Sea of Stars - Game Review

Date: November 13, 2025

Tags: Video Games

Sea of Stars is a good game that is often overrated, and that can leave a bad feeling in your mouth. That pretty much sums up my feelings for it. It has beautiful art, music, and an engaging combat system. But its story is simple, and my parts of the game lack depth. Let’s get into it, and fear not, the first part of this review is spoiler free.

The Artwork

This is easily the defining feature of this game. Sabotage Studios answered the question “what if we adapted the pixel art of the SNES era for modern displays?” And they did it perfectly. Bright, vibrant colors come together in every scene to instill a sense of artistic bliss.

A beautiful scene in Sea of Stars where the party climbs a cliff overlooking the clockwork tower with the sun in the background.

If you are searching for a game that simply looks amazing, this is the one for you. I liked the artwork of the bosses. Every boss battle was a spectacle. I cannot praise the artwork of this game enough. The only thing I can do is just share some of my favorite screenshots.

A giant gem-encrusted slug looms over the party.

A ghostly pirate riding a sea serpent looks down on the party.

A freaky mechanical medusa-like head screams during a boss fight.

The Combat

I found the combat to be pretty good, especially at the start of the game. This game did a good job of spicing up combat in a genre well known for having slow and boring battles.

First is the timing mechanic. Pretty much every move in the game can be empowered by hitting A on your controller at the right time. Every incoming attack can also be reduced by hitting A at the right time. I enjoyed the constant engagement this brought to the combat.

Second is the lock breaking mechanic.

5 obscured boxes then reveal moves that can be used to break the lock.

This is where most of the skill in combat occurred. By using certain moves against enemies, the party could cancel their most powerful moves and provide some crucial breathing room. Managing your resources is key to ensuring you can consistently break enemy locks.

The Not So Good Parts of Combat

The main issue with the combat is that it stagnated. By the end of the game I was really wishing for something new as every combat encounter started to feel the same. Equipment and level ups were not hugely impactful, and every party member felt about the same in their stats. (There wasn’t really anyone with super high defense, attack, or magic).

The game was also pretty easy. I turned on the tactician mode and the whole game was still a cakewalk. I won’t harp on it too much because there are settings to increase the difficulty, but wow, Sabotage has very little faith in their player base to have such an easy base difficulty.

The Story

A lot of the story elements I will reserve for the spoiler section. But I can confidently say that this was by far the weakest part of the game.

There is nothing glaringly wrong. There aren’t huge plot-holes or anything. It just felt like there was no depth to it.

In fact, I almost quit halfway through, luckily there was a thematic change that helped keep my interest till the end. But even still most of the characters are quite shallow. There was just not enough dialog to really drive home the events that were happening in the world.

There are still some redeeming qualities to the story though. Many of the characters are endearing. The pirate crew led by captain Klee’Shae (which I believe is a funny play on the word cliché) were my favorite.

Portrait of captain Klee’Shae, a female pirate with a hat, eye patch
and hook for a hand.

But before I go deeper into this and start handing our spoilers, I want to give my ratings for this game, and how it compares to some of the other games I’ve reviewed.

My Ratings

Artwork – 9/10

This is peak pixel art.

Gameplay – 7/10

The combat was good, but got old by the end. Also, the world navigation and puzzles were trivial to solve. A lot of the time out of combat was kind of a slog as there were puzzles, but most of the time it was more like a series of extra steps just to get to the next area.

Story – 6/10

While nothing was bad about the story, I’m excited to see if Sabotage studios are able improve this aspect of their game development in future releases. With just a bit of improvement here they will be making masterpieces people can’t ignore.

Overall Rating – 6.8/10

This was a good game, but I’m frankly surprised by how many people gave this game a 9/10 overall. It simply does not have the depth many other great games have. I worry that many people will see all the awards this game won and then be disappointed as I was myself just a little bit.

Spoilers Ahead

Now that you have properly been warned let me explain in detail why I thought the storytelling was quite shallow, as it’s an accumulation of a lot of little missed opportunities.

1. Garl

Being the only one in the original trio that couldn’t use magic the story leaned quite heavily on him. It was rather annoying how hard it tried to make him feel like the special chosen one despite his inability to use magic. I would have preferred to see some insecurity over his inability to use magic.

His death was definitely supposed to be the climax of the story, and they did a lot to make that happen. It didn’t really hit for me, but I think that’s just me.

2. The Antagonists

The only kind of interesting antagonist was Aephorul. He had some good history with Resh’an and seemed to cause suffering in others to remedy his own suffering. All the other antagonists were quite plain though. The dwellers are just generic bad dudes, and Erlina just didn’t like her job. I think some additional background dialog with Erlina to solidify her as a bad guy would have gone a long way.

Unfortunately, she is the final boss of the game. (I know about the true ending, but after you defeat Erlina the credits role, thus she is the final boss.)

3. Where Did Brugaves Go?

He was kind of hesitant with the whole betrayal plan, and then he just disappears. We never see him again. No redemption, no counter-betrayal, just nothing. I suppose this is in line with his character arc. But its kind of a lame character arc.

4. Where Did Resh’an Go?

Same case here. As you’re getting close to the end of the game he’s just like “I need some time to think bye”. Then you don’t see him until the final fight where he tells is brother “okay its time to go now”. Like what’s going on!

If you have someone leave the party to think on something you NEED to have them come back at some point and tell you what they were thinking about.

5. Zale and Valere

Never at any point in this whole game do they doubt who they are, or what they need to do. Really bland for main characters if you ask me.

6. Seraï

Now I do have some good things to say about Seraï. She is what kept me through to the end of the game. This reveal was the best part of the whole game for me.

In my opinion Seraï’s world it what saved this game for me. The reveal truly caught me by surprise and brought a huge amount of depth to her character. She was not just a pirate captain who was secretly a ninja. She was a pirate captain, who was secretly a ninja, who was secretly a cyborg from another world trying to free her people from slavery.

Now that’s some good stuff.

It was also important to the story because it spiced up a world that was getting super bland. Now we’re dealing with computers, high-tech structures, and even if it was just a little bit, we got to see how the fleshmancer had ruined people’s lives.

But there still was one part of Seraï’s story I can’t get over. Why did she never tell her crew who she really was! It seems kind of disingenuous to them. She’d been telling lies to us the whole game, and even after revealing her true colors, she hadn’t changed enough to reveal it to those who helped her the most.

7. No Victory Lap

The final boss was lack luster, and after defeating it there was just not a lot that happened. Loose ends just didn’t feel like they were tied up. Zale and Valere fly away and then the credits role with some unsubstantial scenes we a few of the side characters.

Conclusion

I’m sorry I was so harsh with the story. I try to see the positive in the games I play, but I was just underwhelmed by this games story. This game was supposed to be a 9/10, and while the gameplay and graphics were up to the task, the story just wasn’t. I know Sabotage is a small studio, and I hope they don’t take this post too critically. Keep making good games. I’m eager to see what they make next.