Available On: PC, PS4, PS VitaWe’re supposed to “reach for the moon” in our goals. That way if we fall short we’ll still land among the stars.

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that the nearest star is several light-years farther away than our moon. But the point is sound.Zeboyd Games’ moon is represented by classic, beloved 90s Japanese RPGs such as Chrono Trigger, Suikoden, and Phantasy Star. It’s a big reason I backed the game on Kickstarter several years ago. To take on some of the best RPGs in gaming with an indie budget and two-person development team is a daunting challenge.

While Cosmic Star Heroine falls short in some ways, it still lands among the stars as one of the best games I’ve played this year.Agent L’Salle and Friends. Cosmic Star Heroine is modeled like a classic JRPG with pixelated sprites, turn-based combat, and an amazing soundtrack. Each planet and alien creature is lovingly detailed; Zeboyd absolutely nailed the classic sprite aesthetic with fun animations and bright colors. There are even some optional mini-dungeons to explore and boss fights to tackle. Fully exploring each planet is a rewarding experience.The starring heroine Alyssa L’Salle is an intergalactic super agent who, along with some friends, discovers a sinister plot within her own organization. It’s a compelling start to the 15+ hour adventure, though the overall story is one of the weakest aspects of the game.Like Zeboyd’s previous retro-inspired RPGs, the writing is laser-focused on self-parody and light-hearted humor. The tone is more Saturday Morning Cartoon or YA comic book than dramatic RPG.

That’s not necessarily a bad direction, but I would have preferred some more emotional weight. There is a shocking twist near the end involving one of your party members that works well, and I wish there had been more of those kind of moments (though the anime-style cutscenes are a lovely touch).Like any good JRPG the plot funnels you along from one location to the next, beginning with the urban planet Areanu. Eventually you’ll acquire your own starship and travel to two other planets: the swampy, industrial Rhomu and the alien jungles of Nuluup. The spaceship represents the headquarters for your team, which includes friendly NPCs and support characters in addition to party members.Your large roster of companions was my favorite part of the game. Ten potential party members can be recruited throughout your adventure.

They range from a schmaltzy robot dancer to bestial alien bounty hunter to knife-wielding night club singer. Each has a distinct personality and neat moments in the story, from busting out of prison with Clarke to investigating a zombie attack with Finn.You can switch party members and their abilities out at any time, which is a hugely welcome convenience in a modern RPG, and made experimenting with different combinations and builds a ton of fun.Have Bo Will TravelAn RPG is only as good as its combat system.

Cosmic Star Heroine builds upon Zeboyd’s previous games that feature a mana-less system. Each character can equip up to eight different abilities, most of which can only be used once before you have to select the Rest command, not unlike Dungeons & Dragons. As turns go by you’ll gain Style, and after a certain number of turns (depending on the character) you’ll go into Hyper mode, which is the time to blast off your strongest attacks.The combat system lets you unleash your best combos and abilities every battle, which is good motivation to always tinker and find the best ones. You can spot enemy HP and elemental weakness at all times, letting you use the right abilities. I love that a big part of the strategy comes in the pre-battle loadouts, as party members gain twice as many abilities as they can equip, as well as Shields (which provide once per combat abilities) and weapons and accessories that provide passive buffs.It’s a very overwhelming system at first.

I LOVE the music. Everyone SHOULD play it.

Zeboyd Games. Cthulhu Saves Christmas; Cosmic Star Heroine; Cthulhu Saves the World; Breath of Death VII: The Beginning; Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 and 4. Cosmic Star Heroine preorders up on Humble Store Cthulhu Saves Christmas Learn more Cosmic Star Heroine Learn more. Cosmic Star Heroine is an exciting RPG from the creators of Cthulhu Saves the World. Features: - The best of classic and modern RPGs! - Brisk pacing that.

It doesn’t help that the attributes involve terms like “Hackitude” and “Cunning.” For a game that uses a lot of nice modern conveniences, it’s severely lacking in-game documentation and explanations beyond the very brief tutorial in the beginning.Once I began to figure out the rhythm and mechanics of Style, Burst, and Hyper I was able to cruise through later fights with ease, even on the second highest difficulty (out of four). Combat does get repetitive at times, but thankfully you can see foes on the screen (Chrono Trigger style) and there’s an emphasis on quality over quantity when it comes to battling. The RatingCosmic Star Heroine has been rated T for Teen by the ESRB for Violence and Blood. Blood is a rare sight – mostly with the one bestial party member.

Combat involves hitting pixelated enemies, but they disappear with nary a whimper. The story is very YA appropriate.The TakeawayI encountered a few annoying bugs that caused me to get stuck in the environment, or stop responding (without freezing up) in the middle of combat. The game has since been patched and hopefully all these issues will be cleaned up. Despite a few bugs and my disappointment with the story, I loved Cosmic Star Heroine.

The art style is perfect, and it provides a catchy soundtrack, unique combat system, and memorable companions. Even without the nostalgia, Cosmic Star Heroine is a solid RPG that proves that sometimes the old ways are best.

For a good portion of the world's population, all we really want in life is the nice and easy path of least resistance. The hustle and bustle of adult life takes its toll on many of our souls, and the longing for the simple, nostalgic days of our childhood becomes our safe place that we can retreat to when the pressures become too much. Rarely do we find this more prevalent than in the world of video games, especially in modern times when keeping up with AAA releases, indie favorites, and all forms of games in between feels more like a chore rather than a hobby or something that is supposed to be enjoyable.If you've followed my tastes over the last five years of writing for TechnoBuffalo, you'll know that my mind often wanders to lazy summer vacations where familiar names such as Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Lufia captured my imagination and sent me on adventures far beyond my mundane human existence. In this regard, I am the perfect audience for Zeboyd Games' Cosmic Star Heroine, a Kickstarter success story that pitched itself as a throwback to the biggest JRPGs of the 16-bit era.Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star, Suikoden, you name it, Zeboyd's latest probably speaks to you.Granted, a lot of throwback JRPGs that have succeeded on Kickstarter initially promised to deliver such an experience, but Zeboyd's campaign was special because it had already brought us this sentimental escape with four previous games. Cosmic Star Heroine faced a lot of pressure with an extended development phase underneath it to become the studio's most ambitious game to date, and for the most part, it succeeds.I'll just come out and get this out of the way. Cosmic Star Heroine is pretty much Chrono Trigger, but yeah it's no Chrono Trigger. From the animation of the character sprites to the pacing of battles to the lack of random fights to even how the characters shrink while traversing the world map, every piece of this game is inspired by Square Enix's classic masterpiece.Can you really fault a game for not living up to its inspiration, though?

Made on a tight budget by a team of just a few artists and designers? No, not really. Zeboyd Games gives it the old college try, and it shines in its original content at least.It's Chrono Trigger but it's no Chrono TriggerTo its credit, Cosmic Star Heroine balances itself between inciting memories of your childhood favorites and telling a unique story, but, as with most throwbacks, it comes up short when compared to those same classics.Players take control of Alyssa L'Salle, a super cool lady spy under the employment of Agency of Peace & Intelligence. She terminates her loyalties after she uncovers horrible conspiracies carried out by her superiors, and in turn, she goes rogue with a group of plucky allies and works behind the scenes to uncover the ugly side of her planetary system.

As you might expect, very similarly to Chrono Trigger, the game unfolds over a course of very episodic missions in which L'Salle and her friends explore new regions and planets, dive into underwater facilities, and battle monsters and soldiers alike.Where Chrono Trigger uses a time travel element to tell its story though, Cosmic Star Heroine crosses space, and it is here where the game struggles. Alyssa's journeys take her to far-reaching planets, but the scale of the game feels very small thanks to its clockwork structure. Very rarely do these missions ever contain a grand sense of the larger setting and culture operating around her. All of the main pieces and part of a classic JRPG can be found here.

You take control of a protagonist, recruit allies to your cause, visit towns and dungeons, solve the occasional puzzle, and of course, battle monsters! These customs are impossible to break away from without departing too far away from the inspirational material, and doing so would remove its right to call itself a 'throwback.' Luckily, Zeboyd doesn't have to.

It avoids being crammed into the antiquities of classic JRPG design by busting out one of the best and most original battle systems that an RPG has seen in many years.That's no understatement. Cosmic Star Heroine's battle system is really fantastic, a genuine reinvention of the tried and true JRPG menu fighting and something that we've never really seen in thirty years of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. It differs from the establishment by scrapping the usual 'Fight,' 'Magic, 'Item,' and 'Run,' commands and replaces them with unique, one-purpose abilities. Abilities range from simple actions like bashing an enemy with your stick and healing HP to more complex buffs like granting your next attack to target all enemies instead of just one.Each character can bring eight of these abilities into battle, and the core of the battle system revolves around being able to use them only once.

After an attack is used, it is spent, and it can only be used again if a character wastes a turn with the defense ability. This refreshes a character's arsenal back to normal. Simply putting, spamming 'Ultima' or 'Luminaire' won't help you here. You'll have to plan out effective attacks using pure brain power.

For example, the protagonist Alyssa primarily uses water attacks against her opponents, and if an opponent is weak to water, you'll obviously want to dish those attacks as quickly as you can to end the fight, right? Well, not exactly. Cosmic Star Heroine also adds an element to the fray known as the Hyper meter, and this allows for a powered up attack every three or four rounds, depending on the character.Maybe instead of bum rushing that opponent with a water spell now, you can use Alyssa's other ability, boosting her own or an ally's damage for three turns.

That way, when her Hyper meter fills up the next turn, not only will she get the damage boost from it, she'll also benefit from the previous round's boost as well. Alyssa will capitalize on double triggers and dish out much more significant damage than a simple water blast would do.Alyssa isn't fighting alone, either! In the meantime, her teammates without water attacks can whittle away at the enemies by setting up defenses, preparing their own powerful attacks, or aiding Alyssa by blasting opponents with debuffs and negative status ailments. In the example above, 'Vulnerable' would open up the doors for even more water damage against that opponent, probably killing it outright instead of taking one or two.The combinations are endless! Some allies can boost another ally's Hyper meter to alter the timing of a planned attack. Some allies come with the ability to steal Hyper from their own allies to give themselves two ultra attacks in a row. Healing, too, plays a big part of all these setups.

For example, an enemy might slap a crucial ally with a negative status or knock them within an inch of their life. What do you do? Risk letting that ally get killed? Use a Hyper round to fully heal the ally and abandon your well planned super attack?Risks and rewards play heavily into Cosmic Star Heroine's complex battles, even some of the smaller, nonconsequential fights.It's easier than it sounds, but for those who tire from Final Fantasy VI's style of rotating between normal attacks and all-powerful magic, the clearest strength in Cosmic Star Heroine comes from swapping up combat and finding ways to manipulate all of its intricacies, especially Hyper mode, to dish out as much damage on an enemy as possible.For example, the stars align!

Your buffs hold strong, the enemy is weak to your attack element, Hyper mode is flashing and waiting, and your ultimate attack plays out exactly as you planned it. Oh, it's so satisfying to see it work out properly.And even when you fail, Cosmic Star Heroine delivers a rush! A derailed plan or unexpected deadly attack will leave players scrambling to realign the flow of battle in their favor, and this is where the brain really comes into play.

Heal here, rebuff there, boost your attacker's Hyper mode but not TOO fast because he or she won't get the required buff if the attack is pulled off too soon. Even better than landing an ultimate attack is recovering from a failed one to drop an even larger force of destruction on an enemy!And, of course, the game rewards you for style. Beat an enemy with a proper combination, get an experience boost at the end. I say this a lot recently, but the only thing that could really make Cosmic Star Heroine in its current state any better is a portable version. I don't want to play something like this glued to a television anymore. The palm of my hands, a pair of headphones, and a nice chair would make for a better escape. Luckily, Zeboyd Games is prepping a PS Vita version for release down the line, so this is why I am recommending a 'Wait' result in the review.If you've got a Vita, wait for that option instead.Outside of that, I wholeheartedly recommend Cosmic Star Heroine.

I wouldn't call it perfect because it does have a few problems in the pacing and written dialogue portion of its storytelling, but this is often made up for with an exciting plot and heart-thumping scenarios. I got clipped into the map once and had to restart my game, and another weird choice is that you must stand annoyingly close to characters in order to talk to them. Plenty of smaller gripes hold it back from being a true contender.But that oh-so-satisfying battle system just makes all the difference!Cosmic Star Heroine is a winner, even if you're too young to have experienced the games it references.

Check it out.Disclaimer: We received a copy of this game from the company for the purpose of the review. We completed it before beginning this review.