Stellar Seas has a huge bag of tricks, treats, and surprises in store for the player; but the bag is also mixed and a little bit bloated with excess. I have to preface this by saying that I didn't finish the main quest or post game, but I went to the final boss of the main quest before calling it quits, so I think I got a good impression of the quest. I did want to finish and explore more of the fabled post-game tricks, treats, and surprises, but I just had enough of the final boss.
The obvious quality of SS is that the quest is that this doesn't even feel like playing Zelda Classic, but rather some sort of action-RPG mash up along the lines of Secret of Mana meets Star Ocean. The gameplay and overall experience while playing is a technical achievement, for sure, and runs smoothly, seamlessly, and really without any annoying errors - so great job there. Everything, down to the "overworld" and the menus are thoroughly hacked and customized into something unique and unexpected.
I think the "mid quest" gameplay is probably the shining quality of SS. I really enjoy that there are a lot of side quests and an almost open-world to explore, nearly right from the start. I definitely had the most fun while procrastinating on the main-quest advancement and seeking a non-linear path of looking for hymnstones, checking side-quest bullets off the list, and trying to buff the characters. The dungeons and caves in the "middle" of the quest are all pretty entertaining and full of interesting and well-conceived puzzles and mechanics that will make you think. Some of the puzzles are legitimately "head-scratching" hard in all the right ways. Sometimes the solution to a puzzle is so obscure that I never would have intuitively solved the puzzle. Instead, I found myself throwing every item or attack at the wall and seeing what would stick, because a particular trigger is not clearly indicated. I actually really like this kind of gameplay, where solutions are not well telegraphed or are obtuse, but I know a lot of other people aren't a fan of such puzzles.
Unfortunately, SS also veers towards the excessive. By that I mean, some of the dungeons, bosses, and story-related elements just seem to drag on and on and ultimately, wear out their welcome in such a way that I just wanted to be done with it and get on with the game. Case in point: the Under Sea Mine level and its Tidal-Gauntlet related puzzles. While these, like other dungeon puzzles are creative and require the player to ponder a solution, the actual execution of the solution is tedious and often require precise timing and movement lest you fall into a pit and have to start the puzzle all over again. Then, there is the ancient observatory with puzzles requiring use of the dash (think, modified hover boots) technique, which I just never really got a good grasp on. It seemed to me like the dash was difficult to control, or at least, too difficult to time inputs correctly, in such a way that I was almost flailing at the controller blindly to try to execute the technique.
The bosses in SS are another example of excessive. I'm just not a fan of grandiose boss fights in general and don't like difficult bosses. I'd rather be exploring instead of faced with some road-blocking, gate keeper of a boss that I have to learn how to overcome. If you love sperging out on tough bosses, learning their movement and attack patterns and compartmentalizing this knowledge before you can even really hope to have a hope to mount an effective attack against said bosses, then the boss fights in SS are for you. To their credit, the quest makers probably realized that the bosses can be excessive and there is a very welcome option to reduce difficulty when you lose repeatedly to a boss. I took advantage of this option on the tunnel-borer sub boss, the first Selet fight, and Blood Moon. Honestly, if there wasn't the option to reduce difficulty for these bosses, I would have quit way sooner.
However, the second Selet Igorevich fight is just too much for me and drags on and on and on enough to make me say "too long; didn't play." Obviously the final boss fight is supposed to be epic, but this fight is more like a marathon that you need to train for before you have a fighting chance to complete. Even on the "reduce difficulty" mode, after having lost repeatedly to both phases of the boss, there are just too many chaotic magical attacks going around, that are difficult (if not impossible) to dodge outside of dumb luck, that you really need to play as perfectly as possible in the less-chaotic parts. Those chaotic parts of the final boss will grind your characters down, quickly, especially combined with the fact that your characters don't have a whole lot of health or defense to start with. Just when I thought maybe the final boss is finally going down, surprise, no, there's yet another repeat of the same patterns that grind me down and ultimately result in my losing and wasting yet another 5-10 minutes of time.
With that off my chest, I did enjoy the story line, for the most part, and found it to be both novel and well conceived. One of the strong points is that I found the dialogue actually pretty well written and believable that these particular characters would actually say such things. Most of the time, dialogue in fan games is silly at best and, often, cliched and cringe worthy. My hypothesis is that the sort of cognitive processes that are necessary to focus, master technical quirks, and churn out a fan game are almost always opposed or mutually exclusive from the sort of cognitive processes that can create a compelling work of fictional writing. It takes a rare breed indeed to make a fan game that has great gameplay and a good story, but somehow those two things came together with SS. The musical choices are also interesting and fit the particular scenes that they pair with.
So while I wanted some more of what the quest had to offer, I guess I feel complete from my partial play through of SS. I spent around 24 hours to get up to the "final" boss and had a good amount of fun to offset the frustration.
Stellar Seas
Overview
Feature Quest
Creator: Russ , Moosh Genre: Story-driven Added: 11 Jul 2022 Updated: 01 May 2023 ZC Version: 2.55 Downloads: 543 Rating[?]: |
Download Quest (23.88 MB) |
Information
Stellar Seas is a mid-sized heavily-scripted quest that balances story with exploration and has a heavy emphasis on optional content. Explore the seas with three unique characters to stop a plot involving corrupt merchants and space magic. Be sure to grab the enhanced music here!
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Description
IMPORTANT: Grab the music here. Please play this quest in 2.55 Alpha 107 or newer.
For those who have played a Russ quest before, this quest is essentially a more refined version of previous works. It places a heavy emphasis on both story and exploration, allowing you to explore a large Zelda-meets-Metroidvania style world at your leisure while progressing a linear main plot. Features of this quest include:
Update 5/1/23: Fixed a bug that caused you to have far less HP that intended for a particular post-game area. This bug fix doesn't apply to existing save files, but will work on new saves.
For those who have played a Russ quest before, this quest is essentially a more refined version of previous works. It places a heavy emphasis on both story and exploration, allowing you to explore a large Zelda-meets-Metroidvania style world at your leisure while progressing a linear main plot. Features of this quest include:
- Three playable characters with unique playstyles and separate HP pools
- A Polynesia-inspired game world divided into several islands you can sail between
- A dynamically changing time of day
- Several sprawling dungeons with new mechanics
- 100 collectible Hymnstones hidden through the world, which can be exchanged for upgrades
- 11 optional sidequests, many of which have associated minidungeons
- Several features that make use of all the new goodies 2.55 has to offer
- A randomizer mode, accessibly by using the file name "SSRAND".
Update 5/1/23: Fixed a bug that caused you to have far less HP that intended for a particular post-game area. This bug fix doesn't apply to existing save files, but will work on new saves.
Story
Though he dreams of adventures and heroics, Asher's life is one of peaceful mundanity. A trip to town for groceries quickly spirals into something far greater, as an old acquaintance ropes him into investigating a smuggling operation run by a dangerous egoist with megalomaniacal goals.
Tips & Cheats
Exploration is the name of the game. If you're ever feeling underequipped for a challenge, seek out Hymnstones to sell for new abilities, or complete sidequests for helpful Augments. The shops in Pala Bay and other towns also update with new items and Augments throughout the quest. If the quest is too difficult, feel free to contact Russ or Moosh and we can probably send you a cheat code to make the experience more enjoyable.
Credits
A full list of credits can be found in the quest, but briefly, we'd like to thank Aevin for his advice and encouragement, Evan for his contributions to the quest, Deedee and Emily for their prompt fixing of many 2.55 bugs discovered during the development process, Deedee, Ether, and Mani for initial release testing and streaming, and Demonlink, Radien, and Jupiter for their compilation of many of the graphics we used for the quest.