In Stars and Time

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: ~25 Hours? Not entirely sure, it's one of those games that keep the timer runner when the game is in sleep mode, so according to it, like 80+ hours.
• Too Short/Long: Even using the smaller number, it's way too long, for what it is and for what it overs, a lot of that time is spend revisiting the same areas, reading the same dialog.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Disappointed.
• Why I played: Because it seemed neat, had a good trailer, overwhelmingly positive steam reviews.
• Recommend to others: I wouldn't really recommend this one.

In Stars and Time captured me with a snappy trailer that showed some cool art and entertaining dialog. I like time loop stuff, generally speaking, but I know when it comes to games I can grow weary of playing the same stuff over and over, so it's a bit of a balancing act, but some of my favorite games are time-loop based and require you to redo stuff over and over(Nier, ZeroRanger, Void Stranger, Astlibra, Outer Wilds), and it's probably fair to say the most of those can have a level of tedium to them. In Stars and Time is just not rewarding enough to warrant the level of tedium is has.

In Star and Time in practice is just not as snappy as it's trailer would have you believe. The controls are clunky, and that's saying something for a game that mostly moving 4 direction on a 2D plane and going through dialog windows. The inputs just feel rough and stiff when walking around and don't always put you were you wanna be, and the dialog boxes, even on the highest speed setting are incredibly slow. The slowest setting shows like 1 character per second. Why would that even exist? I understand slow text for accessibility, but considering you have to press a button to continue, this just seems like far too much. Also it's "instant" text doesn't work like every other game in the world. It "Instantly" shows you one sentence at a time. So a dialog box with 4 sentences will take 5 button presses to get to the next. But wait there's more. Basically every stop is a button press. So If you have several ellipsis or one word sentences for effect like "Stop. Talking. Now." those are each an "instant" so one text box could take who knows 8+ button presses? It's ridiculous, terribly unintuitive, and annoying.

This is not helped by the fact that you have to go through so much of this stuff so many times. Dozens, at least. There is a fast-forward button that works on dialog you have already seen, but only sometimes. Some dialog does not have fast forward at all, ever, and treading back and forth through the same areas over and over again is not handled the best way. There are some areas that are mutually exclusive in your runs, but only a few, and I feel like that would have been a better way to explore. Instead, the game demands certain procedures be follows and for you to loop back and forth, back and forth, over and over, each time you find a new clue. That's the biggest issue. Seldom are you allowed to find more than one or two clues to progress the story, so you need to constantly loop back and do things over instead of enjoying more freedom to unlock more information between each loop. The pacing is just, really off and that's something really important for the type of game this is.

Since a lot of the appeal/interest was visual design let me discuss that. That's mostly solid, I still like it, but the vast majority of the enemies are uninspired and ugly which is a shame since you have to see each of them so many times. But there is still a lot to appreciate about the art/style.

I do like the core of the combat systems. It's a paper/rock/scissors system used blatantly, even as part of the lore of the world, but in a way that doesn't feel too restrictive like some can. They're used more like elements with weakness/resistance and a lot of the more unique battles use it in clever ways. There just isn't enough variety in scenarios you are presented with overall. There are like 5 truly unique battles and a couple enemies that have unique mechanics that actually matter the first couple times you fight them.

I do think some of the writing is entertaining and clever, but most of it just comes off as trying to hard. It's immature, and I mean that in way more like amateur, but there is a distinction. When I say amateur, I usually mean bad. Like it's written by someone who doesn't write professionally. In this case, I feel like the writing is by someone who is a capable writer, but it's just some silly little writings. It kind of reads like someone's tumblr post, or a 4chan green text, in a lot of instances, and in others, I feel like it's from someone who just has a very rudimentary(or immature) experience with how people interact actually with each other and there is just a lot of over the top dialog that also again, just feels like someone maybe chatting online, rather than a written character's dialog.

It also just kind of eventually ignores some of the - what I consider, big plot points of the game in the end. I'm pretty sure I more or less 100%'d the game, so it's just kind of weird and anti-climactic. The things I actually cared about being answered in the story were ignored in favor of a message that was basically "Open up to your (found) family, they care about you and you're not alone." The whole ending sequence just didn't rub me right. I felt it would have been better a bit more toward the middle of the game. Maybe it was trying to be subversive by having the worst run of the timeloop be the "correct" one, but it just doesn't make much sense for several perspectives and everyone takes it in stride.

I try not to spoil myself in games and lately everyone is just so open to spoiling everything, but in retrospect, maybe I should have actually read those overwhelmingly positive reviews, because now that I do, I realize the majority of them are not from people who look at a game critically, but for those who see themselves in the characters, and are desperate for representation. Several reviews are just "X character, just like me FR, literally me" or just appreciation for it's inclusion of less represented queer characters, but I feel like it's kind of superficial. I don't think the characters are poorly represented per se, I just feel like it's trying too hard to check as many boxes as possible and tell it's audience that what they are is okay and it's also okay if they don't fully understand themselves, but once again, it comes off as something immature, something for those who haven't had many actual experiences in life and need someone to tell them these things. So in that aspect, as someone who has mostly figured their shit out, socially active, and is in a good place, it's not for me, but I don't think that means it's beyond criticism as a piece of media. Just because something tries to have a good message and good intents, doesn't make it good.

But I'm not saying it's bad. It just could have been better for a game that looked so cool, and for maybe one of the first times I just feel like I'm too old to play this game. This is probably supported by the fact that my favorite character was the 40 year old woman who was considered an grumpy old lady by the rest of the party.