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Introduction
This month’s game is a more current title rather than the next iteration of a 42-year-old franchise.
Cosmic Star Heroine is a JRPG created by Zeboyd Games, a two-man studio that also created Cthulhu Saves the World. The game was first released on PC and PlayStation 4 on April 11, 2017. It was ported to the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch a year later, with releases on April 24, 2018, and August 14, 2018, respectively. Finally, Google Stadia received its own port of the game on April 1, 2021.
Development time was longer than you normally see from Zeboyd Games, taking four years instead of a few months. To help finance the game’s production, the makers launched a successful Kickstarter campaign on October 1, 2013, which lasted 30 days. It earned a total of $132,689 out of a $100,000 goal.
The game scored good reviews during its launch, with a more enthusiastic response from the indie and RPG communities and publications.
So, is it a good throwback to a bygone JRPG era? Let’s find out.
The Narrative
Cosmic Star Heroine takes place in The Zevanii star system, which is composed of three planets, Araenu, Rhomu and Nuluup. It tells the story of Alyssa L’Salle, an agent for the Araenu government’s Agency of Peace and Intelligence (API). Members of this organization spy on other races, administer other worlds, carry out killings, destabilize governments, and engage in counterterrorism, among other things. Simply enough, they are interplanetary CIA.
The game begins with Alyssa infiltrating SkyBreaker Systems, a company that develops experimental weaponry but was taken over by terrorists. Alyssa sneaks into the building and fights her way up, assisted by her friend and first party member, Chahn Kaneko, a gunmancer (they can summon guns). It’s a great opening that shows you the plot’s pulp roots.
The plot begins to emerge in your next assignment, when the Director of the API sends Alyssa to planet Rhomu, along with Chahn and a new companion, Dave, a hacker. The three will discover an ancient piece of technology known as the Lumina device. The trio returns it to the API headquarters, without knowing what its purpose is. Dave will later uncover the device’s actual origins as a weapon capable of influencing people’s thoughts, a relic from a past conflict. The Director intends to utilize it to prevent anyone from committing crimes, enslaving all living beings.
Helped by API’s Sector Chief Borisusovsky, also known as Sue, they steal de Lumina device. Unsure of what to do next, our crooks join the terrorist organization Astrea, which fights the API’s increasing authority over the galaxy. Alyssa must now protect the Lumina device, figure out how to destroy it, and put an end to the DIrector’s nefarious plan. On her journey, she will make new friends, explore all the planets in the Zevanii system, and discover the evil power behind the mind-control device.
You will be able to travel to three different planets: Araenu, Rhomu, and Nuluup. Araenu is a typical cyberpunk dystopia, full of gray skyscrapers, oppressive cops and lowlife citizens. Rhomu is a hodgepodge of ideas. Its surface is radioactive and teeming with mutant fauna. Humans live underground in cities modeled after the Wild West. It’s also the home planet of the ultharians, the green cats with tentacles from Zeboyd’s previous game, as well as the scimerex, my favorite species in the game. They are huge bugs with telepathic abilities, access to a hive network, and brilliant intelligence.
The last world, Nuluup, is home to an intriguing species with supernatural abilities. They use spectral energy to power their technology and are able to live on when their natural bodies die by transferring their spirits into a form of cyber body. It’s very imaginative.
The game is full of cameos from Zeboid’s past titles, some are there just to say hello, others will join your motley crew, while a few will test your strength. But unlike their former games, the humor is heavily toned down, in favor of more relevant talks and lore.
The game is full of cameos from Zeboid’s past titles; some are there only to say hello, others will join your motley crew, while some will test your strength. However, unlike their previous games, the humor has been considerably toned down in favor of more relevant conversations and lore. I think that’s an improvement, since I find their type of humor tiresome after a few hours.
Unfortunately, characters and plot are the game’s weakest aspect. Characters don’t have any specific development and don’t have depth. They are fun to watch, but they aren’t complex people with their own personal struggles and goals. They have no personal ties to these events and no compelling motivation to engage other than “to save the day!” Thankfully, they aren’t living stereotypes and gags, like on Cthulhu Saves the World.
The plot is what one would expect from a story involving governmental conspiracies, mind control, and experimenting on living creatures (it can be quite grim at points). This by the numbers development, along with the lack of emotional involvement or personal stakes from the primary cast, diminishes the impact it could have during its most interesting moments.
I’m not saying it’s a bad story, but it isn’t an epic about overcoming impossible odds and full of heroic deeds and emotional development. It is closer to a pulp sci-fi adventure about rogue agents stopping its evil government. Hence, if you keep your expectations in check, you will have fun with the game has to offer on this aspect. As I enjoy this simple style of storytelling (here are the characters, here is their adventure), it was enough for me to be engaged until the end.
I’m not saying it’s a horrible story, but it’s not an epic about overcoming impossible odds, full of heroic deeds and emotional development. It’s more akin to a pulp sci-fi adventure about rogue agents battling an evil government. As a result, if you keep your expectations in check, you will have a good time with what the game has to offer in this regard. As I enjoy this simple style of storytelling (here are the characters, here is their adventure), it kept me interested till the conclusion.
Presentation
A few years ago, as I watched some promotional material for the game, its visuals seemed inspired by the visuals of Sega CD titles. From how the colors looked to the barely animated sequences that were present in every CD-based game of the time. But as I started to play, the game’s biggest inspiration became clear: Chrono Trigger. The sprites’ style, the world map, the battle system, and probably the sound design, were all influenced by that classic RPG.
While watching some promotional video for the game a few years ago, I noticed that its aesthetics appeared to be inspired by Sega CD titles. From the way the colors looked to the barely animated sequences found in every CD-based game at the time. However, when I started to play, the game’s main inspiration became clear: Chrono Trigger. The look of the sprites, the world map, the battle system, and, most likely, the sound design, were all influenced by that classic RPG.
Araenu, Rhomu and Nuluup.
Influences aside, the game’s pixel art is stunning, with detailed environments, well-designed characters, and some cool backgrounds in a few locations. The animated sequences’ artwork remind me of titles released for the Sega CD and the TurboGrafx-CD. They can appear a little rough at times, but this also serves to summon the time period.
The soundtrack was composed by HyperDuck SoundWorks, an Irish music duo. They were the composers of “Dust: An Elysian Tail” and another game by Zeboyd Games, “Penny Arcade’s on the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4”. It’s a lengthy soundtrack (51 songs!) that mixes jazz, rock, and synths with typical video game themes. It matches the game perfectly. As highlights, I would say Hollow Charge, Trojan’s Ruins, Araenu, Hollow Charge, and The Resolution.
I liked the soundtrack, but didn’t love it until I re-listened every track while writing this post. There are some great songs that are available only for short segments that I completely forgot, but that are a joy to listen. I would recommend it even for people that don’t plan to play the game.
Mechanics
The game is a standard JRPG on most aspects, in which you can explore the world talking to NPCs, manage your party, battle, level-up characters, progress through the main storyline and complete a handful of simple side quests.
The game has eleven party members, some human, some alien, but only four of them can be employed at the same time during combat. Later on, after you acquire your own base of operations, you will be able to recruit characters who will provide modifiers to your party. Options like enhancing specific attributes, doing more damage to a specific type of adversary, gaining more experience, earning more money, and a few others will be available, so it’s a good idea to search for these characters.
Similarly to the Suikoden series, you can find and interact with all recruited characters on your base. Their dialogues will be updated as the story progresses, so they will always have something fresh to tell you. Sometimes you can even receive tips or side quests.
When you begin a new game you can choose between four difficulties: Tourist, Agent, Heroine and Super-spy. Except during battles, you can modify the difficulty whenever you wish. Only Super-spy offers a good challenge, with Tourist and Agent being ridiculously easy, to the point of enemies dying with only one hit. Heroine is fine, but I ended up playing on the Super-spy difficulty. The battle system shines on this difficulty, as it forces you to experiment and create new strategies.
The Heroine difficulty is nice, but I ended myself playing on the Super-spy difficulty. This complexity is highlighted by the fighting system, which drives you to experiment and devise new techniques.
Battle System
Chrono Trigger heavily influenced the game’s battle system. Combat takes place on the standard exploration screen, and foes will roam the map until you decide to engage them. It’s really cool to see your party and enemies positioning themselves and taking fighting stances.
There are no random encounters, thus every fight was planned by the developers, who made certain that you are never underleveled, even on the toughest mode. However, if you believe you need to advance one or two levels or simply want to try out new attacks or strategies, you can initiate random battles from the menu (a typical feature in Zeboyd Games). These fights are a little harder than the ones on which they are based and provide less experience, but they are more than enough for a quick grind. I like how the in-game explanation is that these are VR simulations based on your former fights.
As the fight begins, the battle HUD shows the turn order, your character’s portrait, HP, Style percentage and Hyper bar on the left. It also shows you the enemy’s HP, what further helps you to plan your next moves.
This battle system has a few elements that set it apart from other JRPGs. Cosmic Star Heroine separates your actions into three categories: Skills, Programs, and Items. Skills are character-specific and include attacks, healing powers, buffs, debuffs, and so on. To put it another way, practically every action a character can perform is a Skill. Programs are similar to Skills, but they are linked to the character’s equipped shield. Finally, items are standard RPG items found during normal gameplay and shared by the group.
It’s important to note that status ailments play an important role in the game, as most enemies and bosses are not immune to them.
Unlike most games where players can freely use a type of standard attack while having a limited use of special abilities and items, every Skill in this game must be recharged after one use. There are a few exceptions to this rule, while a handful more powerful ones can only be used once per battle. You can choose up to eight Skills per character, but one is reserved for a recharging ability, ensuring that you won’t soft lock your game. It may seem a bit cumbersome and slow, yet it blends well with the other combat mechanics, and it never slowed down any enemy encounter.
The use of items is quite a departure from most RPGs. Items will be permanently available after you find them, so you won’t have to hoard huge quantities of the same item when entering a dungeon. You can only use them during battles, and you can select only four of them. Like programs, normally they can only be used once every fight.
It’s important to note that status ailments play an important role in the game, as most enemies and bosses are not immune to them. It pays off to have a character that is good at poisoning or stunning enemies.
I never thought items were very useful, but sometimes they took me out of a tight spot. I also enjoy a bit of item management, as getting enough resources feels like part of the adventure, similar to what you experience in most survival crafting games, but on a smaller scale.
There are two more elements to the battle system: Style and Hyper Mode. Style, shown as a percentage, grows accordingly to a character’s actions. A greater value causes attacks to inflict more damage and boosts the effectiveness of status ailments. Unfortunately, enemies also gain style, so after some turns enemies will slaughter your party effortlessly.
Desperation Mode is another key application of Style. When a character’s HP falls below zero, if they have a certain amount of style (how much depends on the game’s difficulty), they will survive one more turn with negative HP. On the next turn, you must decide whether to unleash a more powerful attack and let the party member die, or to try to keep them alive even if healing them is more difficult.
A character enters Hyper Mode every few turns, indicated by small blue squares on the HUD and a yellow glow around the character and their portrait. During this turn, any action has a stronger effect, so attacks do more damage, healing restores more life, and most status ailments will take effect. It’s an essential element to take in consideration when planning your next moves.
But don’t worry if someone dies, because the game is very generous to players. After each battle, your whole party, including reserve and dead members, gains experience. Your characters are resurrected and healed as well. However, if your party is defeated, you can immediately restart the encounter without having to reload a saved game.
While I prefer that my dead party members don’t receive experience (but I’m wholeheartedly in favor of reserves gaining it), I believe it streamlines the game’s progression and cuts some of the padding that is frequent in JRPGs. It also won’t make you scream in anger and frustration every time the plot decides to split your main party, forcing you to rely on your underleveled reserves. It also comes in handy if you’re playing on Super-Spy difficulty, as losing one or two characters every battle is common.
The combat system is excellent, facilitating experimentation and the use of different play styles, as you can choose to wear down adversaries by using status ailments or to focus on building your Style to inflict massive damage. The system also has a unique rhythm where you feel rushed to kill foes before their attacks grow too powerful, but you also need time to build up your own damage output.
I also felt that the game restricts healing, making it difficult to recover characters or keep them alive for the duration of a combat (although the player isn’t penalized when a character dies). And it’s quite satisfying when your entire party has been wiped out except for one character in Desperation Mode, ready to unleash a dramatic yet devastating last blow.
This battle system is better put together than the one present in Cthulhu Saves the World. Even if most of the systems and mechanics from Cosmic Star Heroine are only more polished versions of those from Zeboyd’s previous title, they feel more cohesive and well integrated, complementing each other, instead of a patchwork of ideas. The developers improved a lot in their design capacities and I commend them for that.
Final Thoughts
Cosmic Star Heroine is a throwback to JRPG games from the 1990s, with the art style and mechanics heavily influenced by Chrono Trigger. It is fun to play and offers a good challenge on the Super-spy difficulty. Unfortunately, its narrative elements aren’t the most interesting, with simplistic characters and a dull premise. That’s a crucial part of RPGs, more than in other genres, so I can’t call this game a classic, as it would need more compelling characters and a more impactful story. There is also a few bugs that, while not game-breaking, are always annoying.
Nonetheless, I believe the game is a must play for everyone, even if they don’t enjoy JRPGs, because it eliminates most of the genre’s padding. Fans of JRPGs will be able to experience a leaner, more streamlined system that focuses on going through the main story and enjoying battle rather than penalizing players by forcing them to grind for hours or manage massive inventories. It’s also refreshing to play something else than medieval fantasy.
Final opinion: Very recommended.