Sea of Stars gets a final launch trailer that shows off a fourth playable character, and intense boss fights.

Sea of Stars Launch Trailer Reveals Fourth Character

As we sail through the final week before the launch of Sea of Stars, the developers have dropped a sudden launch trailer highlighting the game’s goodness. Sea of Stars is a love letter to old-school RPGs, in both look and in tone, but upgraded to fit today’s gaming landscape. Developer Sabotage Studios is pulling through all the stops, especially since their indie gem is right in the middle of some major releases such as Immortals of Aveum, Armored Core 6, Blasphemous 2, and Starfield. 

But from all the footage they’ve shown off so far, Sea of Stars is looking quite great. It’s even better now with the announcement of a fourth playable character. 

Now You’re Thinking with Portals

Meet Serai, the Portal Assassin. She’s the fourth playable party member, joining our main three Valere, Zale, and Garl. Serai looks like what you would think an assassin in a fantasy game would look like: shrouded in mystery, lightly armored, and armed with dual daggers. She may be just that, but with a unique twist – she has access to portals in combat. 

Serai can creatively make use of teleportation by plopping down a couple of portals that she can jump between. Too far to backstab a foe? No problem, just open up a portal behind them for maximum damage! She can even place her portals on the ground, letting her use momentum to drop into one and jump up to great heights upon exiting the other! This lets her perform some creative moves, as well as attack enemies with thrown daggers from literally every angle. 

It isn’t quite sure yet what her personality is, or what else she will bring to the table. We do know that traversal is quite unique in the game, thanks to the various demos and gameplay footage. Perhaps Serai will be able to lend a portal or two to our intrepid heroes for easier exploration. 

Swap on the Fly

Combat in Sea of Stars is much more involved as compared to the games that inspired it, like Chrono Trigger. Instead of sitting back and relaxing when you select an attack from the game’s turn-based encounters, Sea of Stars will have players be more engaged as they will often need to perfectly time a button press to deal the best damage. 

Valere, for example, can throw a projectile that could theoretically bounce between enemies forever – as long as you’re skilled enough. This projectile will bounce on a foe, and return to Valere, but if the player presses a button at the exact perfect moment, you will actually launch the projectile back at an unsuspecting foe. The caveat here is that the projectile’s speed increases exponentially, making it harder and harder to keep up the deflection. 

The latest launch trailer also confirmed that players can swap party members on the fly in combat. You also do not waste a turn if you change characters, as the one who joins in will be able to act immediately. It looks like though that fights will still only have a maximum of three player characters active at any given time.

The game’s FAQ page does mention that there will be six characters, though it seems the page hasn’t been updated in quite some time so the final count is anyone’s guess at this point. 

Can’t Wait to Sail Away

Sea of Stars is shaping up to be quite a good RPG experience. It has an engaging combat system already implemented, with tons of nuances to look out for. The game’s traversal is also quite enjoyable, especially since it makes great use of verticality in a 2D pixel-art game, which isn’t quite common. And like most good RPGs, it has tons of side content like its very own minigame called “Wheels”. 

The game has already gone gold way ahead of its August 29, 2023 release for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and the Nintendo Switch. Sabotage Studios have also confirmed that the game is Steam Deck compatible. This wasn’t much of a surprise though, as the PC demo ran flawlessly on the Deck already. What was a surprise was the confirmation that the title is going to be both an Xbox GamePass and PlayStation Plus day one game. Nintendo should get in on the fun!

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