Sea of Stars / YMMV

Accidental Aesop: Science is not evil, but it can be used for evil purposes. Once the more sci-fi elements are introduced to the plot, the Death World that is Seraï's homeworld is very mechanical, but the technology itself is not the problem, just the fact it's controlled by the Fleshmancer. The Catalyst that brought so much misery to Seraï's people ends up saving the lives of the children of the Clockwork Castle, offering them a body immune to the rapid aging that would kill them otherwise. The Sky Base was being used to keep the sun away, but in actuality, it had been originally built to help maintain the weather.
Ass Pull: One of the biggest issues with the story is that characters often drop terms or names without any prior explanation or understanding on the player's part on what the heck the characters are talking about. While some of the terms are explained eventually in Teaks' stories, it still comes off as this when solutions and explanations for things that occur in the story just get name dropped due to a "such and such" item that was never mentioned before in the game.
Awesome Art: The game's pixel art has received universal acclaim due to its gorgeous character sprites and locations with a bright and varied color palette. The game manages to capture the style of the time of the games that inspired it while also utilizing a lot of modern technology (especially the lighting effects) to bring it to a new level. What especially stands out are the beautiful anime-style cutscenes that happen throughout the game and the massive amount of stills following the death of Garl, which convey so much emotion and beauty with only sporadic usage of text.
Awesome Bosses:
- Wyrd is not much but is such a pleasant Warm-Up Boss. It is a cute robot (and a tribute to Gato on top of that) that perfectly teaches the player about strengths and weaknesses, to react on the fly, and to try all of the characters' attacks thanks to his Diegetic Interface that makes it very satisfying. When a similar concept comes back later in a less controlled environment (namely the Chromatic Apparition) the player is instinctively prepared thanks to that great tutorial.
- Romaya is a great boss fight that requires players to really think about their strategy due to her ability to summon enemies. With how much health the Mook Makers have, are they worth destroying and should you rush your attacks on Romaya at the risk of fighting a Flunky Boss? Or should you start with them to remove tools from Romaya's arsenal at the risk of taking more damage from her in the meantime? Alternatively, you could even just destroy the summons when they appear, they are annoying but far less tanky than the two piles of cadavers. Both having a distinct weakness is also great design that forces you to juggle between all the characters' abilities and prevent them from easily wiping them out with multi-target attacks. The rematch is equally great, with her new ability to summon shields preventing the player to even break her locks, adding a new layer of complexity to an already great exercise in adaptability.
- All of the Dweller fights basically exist to make Valere and Zale awesome heroes worthy of myth and legend; appropriate for potential Guardian Gods. Each of these fights is with a uniquely designed monster with entire arcs dedicated to the player overcoming them, and show off just how powerful the heroes are when they're able to go all-out. The Dweller of Woe is a protracted slug-fest where the player gets a Purposefully Overpowered team to rip Woe to shreds, the Dweller of Torment is a thematically powerful moment for the actual party where they literally overcome impossible odds, the Dweller of Strife is an interesting Puzzle Boss that takes the fight to every part of the Clockwork Castle and surrounding scenery, and the Dweller of Dread caps off a herculean effort by the Solstice Warriors to convert a world that was effectively a lost cause into an eternal statement of hope and overcoming adversity against the Fleshmancer. What really sells each fight is that the game emphasizes just how dramatically Valere and Zale are able to throw hands with world-ending monstrosities by having the duo deal insane amounts of damage with every celestial-aligned strike.
- In the last third of the game, both Meduso and the Catalyst stand out for similar reasons. Meduso summons tentacles all throughout its fight that either heal it, do group damage, or heavy single-target damage depending on their color, and it is up to the player to break their locks as soon as they appear to prevent that. But as the fight goes on and Meduso's face becomes more and more nightmarish, it summons more and more tentacles until it becomes literally impossible to break all locks in time. It then becomes a matter of picking your poison and reacting accordingly to mitigate them as best as you could. Then there's the Catalyst which does things a little differently: it introduces its healer/damager minions to the player first in two waves which present one key difference: this time they're here to stay with sizeable HP, and they even come back if you take too long. And after defeating 2, then 4 of them (which wasn't particularly easy mind you), you finally meet the Catalyst flanked by a whopping 6 of them, all firmly fixed to the wall and unmovable, and all potentially creating locks at the same time. Both fights are great examples of pattern recognition and gradual difficulty that feel really rewarding to overcome, pushing once again your resource management skills to their limit by dealing with them in the manner you judge best based on the knowledge accumulated in the first phases.
- Both the Final Boss and True Final Boss are good in their own rights, though nothing especially outstanding with the usual "final boss package" of insane damage with lots of HP (though the Unexpected Shmup sections are definitely a highlight). The real kicker of these fights is realizing that you now have all the tools necessary to utterly annihilate them. No gimmicks, no weak point to hit first, no minions to hide behind, now your pure skill can be on display. By playing smartly and parrying on time, it is completely possible to destroy any seemingly random lock combination and roll over the bosses without them landing a single special attack. And if you fail, then it's back to minions and gimmicks which make for cool fights nevertheless. Sure, you will miss out on some georgous sprite animations and their regular attacks still hurt a lot, but that feeling when you effortlessly defeated what is normally a genuinely Nintendo Hard boss is extremely satisfying.
Awesome Music:
- The boss theme, "Encounter Elite", was one of the first pieces of music revealed during the game's pre-launch publicity. Using a minimum of chords and percussive instrumentation, it sets the stage for every boss you fight. It also comes in futuristic and bardcore versions.
- "The Frozen Peak" (Day) and (Night), which are remixes of "The Frozen Light" from The Messenger. Not only do the tracks have a Background Music Override so that you can hear them through the whole level, but they definitely invoke a strong feeling of nostalgia from those who played The Messenger. They are more-modern versions of the song, with instrumentation to match, adding an icy touch to what are already extremely catchy songs in general.
- The battle theme for the second fight against Romaya, "Might of the Necromancer", is a fast paced synthetic heavy metal song with pipe organs that illustrates just how well and truly pissed off she is that the heroes didn't heed her warning not to come back into her territory with the fight she puts up this time around increasing in difficulty to match the music.
- Stormcaller's boss theme, "The Storm Calls for You!", is a fast-paced, somewhat ominous song that manages to make an accordion sound epic. It even returns when fighting Hydralion!
Base-Breaking Character:
- Depending on who you ask, Garl is either the best character in the game and his loyalty to the protagonists carries the story hard, or an annoying and forced Creator's Pet that keeps speaking over the real main characters.
- B'st is a relatively contentious character. On one hand lots of people love him for his unique design and creative Voluntary Shapeshifting, but others find that he suffers from Late Character Syndrome and is overall a Low-Tier Letdown representing an element (arcane) that was already better taken care of by Rash'an. Many people also disliked how shoehorned he was in the story and immediately Promoted to Playable when many Sixth Ranger options seemed more narratively fitting like Malkomud, the Artificer, or Verlot. And depending on how they felt about Garl to begin with, he is either a Replacement Scrappy or More Popular Replacement.
Breather Boss: The champion of Dweller's Fall Arena's gold rank, Sylgain, is this on every level. Aesthetically, he is just a Macho Camp regular guy who already stands out alongside all the giant horrible monsters that you are usually facing, especially this late in the game or even simply in this Arena. But even as an enemy he comes off as way less intense that everything he is sandwiched between (the Clockwork Abomination, Croustalion, and even the Basic Basement Batch that comes just before him). All of his attacks, even the specials, always target one unit and aren't that strong so it is very simple to temporize and heal everyone to full health in a few turns. The cherry on top is that he is a Fighting Clown, between some of his attacks that are made to evoke Punch-Out!!, his unexpectedly real Voice Grunting, his Pec Flex while making a duck face, his ridiculous attack names, or maybe simply the fact that his strongest move consists of launching himself out of a cannon with a watermelon on his head.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- Zale and Valere are pretty much locked on any team composition due to their strong stats and varied toolkits mixing both offensive and defensive options, multi-target special moves, and amazing combos (see below) while also covering two-thirds of the weak points including two that are exclusive to them (sun and moon). And once you get Resh'an who covers the last two weaknesses your third slot is basically taken for good, even after you get B'st. Not to say that the rest of the cast becomes useless after that, they still get situational uses due to the nature of the locks system as well as some useful unique abilities (Garl's All Your Power Combined ultimate, Seraï's ability to delay an enemy's turn that is pivotal to some boss fights, and B'st's revive) but Resh'an just has special moves that are simply "Garl but better" (healing and repositionning), stats that are leagues above Glass Cannon Seraï while also dealing poison damage more efficiently and for free, and an MP-free multi-target attack when B'st can almost only target one opponent and pay MP/Combo gauge for the possibility to hit multiple opponents only if they don't mess up the Action Command. Resh'an's one weakness of not really being able to do much to hurt enemies because of their subpar offenses is also entirely mitigated by the aforementioned Valere, and Garl's single-target heal won't be missed given the presence of Mending Light and Zale's own healing ability can make do in emergencies. They effectively form the quintessential 'fighter, healer/buffer, mage' core.
- Pretty much no one uses the Knight once they begin getting more pieces for the Wheels minigame. It does good damage at a moderate pace but has no counter to even the bare minimum Bulwark height, making its attacks even more of a Luck-Based Mission than its allies' own attacks given how easy it is for the opponent to set up a wall just as you ready a Knight's charge. Ironically, it happens to be initially paired with the Mage, the piece the player will usually use for the rest of the game, making this a twofer instance of this on both sides of the spectrum.
- There are a ton of amazing combos out there with a ton of use cases that can help the player get through the game, but three stand out as the clear leaders of the pack given just how strong they are:
  - Soonrang is everything amazing about Valere's Moonerang, only Zale is joining in to contribute his own monstrous magical power for the blow. It is the ultimate Finishing Move for boss fights - once any stray targets are dealt with Soonrang can easily two-shot or even one-shot bosses if boosted properly. Like with Moonerang, the only caveat to Soonrang's sheer power is that the player needs to get the timing down for reflecting the projectile until they can get by on button-mashing.
  - Resh'an's Petrichor is powerful but expensive healing, and Garl's Nourish is cheap and effective but can only affect one target. With this in mind, when it comes to emergency healing during a tough boss fight, the easy answer is Mending Light. Since it doesn't cost any mana to use it's incredibly reliable and automatically calls in the two biggest damage dealers in the cast. Mending Light is as powerful as Nourish but targets everyone. Its prime use cases even offset the combo meter cost of using it, since the player can typically build Mending Light back up again by just hitting whatever is hurting them some more before the enemies can even come close to finishing the party off. It is incredibly likely that for the majority of the game, this and Solstice Strike will be the go-to combo options since Valere and Zale can already dole out incredible damage with just their skills.
  - It's only acquired about halfway into the game, but Arcane Moons is easily one of the best and most reliable combos in the game. The ability's cost is not commensurate with what it can do - it's a massive AOE explosion attack by Valere and Resh'an that deals ludicrous damage, even unboosted, and hits some very useful locks. It costs one combo meter, and can pretty much carry the player through random encounters and deal with any adds or options brought into a boss fight. The battle with the Catalyst, Meduso, and the Dweller of Dread are almost made effortless as a result of how easily Arcane Moons strips the bosses of their multi-target gimmicks, which is made even better by how it can be chained into Soonrang effortlessly by Valere and Zale to finish off the singular entity hiding behind all the adds.
Complete Monster: The Soul Curator manages the army in the Fleshmancer's Lair, and is concerned only for his own safety and the power of his creations. In the past, the Soul Curator forced the humans in Seraï's homeworld to graft their souls onto immortal robots using a sapient and unwilling AI core so they can be fed on indefinitely by the Dweller of Dread, slowly driving them into despair and hopelessness. When the party storms the Fleshmancer's Lair, the Soul Curator attempts to corrupt Zale, Valere, Seraï, and B'st into his minions, with the implication that he's done this before. When confronted, he runs away to the portal room where he orders four servants to sacrifice themselves to summon the Phase Reaper, who kills two more to intimidate the rest into following the Soul Curator's orders. When the Phase Reaper is killed, the Soul Curator attempts to summon Barma'thazël in a last-ditch effort to save himself, which would have violated the Fleshmancer's agreement with Brugaves to never have to fight the Solstice Warriors again.
Creator's Pet: The crew of Plucky Comic Relief pirates is omnipresent throughout the story despite not contributing much to the plot and yet are treated as loveable heroes by everyone nevertheless. Yolande in particular is a Base-Breaking Character with most of her jokes revolving around pointing tired JRPG cliches while making silly poses.
Friendly Fandoms: With Chained Echoes, another pixel art RPG that takes heavy cues from Chrono Trigger and was also funded through Kickstarter.
Game-Breaker:
- Seraï’s Disorient skill, which not only breaks both Poison and Blunt locks, but also delays an enemy’s action by two turns, which can often mean the difference between eating a boss’s Charged Attack and getting away scot-free. With enough MP and good timing, certain bosses might not even get to touch you with anything but their basic attacks. With bosses that require damaging appendages before being able to damage it like the Botanical Horror and the Dweller of Torment, it stretches the time said boss is vulnerable.
- Resh'an's Ultimate Skill, The Great Eagle, is broken from the moment you get the character in your party. It does damage to all enemies, heals and revives the party, and delays the enemies' turn by four or five. While not half as abusable as Seraï's Disorient due to being a limited-use skill, it's often a fantastic way to turn the tides of a fight and outright demolish boss fights.
- Garl doesn’t get his Ultimate Skill until after he comes Back from the Dead in the Golden Ending path, but it’s well worth the wait. Sleeper’s Fury might not have the healing utility of The Great Eagle, but it makes up for it with one key feature: it hits every elemental weakness at once multiple times. While it has the same limited drawback as any other Ultimate Skill, any elemental locks on the field are completely obliterated by this attack.
- The Magic Pocket is an accessory obtained around the mid-point of the game. Once per round it allows any character to use a food item without counting as a turn. While you can only carry ten items, it's more than enough to ensure you never need to worry about healing ever again nor ever need to choose between healing and attacking or lock-breaking.
- Valere chose the staff because she thought it would give her brute strength, and she was right. Valere's Moonerang is overwhelmingly powerful for one simple reason; the player dictates when it ends. Seraï's Venom Flurry will eventually stop by itself, but as long as the player has the skill's timing down, they can keep Moonerang going for ages, dealing stupendous amounts of damage and being the offensive option of choice until the player gets the Vespertine. Once the player does get the Vespertine, this distinction instead goes to Soonrang, which the player can get with a quick jaunt off to Sleeper Island to get a path back to Evermist Island. Soonrang is everything amazing about Moonerang, but Valere lets Zale join in to make the attack even better, massively increasing the total damage of the final tally. The only things holding Valere back are bosses with multiple targets (all of which, besides the Acolytes, can be reduced down to one target for Valere to focus fire on) due to damage dispersion and timing the skill or combo right to coincide with having three orbs of Live Mana for the max damage possible, the latter of which most powerful offensive options need to get the most out of them anyway.
- The Artful Gambit is a Self-Imposed Challenge relic that lowers your max HP by 95% with the tradeoff of perfect parries turning enemy attacks into Scratch Damage and doubling the power of all your attacks, and it's required for That One Achievement. However this dreadful challenge can be made tenfold easier by the combination of two simple trinkets: Reaper's Mercy, which gives a Last Chance Hit Point to the entire party, and Leeching Thorn, which gives it's wearer Life Drain on normals. Now even if you get hit, your boosted character is guaranteed to survive and can go back to full health in a single attack. It still requires the player to be competent at the game, especially since the relic also renders enemies with locks invincible (no damage, so no heal), but is nonetheless an incredibly useful safety net for this challenge. And since you get Leeching Thorne in the tutorial dungeon, this challenge on New Game Plus is made even easier now that you have two of them and can equip both Valere and Zale from the start.
- Wheels minigame:
  - The Mage is widely considered the most powerful piece. It always fires two attacks at a time, and while the first attack is easily blocked if the enemy has a Bulwark up on the field, the second one will always do damage. This means if you just concentrate on filling up the Mage's meter, you can usually but not always knock your opponent's HP down to 0 in just a few turns. The kicker: the Mage is one of the two pieces you're given at the start, the other being the Warrior. The drawbacks are its low attack and the big amount of energy it requires to attack, but it still more than justifies focusing your strategy on using it, since it partly ignores the enemy's Bulwark.
  - The Assassin. While it's likely the last wheels hero figure you'll get, it makes the remaining champions a joke. Cheaper to activate than the Mage, saps energy from the opponent so they can't activate, and deals low but unblockable damage. With some lucky rolls, an Assassin will prevent the opponent from doing anything at all while whittling their crown down.
Ho Yay: During the 2018-2019 ARG that involved characters from The Messenger and Sea of Stars briefly visiting the official Discord and roleplaying with the members, the Archivist states that he has a tale of "forbidden love", to which he and another alchemist made the Elixir of Life to wait out a society that would be more accepting. Sea of Stars pretty much outright spells out that this refers to Aephorul and Resh'an.
Hype Backlash: Despite receiving glowing reviews from critics and general audience, many JRPG genre enthusiasts found it to be So Okay, It's Average, criticizing the lack of depth of both its writing and combat system and that the game was so focused on evoking old tropes that it ignored decades of innovations and improvements in the genre.
Moral Event Horizon: While the Fleshmancer committed several atrocities throughout the game, genociding a race simply to make a gift of transformation for Resh'an and forcing the survivors to serve him has got to be the earliest chronological example. Also counts as one in-universe, as learning this truth compels Resh'an to re-evaluate his friendship and deals with Aephorul in near-complete isolation afterwards.
One True Threesome: By far the most popular ship in Sea of Stars is Valere with Garl and Zale. There's some prevalent fan works that also favor Valere with Teaks and Garl with Zale, but thruple fics with the first three party members are abundant. This mostly comes from their status as True Companions; Valere and Zale tend to run on a similar wavelength and overcome the death of Garl by finding comfort in each other. Meanwhile, despite losing an eye goofing off with the duo and having to wait ten years to see Valere and Zale following the start of their training, Garl never once lost his devotion to his friends and trained himself day in and day out to work with them on their journeys as a Badass Normal. Must fanworks take this and run with it, alleging they begin a proper relationship shortly following the start of their journey.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Valere's Moonerang and Seraï's Venom Flurry cause the character to jump to a new location based on the position of the enemies. However, this will sometimes cause Valere or Seraï to jump to a location that's obscured by the background, behind another character, or (in Seraï's case) completely off-screen. Since these attacks are rhythm-based and get faster as they go on, it can result in these moves dropping through no fault of your own, simply because the game wouldn't let you see what you needed to see.
- In place of standard buffs or debuffs, the main way Sea of Stars shakes up combat is by getting the player to respond to enemies casting spells by stopping the cast through breaking elemental-themed locks. Generally, this is a pretty fun mechanic when the RNG doesn't screw you into a situation where you can't stop the cast - and even then, you can at least weaken the incoming attack - but what is a little rough is the presence of Solar locks, especially against late game enemies that have tons of locks on their spells. The issue isn't the ease of hitting the lock, since you always have access to Zale, but unlike Valere and Lunar locks, Zale doesn't have any normal skill or attack that hits a Solar weakness multiple times. This is a massive issue in late boss fights, especially Aephorul, who love to have two, three, or even four Solar locks on them. There are abilities that can hit Solar locks multiple times, but they're all fraught with problems. ^{To go into detail...} Considering how three entire characters exist to hit bashing weaknesses, it would make a bit more sense for one of those three to also hit Solar to make up the deficit, though story reasons make Valere and Zale special in this regard being Solstic Warriors. Having Zale have something similar to Valere's Moonerang could also alleviate the issue.
- The zone damages and repositionning are interesting mechanics, but they unfortunately are a bit of a crapshoot. It is never really clear how large the invisible Area of Effect is and the sprites' placement on the isometric battlefield are often misleading, causing a lot of Hitbox Dissonance at the player's disservice. It is less egregious when you can see who would be hit before casting, but when the zone damage is supposed to be a bonus on synchro it becomes far more annoying to hit perfect timing and still be punished for it (which pretty much doomed B'st to their Low-Tier Letdown status with how much they rely on that). Repositionning is supposed to be a solution to this and it often is, but the complete lack of control about where exactly the displaced enemy would land can cause some unoptimal placement and frustration, especially in the case of some bosses that can be hurled but are replaced exactly where they were which can feel like Fake Difficulty.
- It's possible to sell the gray/silver trinkets of which two can be equipped on a character at any given time, but they aren't available to purchase at any equipment shop (they're always found in treasure boxes scattered throughout the world). This makes it a very common trap for players to sell excess trinkets without any means of buying them back. The only means of re-acquiring these items is to go through New Game Plus and obtain these items in the new playthrough.
Special Effect Failure: The green halo around Seraï's portals has a tendency to not be properly layered depending on the situation, resulting in objects in the backgrounds sometimes appearing behind the wormholes and above the flames around.
Spoiled by the Format: When you encounter "the last Dweller" only about 10 hours in, it's pretty hard to believe for a second that it is the actual Final Boss. Especially since at this point you still have many unused items, empty skill and character slots, and a cabal of shadowy figures that have not properly appeared in the story. Still makes for an epic Disc-One Final Boss nonetheless.
Tear Jerker: Garl's death at the hands of the Fleshmancer hits pretty hard. It doesn't help that he doesn't die quickly, but rather spends several sections visibly getting worse and worse until he kicks the bucket.
That One Achievement:
- "What a technique!" is either a brutally difficult or cruelly boring one to get. It requires the Artful Gambit relic which basically turns the combat into Rocket-Tag Gameplay and to defeat 10 bosses with it. Problem is you get this relic very late into the game, and by this point the only bosses left are fairly hard Optional Bosses and The Very Definitely Final Dungeon's ones which do not amount to 10, unless you knew about the secret path to get to it beforehand and Sequence Break, then you should have just enough bosses, the ten hardest in the game now turned even harder. But far more likely since this is one of the secret achievements with no clues, you finished the game, got all of the other ones rather naturally, and realized it was too late to get it after searching the solution online. The only other option at this point is to start a New Game Plus (which carries the achievements) but now it becomes a chore of replaying the beginning of the game (nearly half of it if you hadn't any bosses yet) which will take a handful of hours at minimum even by rushing through everything with your jacked up units and skipping all cutscenes.
- "Gustative Completion" is not necessary hard to get but rather annoying. It requires to cook every meal in the game at least once. A diligent player will have bought every recipe along the way (but if you didn't, good luck finding the ones you missed by checking every single merchant in the game) but the annoying part is that there is no tracker for it, neither of the ones you already cooked nor how many of the total (which is 26). Since you probably skipped some recipes after finding redundant or better ones, by this point the only solution is to re-cook everything to be sure and to track it manually which is tiresome on its own, on top of the required back and forth between campfires and gathering the rarest and/or most expensive ingredients. In shorts: cook every recipe as soon as you get it if you want that achievement without the headache.
That One Boss:
- A lot of players have trouble with the Dual Boss fight with One and Three on the Jungle Path. This has everything to do with the major gimmick of their fight - One is a Stone Wall dedicated to powering up the Glass Cannon Three, who has a painful multi-hit attack that targets two characters in succession. One themselves doesn't really hit hard, but adds a massive wrinkle to the fight with their spell. This spell is a massively painful multi-hit team assault with Three that functions similarly to the combos the playable characters use. One is more than happy to spam this spell if given the chance, and can easily down multiple party members with only two or three casts. The obvious answer to this problem is to stop One's cast - only the actual gimmick of the fight is that One can counter attack any attack made at them in melee range when they start readying their spell. This gimmick is not spelled out to the player until they have Zale gore himself on One's blade, which is basically bound to happen given how slashing attacks are always needed to stop the cast. This means either Zale has to use Dash Strike to get a hit in, or Valere needs to set up Lunar Shield. The MP for both is still very tight at this point in the game, and these methods still face problems - Zale needs to somehow get off multiple to stop One, or Valere needs to hope Three's turn doesn't come before One's lest Three break the barriers early. The only feasible answer then is to try to damage-race Three so they can't combo with One anymore, but that can end up being a Luck-Based Mission if One is frequently trying to set up the combo. The irony of all this is that One and Three return to harass the party with Two and Four in tow at the Clockwork Castle, only by the time all the Acolytes are working together, the player will be so much more resilient that One's dreaded combo with Three ends up looking rather pathetic.
- The Basic Basement Batch, a team of mooks that is supposed to be tournament fodder in the gold rank of the Dweller's Fall Arena, might genuinely be one of the hardest fights in the game due to the strict limitations of this event. For starters it is a team of four which is always trouble, and a varied team at that that will damage you no matter what with moves with tricky timing before you could even wipe one out. Add to that the fact that items are forbidden, that you are limited to Valere, Zale, and B'st so no swapping damaged allies for fresh benched ones, that you are weakened from the fight that happened directly before and start this one without combo meter nor a single mana boost available. The mini-boss that comes right after looks like a joke in comparaison (which he partially is).
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A lot of people were disappointed to realize that Malkomud would not become a playable party member when many story beats seemed to point to it. All of the Other Reindeer backstory? Unique Dishing Out Dirt powers? A weapon that could deal both blunt and slicing damage? And he's an adorable moleman with a big salamander that could respectively become the Token Non-Human and Team Pet? Add to that the fact that he is featured on several promotional artworks alongside the party members, leaving players puzzled at the fact that he does not even become a non-playable follower like Teaks or the pirate crew and has a relatively minor role in the story. The game still seems to treat him as a main character however as he was invited to the banquet at the Golden Pelican alongside the actual main characters, leaving fans hopeful that he would become Promoted to Playable in an eventual DLC.
Underused Game Mechanic:
- The night/day manipulation is ultimately pretty anecdotal despite being central to the game's plot. It is way less used than the Graplou and Mistral Bracelet but also has no secondary application outside of puzzles (other than changing the scenery) when the other two can also be used for preantive hits and avoiding fights respectively. Outside of specific story fights, the sun and moon don't give any character nor enemy any kind of buff, nerf, or special abilities they wouldn't have otherwise for example.
- The Cooking Mechanic is fine on paper and makes crafting healing items a breeze, but conversely feels a bit limited with the only recipes available being variations of "heal HP/MP/revive" for "one/group" that renders everything but the strongest ones you get basically useless and doesn't create any opportunity for weird effects that would in turn create new fighting styles or team compositions.^note It is also weirdly disconnected from Garl, the team's chef who introduces the concept which is central to his character, his aesthetic, and several key moments of the story, yet possesses no ability that would directly relate to it nor enhance it in some manner (in fact you can still cook without any downside when he is out of the party for story reasons). And even outside of combat and narrative, it really is a footnote with only a couple of small side quests related to it only rewarding Rainbow Shells.
- The equipments have been criticized a lot for being mere upgrades that are progressively better in every way than the previous gears, seriously limiting any kind of character customization to the trinkets. Thing is there were two instances early in the game where that wasn't the case, but these ideas were just abandoned as soon as they appeared:
  - The Mage-Knight Armor, found in an optional room in the Abandonned Wizard's Lab, in the only equipment with an interesting tradoff, in that case low physical but really high magic defense. It becomes statistically outclassed pretty quickly, but should you prioritize Valere or Zale being Resistant to Magic it would not be beat until the gears you find during the Sleeper's Awakening arc way later down the line. It's neat, but pretty basic and unfortunately an outlier.
  - The "Shimmering" set of weapons you find on Wraith Island possesses the unique bonus of inflicting 10% more damage to The Undead, which pullulate this specific island but are very rare otherwise. Not that it would matter anyway since that bonus is rapidly negated by the more powerful weapons you get throughout the game, and no other weapon offers this kind of enemy-specific advantage either.
- At some point, you need to upgrade the Coral Hammer into the Cobalt Hammer, allowing you to break crystal walls that block your progress in the current dungeon. Except that, outside of this dungeon, there's only one other crystal wall in the game. Egregiously, there are further locations where you need to use the original Coral Hammer, making the upgrade seem relatively pointless in the bigger scale.
Vanilla Protagonist: Valere and Zale have very little personality besides The Hero played completely straight — virtuous, upstanding, morally righteous, The Chosen Ones that fulfill ancient prophecies, and all-around good people who are doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. They have almost nothing that differentiates the two of them as characters beyond a few easy-to-miss lines of dialogue and their respective movesets, very little is explored about their individual wants and desires, and not much is made about them besides the fact that they're heroes who want to save the world. This is an intentional choice by the developers, who made Valere and Zale characters without much complexity that can fill the protagonist role quite well, since they provide a center for supporting characters who are more interesting than they are. Early on, the only other party member is the gregarious Big Fun Garl, who tends to talk a lot more than Valere and Zale in conversations. All of this doesn't necessarily make Valere and Zale bad characters, but they're intentionally written to be overshadowed by the larger personalities and more complicated histories of the other party members.

YMMV / Sea of Stars

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