How ‘Sea of Stars’ Taught Me That JRPGs Can Be More Than a Story
Until recently, my experience with JRPGs had been relatively limited; I had barely heard of the genre outside of Pokemon and Paper Mario before the Wii era. I played the likes of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and VII, and Golden Sun for the first time within the past few years, but the gameplay for them never really clicked for me. It always felt like random encounters ended up being a button-mash to quickly get through them, and longer fights involved buffing, debuffing and having enough healing to outlast the boss. The story of JRPGs was always the focal point to me – each game in the genre has fantastic moments, such as Chrono Trigger’s court proceeding or Final Fantasy VI’s opera scene, but I need something more substantial to keep me engaged.
A Link to the Social
Before I get into Sea of Stars, I want to talk about another JRPG series that was close to showing that JRPGs could be more than story to me: Persona. I got into the series with Persona 5: Royal, which immediately gripped me with its flashy visuals, funky soundtrack, and fun characters. Beyond that, though, is an interesting dynamic where only half of the “gameplay” is actually like a JRPG – the other half actually simulates a social life where time management is key. The fact that those social aspects contribute to the JRPG mechanics by giving extra abilities gives them incredible value beyond the character building that is inherent to them. It tickled my fancy like nothing else when I had to balance social links with actual game progression, putting me in charge of deciding when I felt like doing the experience grind and when I felt like forming bonds.
Of course, Persona also has some unique combat mechanics. Weakness systems are nothing new to JRPGs, but Persona takes it a step further where hitting weaknesses “downs” them, which gives you an extra turn (or, in the case of the Q games, makes your next attack free). There’s an extra incentive for downing every opponent, which then lets you do an All-Out Attack, dealing massive damage to everything. Combined with Royal‘s tag mechanic, it can lead to constant chains of destruction. It’s a fun system that encourages learning about each enemy. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t apply as much to boss fights (for the most part, there are exceptions such as Madarame), leading to the usual buff/debuff and heal shenanigans. That’s not to say Persona is a subpar JRPG by any means; I just attribute my love for it more to the social sim and narrative aspects as opposed to the combat mechanics.
A Sea of the Best
Most JRPGs I have played have had some special element to the combat; for instance, Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario utilize action commands, where timing a button press to the attack increases the damage. What Sea of Stars starts with is taking all of the best elements from other games and combining them into one suped-up package. One of the first things introduced is the aforementioned action commands for both offense and defense, which is already off to a great start. Battles take place in the overworld, which allows Chrono Trigger-style positioning, where area damage has to be carefully planned around. Next on the cherry-picking tour is Mario & Luigi. The spectacle and infinite button timings of some of Mario & Luigi‘s special moves are on full display here.
Speaking of special moves, Sea of Stars doesn’t just have a standard magic meter; it actually gives three separate ways of building for special moves. There is the standard MP for skills, but a combo meter builds from normal attacks and skill moves, used to pull off techniques that are like if Mario & Luigi and Chrono Trigger were combined, taking from two party members but then doing something special with them. Then there is the Ultimate meter, built by using combos and skills.
Normal attacks had a lot of thought put into them, too. They don’t just do damage and build the combo meter; they also restore MP, forcing their use to keep up resources that would otherwise become scarce. Low max MP pools make MP management with regular attacks all the more important. And yet, normal attacks have an additional function of dropping magic orbs (“live mana”), which can be absorbed to make attacks even stronger and add an extra element when needed for weaknesses.
With all of these, battles become a never-ending cascade of building to stronger moves as using MP charges the combo meter faster, then using combos to charge the ultimate meter faster. Throw in some normal attacks every now and then to recharge, and there is an extremely solid base for a combat system that would have already been fantastic on its own.
However, Sea of Stars isn’t content with just taking the best aspects; it also cuts out the fluff, removing anything that might turn into wasted turns. Buffs and debuffs are entirely gone, meaning boss stats are not inflated to account for those being active. Healing moves are less common, only being single-target unless enough meter has been built up. Thus, dedicated heal-bots are no longer an option in the party. Even items are limited, as only 10 can be carried at a time, forcing a decision between carrying revives, MP restores, or actual heals. This all leads to a focused sort of combat that doesn’t want to deal with the usual tropes of the genre.
The Party That Grows Together
Returning to Persona for just a moment, one thing that I took full advantage of in 5 was the Mishima social link. What this link does is grant experience points to party members in reserve, even if they didn’t participate in the battle. I personally loved this, as it allowed me to constantly swap between party members to fit the current situation without feeling like I needed to grind. When I eventually went back and played the other Persona games, this feature was sorely missed and I ended up never changing my party unless someone new joined up who was ready to go.
Sea of Stars embraces the variability of the party by having a general experience meter that applies to everyone – even new recruits, which keeps everyone on par with each other. No needless grinding to have a balanced group. All too few JRPGs follow this pattern, and it’s a real shame it’s not seen more often. And yet, like seemingly every other aspect of the combat, Sea of Stars takes it another step further. On top of having a balanced party stats-wise, swapping party members mid-combat is a free action. No strings attached, with the backup member having whatever HP and MP they had going in. It’s such a breath of fresh air that I found myself constantly swapping, never settling on one strategy the entire run time.
Time to Lock In
Thus far I have talked about what the player characters can do, but Sea of Stars’ biggest contribution to the genre may be how it handles its enemies. Sea of Stars is a champion of player choice and versatility, so its enemy mechanics should be designed to take full advantage of that fact, encouraging strategy and reducing randomness.
Sea of Stars tackles this issue two-fold: through the use of telegraphs and a lock system. Every enemy in the game, including bosses, will indicate when it attacks next by a little clock icon above it. This clock counts down whenever any party member takes a turn, so it is painfully clear when something is coming. However, the target isn’t known, so there is still at least a little guesswork involved, which caused me to overprepare on multiple occasions.
By far the most interesting mechanic to me, however, is the lock system. Whenever an enemy is getting ready to perform a special attack, a series of locks appear by the clock over their head. Each lock has a corresponding damage type, such as sun or poison, which gets removed when the enemy takes damage from the corresponding type. If all of the locks get removed before the countdown ends, the attack gets canceled outright. Typically the more locks that appear, the stronger the special attack is, and bosses usually have multiple special move options. Combined with the timers, there is a very strong visibility on what exactly each enemy will do at a given time.
Strategize for Success
When I started Sea of Stars, I went in with my typical JRPG mindset of mashing the attack action. This quickly turned into spamming my strongest spells, as normal attacks restored MP, which then turned into saving enough MP to be able to take out locks. As I learned more about the game mechanics, I became more strategic with my every action, planning ahead to optimize. I would use early normal attacks to litter the battlefield with live mana. I would purposely try to stall so I could get off a combo heal before a battle ended.
By the end of the game, the toughest foes were mere playthings for me. I knew exactly which moves and combos were the best for removing specific combinations of locks. One of the party members has a move that can add more time to the clock, so I kept him in reserve to be able to swap in at any time in case an impossible lock combination came up with too little time to remove. Then I would keep him in for a bit to restore his MP. Characters with particularly strong ultimates I would also keep in reserve in case of an emergency. Even the final boss never got a chance to use a single special attack!
Throughout my journey, I fell in love with the combat mechanics in Sea of Stars. They made the game feel more like a tactical RPG, which falls in line with one of my favorite series, Fire Emblem. It’s strategic and showed me exactly what the genre was capable of when combat isn’t taken for granted. Of course, Sea of Stars also has a fantastic narrative, but the gameplay is going to be what I remember most from it years from now, and I hope that other developers will take notes.
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