In Stars and Time Review/Rant
Spoiler Warning, and full disclosure, I spoiled myself on the ending, and some of the parts, and I gave up on it. Just FYI.
I want to start this off by saying this isn't a bad game.
The core of the gameplay loop, combat, characters, soundtrack, and basic story narrative - all work within the bounds of the game and the narrative.
But I have some (big) issues with it.
But first the basic plot:
(Spoilers and full review under the cut.)
Edited on 1/3/2024 to finish the sentences I missed and correct spelling
The basic plot goes like this. You are Siffer, a rogue in an adventuring party that needs to take down the King that had come out of nowhere to threaten the country, because the King has been freezing people in time to protect the country.
You make a wish, and then - after entering the he dies in the deadly room due to a trap, before resetting back to when you started the game, laying down on the grass. There's a Star that informs you that you are stuck in a timeloop, and that they (the star) informs you that they are there to help and be an ear to you.
Eventually you do beat the king, time resets, and Sif is back where he started; clearly, defeating the King doesn't work by itself, so clearly there must be something else you have to try.
During the entirety of the time loops, not once does Sif communicate with his party about the situation. Eventually, you reach a breaking point, lashing out at your friends in a flawed attempt to rush things along, and go on to take the King down by yourself, because there's nothing else left for you to try.
The party - with help from the star - was able to follow and locate you, and it all culminates in a big moment where the pressure valve is released and it's revealed that Sif wished to be able to spend more time with his friends, his family.
And it's a big moment, because he's finally communicating with the team, and they're with him, he's with them, and the story ends there.
By itself, with the gameplay being as tight as it is, that is not that bad.
The combat is basically rock, paper, scissors, with each member of the four party members have some utility towards that, and it's really good! The fast forward and looping mechanics are also handled well, and it just ties everything together nicely, on a surface level.
What bothers me is the set dressing, it's the extra details thrown in, it's the King's backstory, it's Sif's backstory, and it's an NPC who sometimes does and does not have a sister-
Because a sizable element to the story is that there are things Sif cannot read, there's an NPC who's sister left to go to a foreign country but the NPC can't remember the name of it before the world resets itself to allow the NPC to be an only child, and the King mentioning - when you beat him - that he can't go, because he can't say the name of it yet.
As you go through the game, it's revealed that there is an island that just - straight up and down, unironically, disappeared from the world, within the last eight years in game story, given that Bonnie - youngest member of the party who's about 11 or 12 at most - is able to remember people talking about it for weeks when it happened. What's more, is that no one is able to remember anything from the island. Not the culture, the language can't be read, and - most telling of all - the name of the island cannot be said. It's both implied and then outright confirmed that the King and Sif are both from that island, hence why the King is trying to hard to preserve the closest neighbor and why Sif has no real past to speak of, because they can't say/remember their home; that NPC's sister I mentioned earlier? The NPC's sister was almost certainly on that island when it disappeared.
Additionally, remember when I mentioned earlier
The Head Priestess, she would - after to talking to Sif, thanking him for his help - immediately state that the world was 'breaking apart' that the world was dying prior to Sif resetting back to the grass.
There was also a tiny detail of like the world not having color as it disappeared slowly, day by day, until it was just gone and the world was in black and white.
All this, in my mind, while I was playing it, was building up to us being able to bring back the island, bring back color, and basically fix the world of whatever was wrong with it.
I was in the later half of Act three at this point? And that's when I looked up a video, just to try and find where the secret room was.
It's ten hours long, but it was the only one up at the moment, and beggars couldn't have been choosers.
So I watched it, at the point where Sif and Mirabelle were talking and saw where it ended at like Sif talking to the Head Priestess, at the very end of the game.
And I was hyped! I was like, wow, what an ending, the art direction was sound, the music was nailed, everything was very cool and interesting and I couldn't want to wake up the next day to get to it myself.
But I kept turning, turning, and turning it over in my head, and the more I did that, the more I was realizing - I don't really like how it ended. Maybe I had too high expectations, maybe if I had actually played it through to that point I would have seen the vision, but like.
Why were those extra details in there that didn't amount to much? Because like. The island - everything about it, from it being unable to be named, from it just disappearing one day, from the NPC's sister who was on the island country when it was wiped from existence - didn't actually come back? Like. That's still not fixed? Not to mention the chehov's guns that never fired. I mean, yes, the team was there for Sif, but none of them were ever able to realize something was wrong with Sif, at least not to the point of actually confronting him about it until the last go around (there were hints, but there was never any follow through, again, from the point I played and the point I watched - I fully realize I missed things as a result of my skimming).
The King was unable to say it's name, even as he died/was frozen in time?
Sif still doesn't remember any of his past - and he can't remember the island/old home at all, or his own childhood, because the island is still gone! The block is still there! There's no explanation for why that happened to begin with!
And the NPC's sister is still also gone! The NPC will never fully remember their own sister, because the foreign country she went to was wiped from the world and from memory! The color is still gone! Why include what the Head Priestess said about the world rotting and being corrupted when it was just the wish magic functioning? Shouldn't she have been able to do or say something different when Sif interacted with her?
Like, ok, the color thing about colors fading from the world - cute detail, nothing crazy.
The book series in the world - nice detail, not much to mention.
It's the disappearing island that is the biggest offender of this. That is the one thing that needs to gtfo, that's the one detail that is PLOT RELEVANT and stupid!
(Edit: I failed to mention; it's only not the island disappearing part I have an that much of an issue with, it's more the context I take issue with more. The fact that not only was the island was just gone, but that anything even tangentially related to it were suppressed, from the language, to the culture, to the memory of it, to the extent anyone that was still on the island was forgotten about, except in tangential glimpses and stone hops. And that's not going to the people that actually LIVED on the island, like the King and Sif, where they can't remember their past - their parents, their friends, their loves, the food that comforts them - ANYTHING, it's suppressed and rewritten over by the universe. That is demented - that is dark and heavy sci-fi dystopian level stuff, and for the take away to be 'let it go'? To forget the crumbs that you have of your life before, your family, the life you lived, the decisions you made? I don't know, that feels bad, and that doesn't feel satisfying to me, particularly. I admit bias here. Especially because that one NPC, even after everything, won't be able to remember their sister, whom they clearly really really loved.)
If you've read this far, come take a walk with me down a hypothetical scenario, on another path.
Consider if you will, instead of just - fucking disappearing and being blocked from memory for some reason that is NEVER EXPLAINED - it is instead destroyed by nature (think Earthquake and/or Tsunami). Many people die, the island is just destroyed/gone, and what's left of the people get scattered to the winds because who wants to live by the place where your life was destroyed?
And that way, it be less about this weird block on the memory and more about Sif actively avoiding any mention of his old home or Sif not remembering the name of his old home due to trauma, and the King's motivation would make more sense; he wants to protect the people of his country that still exist, and the majority of them are in the main story's country, as well as preventing any changing nature to affect the country that houses most of the people! ( I don't care enough to look up the name)
It would have been 1) more fulfilling, imo, 2) would have given him more depth and more of a religious crisis, 3) he would have to confront the King, this person from the home he can barely remember, every time, and kill a real part of his past, 4) it would give him more reason to want to not lose the family he currently has because he's already gone through it once, 5) It would actually be relatable to people who have/are currently losing their culture to time and just not being able to practice it, 6) it wouldn't be so fucking bizarre!
And the fact that it didn't is...not bad? The developers were still able to tell the story they wanted to. And on a basic character level and overarching, they did succeed, I won't discredit them that! But like. The setting lore - feels like cardboard, like you poke at the setting hard enough it'll break. Especially with the disappearing island that's just- blocked from people's memories, again, for reasons that the story never explains how or why that even happened. Especially with all the other details in the game it's just. Bad. It tastes like Ash.
TD;LR: This game is not a bad game, but it's not internally strong enough to be considered Indie peaks like Hades, Slay the Princess, Undertale, and I personally would not recommend the game.