STARBITES

2 hour review: I am literally split half way on this game: many goods vs some very bads. however, i've decided to ultimately give it a negative review simply because one main thing: the PRICE. pick up this game when it's on sale, but not at full price. the cons: it's about <8 gigs... some say 20-30 hours to finish... lots of uninteresting quest paths (person X has to attain Y but then needs Z which needs K but first ABCDEF... bro no, life isn't like that! thats just busy work)... clearly a controller friendly game, the keyboard bindings are not to my preferences (and you cant change it on the menu), the npc pathing is off (i saw some npcs walking to walls repeatedly, some going through objects like tables), the first open world map is boring and terribly designed (visually awful honestly), you can only save on certain spots (they dont make much sense honestly... why not just put a "save anywhere" function"?... but you can "load" the saved files anytime?... i dont like that). also, the settings are very limited (not allowing windows mode, resolution size....or almost anything else for that matter). I had to use the arrow keys on my keyboard to move the character instead of the WASD keys... annoying, so I just played with the controller. the goods: overall, a funny and aloof game. the character dialogues are good (most are funny, it gave me some chuckles here and there...i like that). many side characters with good visual designs (the females are... SUPER nice to say the least... my god... very nice...). some people complain about the graphics, i like it, the art style is very good. the main character is funny and high-spirited- i like her. I really enjoyed the music of this game, the soundtrack is good (despite the fact that the tracks are short and looped). The pacing is varied- sometimes there is dialogue, sometimes there is combat, sometimes its finding items, the game isn't TOO predictable. Have I mentioned the nice babes this game has? my god...very nice! <3 the in-betweens: some fights were too easy, while some other fights had me think and strategize to win (it has a stagger system like Sea of Stars and Octopath Traveler... except I think those games did it better)- some people may like this, some people might hate it. the story does seems very shallow and simple (perfect if you play Pokemon-like games... but if Elder Scrolls is more of your thing- this isn't the game for you). conclusion, this game isn't worth the full price- and will be enjoyed most by jRPG lovers that want a nice fun game... also, if you enjoy fan service...

TLDR: This game's pacing and pricing is egregious, characters are one-note. *Edit: Game is now hard locking computer due to possible loading errors, further attempts may damage internal components due to abnormal amounts of heat produced from computer. I cannot recommend this game. Its flaws exceed whatever charm the concept provides. The price is way too high, maybe this would be a little more excusable for $20 usd but its $50. This game sadly has terrible pacing in both gameplay and story. Starting with the story I've finished act 1 in about 4 hours and have learned nothing about the main overarching plot of getting off the planet, nor have I learned anything about the characters other than "alcoholic", "I hate this planet", "bodyguard", and "Nerd". The main setting is charming but lacks any sort of depth beyond it being another planet with mechs due to the main background of an intergalactic war where all ships simultaneously crash not being touched upon whatsoever. This review will mostly be about gameplay as the story has been very few and far between. Gameplay: Pacing and Equipment The gameplay is where I draw the line however, the gameplay's pacing seems drunk where is remains in place then staggers forward 20 paces. As an example, the characters' starting attack power is around 40, 35, and 70 with their weapons being 8, 4, and 10 attack respectively. However you can easily find weapons for two characters meanwhile the other is stuck doing minor amounts of damage. So ending the prologue my characters' attack was around 102, 48, and 135 and that remained until scanning suddenly granted a weapon with 52 attack power for the useless guy. So your characters don't grow progressively more powerful its like they hit sudden spikes of strength due to the game granting equipment that is much more powerful than reasonably necessary. Equipment also has another system called "Engines" and "Cores" where engines give stat boosts and have slots for cores, engines can also be upgraded to provide more core slots. Cores are the only interesting equipment the game has as they provide trigger bonuses such as "On start of battle gain +20% damage" However the only ones that the player can make are standard buffs meanwhile you can find ones like "On break, fill Driver's high by 50%" or "On basic attack, 50% chance to attack again" which is actually really cool but sadly more unique ones either don't exist or are later in the game. Upon level, characters also gain a skill point these skill points provide passive bonuses ranging from buffing abilities to giving them more mp on a basic attack (a feature the game doesn't tell you about) and upon reaching a threshold of points they are able to access a new skill tree with more features, honesty its a little bare bones with only a few interesting options like giving moves new properties, status effects, making buffs last longer, or reduced mp costs. So there isn't much to put here. Gameplay: Combat Character abilities are a mixed bag, their animations are nice to see but some are very long even with double speed, however some are just poorly designed. For the first three characters you get they each get a buff skill: +20% speed on self for 1 turn, +20% attack for all members for 2 turns. and +20% defense on self. But the only one worth using is the attack buff because the speed buff runs out fast if you don't extend its duration and the defense buff is only on that character and they don't unlock a taunt skill until around level 16-ish. Another example is "trick shot", its on the sniper so its like her first ability but it also attacks groups of enemies, I think combat encounters are staged on positions like this: 1 2 3 4 5. So if you use that skill it can only hit the position you target and the enemies to the immediate right and left of the target. (If you've played Digimon World Dawn or Dusk its the same system) The problem with this is that its poorly communicated how the attack even works so even though its a group target ability its ability to clear encounters is extremely limited. Another skill worth mentioning is "hammer drop" its supposed to scale with defense but by how much is entirely up to guessing because the game doesn't communicate this. Combat itself is really standard, uses a time bar system like World of Final Fantasy (haven't played Grandia yet and its not like Active time battle like Crono Trigger or FF between 6-9) But speed doesn't seem to affect the battle bar too much or most entities have a similar speed stat as the game might as well be turn based because even though the motorbike sniper has a much higher speed stat, she has turns just as often as the big slow tank. The game does do something interesting with Driver's High, an ability that allows a character to instantly get their turn with their abilities improved, the bar raises on taking/dealing damage or by conditional triggers. Unfortunately it doesn't do anything better than "extra turn" despite some abilities changing properties/animations when you activate it (the game never tells you that they do this). Enemies are vibrantly animated and some are well-designed however they don't really have the spice that some games have with their baddie roster, none of them are memorable due to their gameplay function. (Think Tonberries in FF where they inch closer and stab you.) All enemies share the same mechanic of having weaknesses to hit before they are vulnerable to real damage, like breaking in Octopath. But unlike Octopath where it comes with a flashy animation and a satisfying sound effect it just kind of happens and the damage buff here is only minor, the next turn of a broken foe will be skipped however, so if you can it is possible to repeatedly break a foe and they just cannot fight back at all. Most enemies die in one hit on normal or three on hard so its tedious either way, but that's for the next section, there is a 2x sped option but I wish for a 5x speed or an autobattle. Gameplay: The overworld This is when it gets BAD like horribly bad so buckle your shuckles I've got some choice words for this. This game's overworld is terrible, instead of random encounters, you get overworld encounters and they are placed so you HAVE to fight them, and they respawn on leaving a zone. So you gotta mince your way through fight after fight and running is a 50% chance based on speed that LOWERS ON FAILURE. So running doesn't work half the time. Wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't LOVE backtracking and you move as fast as the game's plot; glacial. Your movement speed is slow even while sprinting and you can't move the camera at all so if something pops up while you're moving down you gotta fight it. The basic walk speed is terrible you could have the patience of a saint and be fed up. I love my RPGs, so I'm not a stranger to backtracking but this game LOVES it. At the 2 hour and 20 minute mark I got a quest to investigate some robot tracks, so you go to the tracks and take a picture, then you fast travel back to town and then get information and go back to the tracks, I should have refunded right there honestly, Because your last quest in act 1 is going through some ruins, rescuing some people, being forced to fast travel back to town, and then GO BACK TO THE RUINS BECAUSE RIGHT NEXT TO IT IS THE FIRST BOSS. Several sidequests also desire backtracing, such as one you get after the first boss where some guy says: "Hey can you go grab some parts for me RIGHT AT THE RUINS YOU JUST WERE 2 SECONDS AGO FROM THAT BIG MECH YOU KILLED." Its padding, and it worked on me, and I hate it because I now I want my time and money back to play Octopath 2 again. In the games own intro, it mentioned that teleportation technology was common, so why can't I fast travel to charge stations (Save points with a free full heal) whenever I want?

Not sure where turn-based strategy came from, but this is just a JRPG with "mechs". I use mechs lightly. Combat is kinda meh. The game is very easy, almost like a "first RPG" feel. Remember FF Mystic Quest? Feels like it was developed primarily for the Switch (not switch 2 mind you) and ported to PC / PS5 as there are literally no options. I play on an Ultrawide monitor and the bottom of text is cut off. And, speaking of text, the game as times uses keyboard button prompts mixed in with my xbox buttons. Yeah... Thankfully you can at least speed up combat a little bit, but you can't autobattle unfortunately. And, despite some of the game themes, "crack open a cold one" and the underboob, and some questionable icons and names, it's decidedly a kid game. There's some basic skill trees, atk, spd, etc. You can also upgrade armor and 'cores'. Some fights, instead of all you characters attacking the same target, one will be switched to another, which is kind of annoying. There's also no taunt for the tank, at least yet. Overall, combat isn't engaging nor is it very good. Honestly, I don't recommend this game unless you need an ultra easy RPG or just want achievements.

there is some promise here and there are some good ideas here heck there is even some realy endearing audio-visual design going on but frankly nothing and i do mean nothing is polished, finished or better said: nothing realy works progression works classical: you kill mobs, do quest, get exp, lvl up the crux is the talent-tree-system you get 3 tiers of talent trees per character and for every lvl up a point each tree consists of a small amount of straight stat upgrades (+ATK, +HP, etc.) and for the most part buffs to the char's skills; usualy multiple different buffs per skill (like a cost reduction, or added debuff/buff effects, etc.). and here is the problem: for 99% (not an overstatement) these skill-buffs do not matter at all. you will barely ever outside of boss-battles (very, very few) use anything but auto-attacks. but even worse: debuffs do not work on bosses. every boss has a permanent buff that negates debuffs. the tank-char with his taunt? nigh useless cause his taunt acts as a debuff on enemies, hence doesn't work on bosses. which also means his re-active skills (like a damage-on-beeing-hit-aura) do not work any better than they would on any other char. i am also very sure many a buff-talent doesn't actualy work. there are buffs for every duration skill that will ad another turn, but neither the counter not ingame numbers reflect this. and seeing how many other bugs and glitches are there... and speaking of bugs: there are skills your team gets that will melt everything. and i do mean close to 1 hit kills on bosses. without special gear. now i did the math (kinda) on these skills and the actual ingame damage numbers do make any sense at all. even when takin crit and crit damage into account. we are talking skills that should at best hit for 2 to 3K hitting for nigh 10 to 15K. and i found similiar oddities all over the place. then there are quest bugs. collecting a quest-item before getting the quest can "break" the quest. you can usualy work around these glitches by going to the pickup location after actualy having received the quest. or if you are ment to talk to npcs in a hub during a quest: saving and re-loading will just skip the step and play the next-quest-step-cut-scene, with the npcs you actualy had to talk to still standing around having the quest-symbol and dialogue. and these issues are all over the place. up until now i didn't find any instance where the game would actualy soft- or hardlock you, but it is very noticable and irritating. and then there are all the wonky design choices. you get a party of 6; 3 active and 3 passive members. the 3 passive members will be linked to an active member each and will receive around 50% of the exp-earned. but come Act3 you reailze that encounters were build around you actualy switching in party members with the right damage-type. but these "passive" new members will be severly underleveld. you could combat this with some grinding. what you cannot combat is the weird choices around the itemization. stats and thus combat performance is heavy gear dependand. basicaly you don't equip the chars directly, but their vehicle (mechs, a bot and a bike). but the higher tier gear is so rare that actualy would have to constantly switch out the parts between characters each time you switch your active members. then there is the light, very light crafting system. you collect crafting from each area either lying around or dropped from encounters. these parts are even described on the overwold-map. but the only use for them is to craft up to 3 current mods to your engine. which is usualy some passive (trigger) effect. like +40% def on dropping to half you HP or +60% ATK for the first 2 combat rounds, etc. with the rare exception of some "real" trigger like a chance on normal attack to repeat the attack. a) for 90% of the game the few engines you find have barely more than 1 slot b) you barely get enough engines with more than 1 slot to kit out your 3 active members then there is the re-use of assets. oh boy. yes: most of the map looks the same, is tiny and filled with the same enemy-types. the hubs while neat looking are also quite tiny. neither the VO is extensive nor the story-progression. you get some small static conversations, then perhaps a tiny ingame cutscene and rarely some 2D art thrown into the mix, then it is back to running through the same looking areas fighting the same (looking) enemies over and over again: for 50 Euros? (or your regional equivalent) i am very of NIS but i didn't know how bad it has gotten even when you are not strapped for cash and the game is reduced: think carefully. there are some great ideas here and the setting+ classical jrpg-mechanics are neat but what is delivered here is just not great...not even good or remarkable. barely any character devolpement, a story that just kinda exists, etc. which is to say that even the none-gameplay related things that can make a jrpg good do not exist here.

王道を往く探索型のコマンドRPG。 世界観やメカデザインなどとても良いし、イベントはフルボイスかつローカライズも全く問題ありません。 しかし。肝心のコマンドRPG部分は、ソシャゲーマーなら親の顔より見た「属性特効とブレイク」の例のやつです。 まさかソシャゲ以外でお目にかかるとは思わず、ため息が出てしまいました。ほんと擦られ続けてお腹いっぱいなんですよこのシステム。ソシャゲに明るくない方ならむしろ新鮮なのかもしれませんが…。 この飽き飽きしたシステムに耐えられれば良ゲー足り得たかなというところですが、私には無理でした。 無念。

This is actually a difficult one for me. On paper, STARBITES seems like the ultimate dream game for any fan of PS2-era JRPGs, and it probably would have been hugely popular back then. But times change, and some things simply don't age well. First, I'd like to highlight the positives: -The core idea is fantastic. Mechs in a JRPG, fighting other mechs in turn-based battles. We haven't really seen something like this since Xenosaga, and I genuinely miss mechs in JRPGs. -The world is interesting. The game establishes a really cool universe with a lot of potential for great stories. -No random encounters. In this regard, the game actually feels more modern. You can see enemies on the map and choose whether to engage or avoid them, instead of getting dragged into a battle every five steps and eventually growing to hate the battle music. Now for the reasons why I stopped playing after about 2.4 hours, starting with the biggest one: -The story simply never gets going and, at least for me, is just boring. Right at the beginning, Lukida loses something very important, and our goal is to find it. Beyond that, nothing particularly exciting has happened so far. There are some groups of bad guys here and some bandits who have built something supposedly dangerous there, and while I can imagine the story eventually picking up, I still don't want to keep playing it because of my second major criticism: -The presentation is dull. The English voice acting is extremely monotone, with very little emotion. The Japanese dub is somewhat better, but not by much. On top of that, the dialogue itself is often rather boring. More than once, I found myself wishing the characters would just stop talking so I could get back to the map and fight monsters instead of sitting through conversations while trying not to yawn. -I also think the upgrade system is only mediocre. There are some interesting perks, such as recovering AP after certain attacks, but all upgrades ultimately come down to stat increases. You have mechs as your combat units, yet all you can do is tweak numbers in menus. No cool shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, no spider legs, no meaningful customization. There was so much room for creativity here. It's a shame. -The visuals unfortunately look like they're straight out of the PS2 era. To be clear, I'm mostly referring to the textures, which often lack detail and can look as if the game hasn't fully loaded them yet—similar to those moments in other Unreal Engine games when low-resolution placeholder textures are displayed before the proper ones stream in. The character models themselves are actually quite decent and look much better by comparison. It's not a dealbreaker for me, and it's only a minor concern overall, but it's still worth mentioning. -Unfortunately, the soundtrack is pretty mediocre as well, and for me it's one of the main reasons why I found the game so boring. In other games, the music pulled me into the world and made the battles feel exciting and impactful. In this game, however, I often felt like I was playing a cozy game. But I'm fighting giant mechs! The music should hit hard and get me pumped up. Unfortunately, it just doesn't. Please keep in mind that this is based on only 2.4 hours of gameplay, and the game may very well become much better later on. Personally, though, I've had enough for now. More than anything, I simply found the gameplay too boring. Because of that, I can't recommend the game.

TLDR: Great RPG for the base game price, more nostalgic than current (a plus for me personally) 8/10 so far. Likeable enough cast, good voice acting, solid and well put together combat and flexible skill trees. Absolutely worth base game price. Honestly a hidden gem. Has octopath/bravely default combat though the boost is built up (usually in 2-3 turns depending on if you get hit or not) and changes some skills more than others, as well as gives a free turn whenever. The digital deluxe isn't worth the price, (and to my understanding gives you nothing in game) so for 50$ it's been a great nostalgic RPG. Voice acting is great, and the story was a bit slow at the start, but lets the player decide the pace. The side quests are all fetch questy, but the fast travel system makes the longest one I've gone out of my way for like... three full minutes? I wouldn't fight every enemy you see either, as they are very easy to avoid. The constant rest stations on the overworld (no rest fade to black screen, just one second to hop on and you heal/save) and you can grind if you like to be overpowered in these kinds of games, or just avoid em and every fight seems doable so far. By no means perfect, but it was nice to play an rpg that didn't feel bloated with garbage minigames or forever long side quests. Its on the easier side, even on hard, but bosses will get you if you underestimate them. Have to change my review as I've gotten further, the game just breaks more and more. Triggering cutscenes in the wrong room, bosses not activating abilities correctly (bookworm using both forms every single turn) It sucks to be wrong with such a pleasant start, but half of the game feels unplayable, and it already wasn't super polished. I don't imagine any support will exist for this game either, so just avoid it.

I was hoping this game would be good, but it just hasn't come together. Within the first half-hour, the controller glyphs glitched out and stopped matching my controller. The basic movement has a couple of annoying qualities that should've been sorted out pre-launch. The walk speed is so slow that it is completely useless, which means you'll be running 99% of the time, but when you run your character "skids" every time you change directions, so it just makes getting anywhere more annoying than it should be. Of course, these aren't gamebreakers, but it shows a lack of attention to detail or care for the player's time. The dialog and story from what i experienced in the prologue is your basic sub-par anime writing. Characters over-explain everything in the most annoying way possible and the story fails to gain any momentum at the start. Some of the character designs lean so far into fanservice that it breaks the immersion of the game. It just makes the world feel juvenile, pandering, and incoherent. The combat felt good in my first play session, and seems like the most polished part of the game. It was fun enough if not a bit simple--but that's to be expected in the prologue. After my initial experience, I'll be skipping this one.

[b]Левакам не нравится дизайн тяночек и они решили засрать игре рейтинг. Увидев такое сразу же купил игрулю и естесна поставлю палец вверх! Горите уродливые жирные вокнутые шмары, горите! [/b]

A Old School JRPG Feel from the PS2 Era. Way more fun than expected despite some flaws here or there. Here's my full video review below - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa7U-Z6XicQ