Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Peng Chuwei

The key is to grasp the core of the classic game.

This year is a big year of role-playing games, from the high-profile "eight Travelers 2" to the final release of the official version of "Baird Gate 3" to "Starry Sky", any game is enough to become "the first RPG for young people". Among these works, the most independent and eye-catching one is Sea of Stars.

The selling point of "Sea of Stars" is clear: in the name of "retro Pixel", it tells players that it will be a "spiritual sequel", which is aimed at role-playing games that have moved countless people in childhood.

Objectively speaking, this is indeed the case. Under the live video of "Sea of Stars" customs clearance, you can find a wide variety of such comments. Some people say that the game is the successor to the Tale of double Stars; more people say that it is the imitator of the Golden Sun series; and quite a few people will point to it and say, Ah, this is the "Wheel of time and Space" in 2023.

You can interpret these comments as an affirmation of the "retro" part of the game. But the challenge for "Sea of Stars" is that the span between retro and reengraving is no smaller than creating a regular new game from scratch. It not only requires developers to have a personal understanding of classic games, but also needs to raise this personal experience to a more popular level. The problem with Sea of Stars is that its pursuit of retro is too personal. This makes the game not only appear niche in front of the entire market, but also show some differentiation in the eyes of its audience of pixels and classic role-playing games.

In Chinese and Japanese-speaking areas, the praise rate of the game is only "mixed" as an independent game, "Sea of Stars" is doing very well, of course, but it could have done better. The upper limit of JRPG's market potential can be very high, and for "Sea of Stars", it has a good chance to break through the restrictions of type and become the "first RPG" for more new players.

Unfortunately, the current "Sea of Stars" is still a long way from this goal.

Reviving classics in the last 10 years, "retro classic games" has become one of the topics often talked about by independent developers. The rise of crowdfunding sites has exacerbated this tendency.

This is a direct reflection of the soaring cost of development and publicity in the game industry, when the risk faced by the development team is so great that they no longer dare to try to develop new ways of playing and create new titles in the commercial game field like in the low-cost era. choose the classic games of the past as a reference, the development of "retro" games is a very wise choice. The other side of this choice often comes from the love and attachment of the development team members to the "good games of the past".

The special experience and emotion that developers get from classic games can be an opportunity to start making such games and a bargaining chip for them to persuade players on crowdfunding sites to pay for their feelings.

The previous work "The Messenger" by Sabotage Studio, the developer of the Sea of Stars, is a very successful retro work. It has something to do with the market it faces. That market is full of diehard groups with very clear needs, who are more demanding but more likely to be satisfied. When it comes to Sea of Stars, as Sabotage Studio's ambitions grow, they are faced with role-playing games, a highly complex field with countless subtypes, with a 10-fold larger audience and 100-fold more complex preferences.

The art of "Sea of Stars" fits very well with retro games. In this case, when Sabotage Studio promotes "Sea of Stars" as a retro classic RPG, it faces a much higher risk than before. The risk is that developers cannot guarantee that they will get a special experience from classic games that are consistent with what most players used to feel. At the same time, for new players who have not played classic games, how to rely on the highlights of the games of decades ago to attract them is also a question to consider.

It is rare for us to really see such a retro game regain its foothold and achieve commercial success after many years-the vast majority of "retro" works can only be supported by feelings and flash by like meteors in the night sky. only a few retro games can gain reputation, and there are very few works that can achieve commercial success.

In the case of the Sea of Stars, developers must be aware of the difficulties and risks. Instead of falling into blind imitation, they gave their own solutions.

First of all, the developers chose some classic games that are worthy of "childhood memory" as the reference of "Sea of Stars". "Childhood memory" has two meanings: one is that the game has conquered enough players, its audience and influence is large enough, and the other is that its play is pure enough to attract players who have not been exposed to such games before.

It sounds like nonsense, but it has a unique meaning in role-playing games. Many people like to call "Star Sea"Japanese role-playing games". As we all know, Japanese role-playing games are not a form that can widely exert creativity, but there are many designs limited to tradition and paradigm. These designs are part of the tacit understanding between players and developers: "I give you what you want, you give me money."

The downside is that new players rarely immerse themselves in traditional Japanese role-playing games. Its insistence on "round fighting" and "revealing the character's background, story and world through so many performances and dialogues" is so slow that it is difficult for new players to stick to the fun part of the game-and the so-called pure, is to let players see the fun at a glance.

In this regard, the choice of "Sea of Stars" is to choose a classic game that conforms to the aesthetic appreciation of modern players on the premise of ensuring fame. This is a very ingenious way, taking into account both old and new players, making the game look more "modern".

Let's take a look at which classic games the Sea of Stars chose to retro.

The first is map exploration. In this regard, "Sea of Stars" adopts a lot of the design ideas of the classic game "Golden Sun" series: connecting parts of the map through various shortcuts and dividing the map into several three-dimensional levels. each layer requires combat, observation, special abilities and puzzles to open shortcuts.

Jumping up and down map exploration is the most attractive design for players in the "Golden Sun" series, where players can get special abilities from elves hiding all over the country to push the checkpoint. The special abilities in the "Sea of Stars" are hidden in the treasure chest, which is generally placed in the main line. The design ideas of the two are the same, and the Sea of Stars pays homage to the Golden Sun in some pictures.

In JRPG, map exploration and enemy encounter mechanism have always been a problem. Most new players can't stand the long running chart and the thunderous enemies in the process, and even under the "Octagonal Traveler 2" Steam store page, complaints about meeting too many enemies in the running chart once became the most liked bad reviews. The Sea of Stars cleverly relieves boredom by increasing the complexity of the map. The game map is kept at an appropriate level that is neither flat nor overly complex, allowing players to keep thinking while jumping up and down.

Second, the encounter of the enemy of "Sea of Stars" is not a hidden thunder, but similar to "Chrono Trigger", where monsters are visible and players have to run to avoid monster attacks, which further strengthens the action elements. At the same time, developers also add their own small innovation: each monster will issue a unique "attack" in the map, and after being hit, the player will start to fight.

The "Sea of Stars" combat system uses the eye-catching "dynamic Command RPG Battle": click the corresponding button to complete block, increase damage, critical strike and other actions; at the same time, it also adds a "broken lock" mechanism: players can interrupt the monster's moves by creating attacks with corresponding attributes. Other combat parts are roughly similar to "Wheel of time and Space". The player's action consists of normal attack, skills, and collaborative attacks, which can accumulate magic balls like "anger" common to the whole team.

In the Boss war in the game, there are often different roles involved in the dialogue and interaction. "Sea of Stars" uses a setting similar to the Tale of double Stars, with the Gemini protagonist controlled by the player as the core, gradually adding other roles, the dialogue style between the characters is short and lively, the performance can be used to perform, never say a word more. As an independent game, the producer makes all the key scenes into high-quality animation to make up for the lack of expressive power of the pixel screen.

We can see the efforts made by "Sea of Stars" in "modernization". On the one hand, it uses the design of many classic role-playing games, and those reference works have reached a level that is not limited by the "Japanese role-playing" example in terms of time and fame. This gives developers the flexibility to make considerable innovation to bring the game close to the preferences of modern players without damaging the nostalgia of old players.

On the other hand, these designs are all based on retro. For example, when increasing the complexity of maps, most of the hidden elements are removed, and all maps have shortcuts that can directly return to the exit; give players 10 "holy objects" that can reduce combat action and difficulty, all puzzles are very simple, and the guidance is also quite obvious; players do not need to increase combat effectiveness by practicing levels, exploring hidden elements, and so on, all character training elements are placed in the main line.

It can be said that the developer of "Sea of Stars" clearly told the players from the very beginning: "the purpose of running the map is to enhance the sense of adventure, and the battle is to make you do something a little exciting." the point is, you have to appreciate the whole world style and story we show. "

The core of a role-playing game, what about the story of "Sea of Stars"?

Retro a classic game, not only to grasp the form, but also to capture the essence. The Sea of Stars maintains its own modernity in form-although the battle is boring in the middle and later stages, it is bearable. More importantly, Sea of Stars does not well grasp the core of its retro classic games.

As we said before, "Japanese role-playing games" continue many traditions and paradigms. These parts not only affect the players' experience in form, but also have the greatest influence on the narrative habits of the game. Narrative habits are not so easy to explain, but in any case, the essence of all role-playing games is still to create wonderful characters, stories and the world through narration.

This is precisely the weakness of the Sea of Stars.

"Sea of Stars" does break away from those traditions and paradigms, but it goes a little too far. I can almost imagine what developers have in mind when filling in conversations and plots for their characters: what they are after is the moment in Wheel of time and Space when the Frog Warriors wield legendary swords and split the cliffs in front of the City of Devil. They want to keep the experience of that moment and put it in the Sea of Stars. But the problem is that the beauty of "wielding a sword to create miracles" does not come from "insipid", but from the superb control of the atmosphere and performance behind the whole task, that is, the "narrative habit" of the so-called classic games.

In contrast, the plot and characterization of "Sea of Stars" are too insipid from any point of view. The characters are too shy to shout long sentences about love and friendship, only chanting "long live friendship" over and over again. Even the early ultimate betrayal is calm, not like arousing the player's mood, but more like a kind of speculation-- the point is, it reflects the creator's attitude. It's talking about motivation: is it just because of setting that a warrior is a warrior? This kind of discussion is deconstructed, of course, but the problem is, this is a JRPG! What do you mean by such a completely unwarm-blooded deconstruction? In a way, it looks like something that people who don't fully understand the JRPG kernel will try to talk about.

The plot of "Sea of Stars" is actually very pure, the characters don't have much misery, only courage and fighting, but because of this, it needs stronger narrative ability to catch players. Unfortunately, Sea of Stars has not done a good job in this respect.

Even, instead, they chose a more inferior approach. The story structure of the game is largely influenced by the Wheel of time and Space, and the Sea of Stars, as its name suggests, implies the possibility of a multiverse in which players can travel one scene after another, from the pirate ship to the water capital. from clockwork castles to robotic buzzards. This scene creates the best part of the game, bringing out a large number of monsters and enough maps to touch the player's heart.

The scene design of the game is very good, but it is difficult to make up for the mistakes in the narrative of the game, you know, one of the developers' classic "retro" games, Wheel of time and Space, is that it can create the best part of the plot every 2 to 3 hours to capture the player. "Sea of Stars" didn't learn that. One detail is that these North American game developers are still stubbornly cramming the description of "old books" and "useless things" into the game, which is not only a kind of deconstruction, but also an attitude: they are incompetent. I haven't thought about it.

The most important thing may have been lost. Players don't hesitate to go through the hardships of the JRPG tradition to get a glimpse of the real stories and characters, which don't take up enough weight in the Sea of Stars. In this sense, "Sea of Stars" is a bit like a "meal" work, many clips are enough to make people smile, and there are many well-designed forms to take players back to the past and appreciate the way classic games are played, but it lacks moving content.

The postscript has an interesting detail: according to the Steam store, the current favorable rating of "Sea of Stars" is completely divided in Europe, the United States and Asia. In Europe and the United States, the game maintains a positive rating of 88%, while in Asia, the figure is 66%, which may explain the differences in JRPG aesthetics among players in different regions. All in all, "Sea of Stars" is a good example of the details that retro classic games should pay attention to, and that they only pay attention to these details without thinking about why the classics are classics at a deeper level. what a pity that we didn't get better results in the end.

In this day and age, new players pouring into the market are more eager than ever to witness classic games, but only if the new work retains the charm of the classic core while being modern. If you are lacking in a certain aspect, you may miss the opportunity to become a really good work. In terms of the game itself, Sea of Stars is of course quite good, but it could have gone one step further-perhaps the biggest regret that Sea of Stars leaves to us bystanders.

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