that these are innovative or original), with some success. The implementation of traversal puzzles, timed hits/blocks, and the ability to avoid entering combat through stealth/dodging are all good additions. That being said, the combat still got extremely stale before I even hit the 10-hour mark. I was willing to trudge through the boring and repetitive combat partially for the decent story and great characters (excluding the two dull protagonists), partially because of the fun puzzles hiding the game's collectibles, but mostly because this game is PURE ECSTASY FOR THE EYES AND EARS. The art and animations here are incredible, and the soundtrack is absolutely ELITE. Also, very minor spoiler, but the way that this game connects to the Messenger is absolutely genius. From the familiar characters, shared world, musical themes, lore, and hidden Easter eggs... I even saw a YT video of a side-by-side comparison of Autumn Hills in both games that kind of blew my mind. It is clear from all of this that the team behind this game is not here to just cash a check. There is a strong vision behind this game, and some ridiculously talented people behind the wheel. Obviously, this game was not made for me-- I'm a tourist to the genre. But I can't deny that I enjoyed the scenery.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 12 April 2025 03:11 |
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| SteamSpy data | 12 April 2025 04:48 |
| Steam price | 15 April 2025 04:48 |
| Steam reviews | 14 April 2025 21:45 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Sea of Stars, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Sea of Stars
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Sea of Stars concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Sea of Stars compatibility
Online players
203
Developer
Sabotage Studio
Publisher
Sabotage Studio
Release
28 Aug 2023
Platforms