Cosmic Star Heroine
Alyssa L'Salle was one of the top secret agents at the Agency of Peace & Intelligence on the Planet Araenu. But when she uncovers a horrible conspiracy, she has to go rogue in order to save the day! Can Alyssa save the galaxy when everyone (and everything) is out to stop her! Features: The best of classic and modern RPGs! Brisk pacing that respects your time! Save anywhere! No separate battle screen! Battles take place directly in the areas that you explore! 2D visual style straight from the height of gaming's 16-bit era! Animated cutscenes reminiscent of the Sega CD & Turbo Duo era! Soundtrack by HyperDuck SoundWorks (Dust: An Elysian Tail, Precipice of Darkness 4)! Over 100 minutes of music! Multi-character combo techniques! Innovative turn-based combat system that focuses on flow & strategy! Your own spaceship! Recruit new agents to help your home base grow!
Steam User 7
Cosmic Star Heroine is a 16-bit JRPG that leans heavily on the well-known titles of the 90's. It features an innovative battle system and mechanics.
What I liked
Style, sci-fi setting and art. All combined it comes across as a coherent package.
The music and soundtrack. It's different to most games.
The battle mechanics. Fights take place directly on the map - i.e. like Chrono Trigger. It's fun to set up the big damage moves, using skills of various characters and often times taking multiple turns to do so.
There is no obvious 'best party' or 'best character build', though of course some abilities are more OP and usable than others.
Backtracking is kept to a minimum. Almost non-existant if you were to skip the side quests and just focus on the main story.
You can change your party on the spot,
What's just OK
The story and dialogue serves it's purpose. I liked that it's kept concise and moves everything forward, but don't expect the greatest story.
Towards the end of the game you've gathered quite the party, of which you can choose 3 to accompany you. The developers made sure to provide a backstory for each character, but still some characters didn't do a whole lot for me.
What could be improved upon
I wished the game provided a bit more information during fights. On active buffs and debuffs, how long they'll last, what the projected damage output is et cetera.
Battles will drag on in the later game, as enemies increase in HP (and there are a lot of battles in this game!). There is a lot of rinse and repeat during most non-boss fights. This may be less of an issue on lower difficulties, but I have not tried this.
I guess this is in keeping with the 16-bit classics, but I would've appreciated something like a quest log. Most party members mention a side quest after recruiting them, but only vaguely, and the player has to remember them.
There is a bug where the game freezes if using a certain attack in a certain fight. Easy to overcome by not using that attack, but be sure to manually save regularly. There is no AutoSave in this game!
In conclusion: this game proved plenty fun, even for a novice on 16-bit RPG's like me. I would encourage anyone to at least try to play on Heroine difficulty. I switched from Normal to Heroine pretty early, as I felt the fights became too easy.
Playtime: I 100%'ed the game in about 31 hours. Had to replay the first few chapters from a fresh save to re-trigger a certain event, as the Steam achievement was not recorded the first time apparently.
Steam User 5
Pros:
Combat system is fun.
Pixel graphics are great!
Music is amazing!
Story is pretty good.
humour is good.
World and environments are cool and well designed.
a fair bit of side content.
Cool Super bosses.
Short (May be a con for some)
It's cheap.
Interesting characters.
Cons:
Combat gets a little stale after about 10 hours.
Final boss was cool but a disappointing fight (IMO)
I kinda feel like some of the normal enemies just had too much HP, it just made the battles longer then they needed to be.
music can be a little repetitive at times.
I think that's about it, overall it's a solid game and I'm hoping for a sequel! :)
8/10
Steam User 2
I'll start this off by saying Cosmic Star Heroine is a rough gem, and in my opinion, very much worth its asking price.
I'll start with the good. In terms of mechanics for turn-based RPGs, this game feels fresh. Status effects are based on an "HP" system, rather than chance-based. This makes them largely predictable, and very useful. I love this. Characters dedicated to status ailments can be a part of your primary crew, even against bosses. On the matter of mainstays, any and every playable character serves a purpose, and they're all equally viable in your crew. Alyssa, your ever-present protag, can be flexible in how she works, so you can bend your crew to just about any combination you want.
The soundtrack is smooth and an absolute pleasure on the ears. The art is also quite nice, from enemies to character portraits. And in terms of content, the game isn't lacking. Superbosses, side quests, optional dungeons, extra gear, it's all there and none of it felt awful to engage with (though I was definitely taking on one quest earlier than I should have with how difficult it was).
Now for the not so good. In a game with a plethora of status effects, buffs, and ailments, the game does a very poor job of conveying what they all mean and when they're active. The UI won't give you any information about buffs and debuffs, and you'll have to look at an enemy/ally's icon above their head to know what's afflicting them, IF that affliction has an icon, which many don't. This is kind of a big deal, as entire strategies can depend on status effects that you may not fully understand.
The story is nothing particularly interesting, and I'm sad to say, neither are the characters. They're really just cliches that give you some dialogue in between you jumping to the next plot point. It's odd that the story feels like it's SPRINTING from beat to beat, despite this being a fairly lengthy game. Now I want to clarify, I don't think the story is awful, nor is the dialogue anything particularly wince-worthy, but if you're looking for depth of narrative or character, it isn't here.
All in all, I still had a very good time with with Cosmic Star Heroine. If you're looking for a fun RPG you can experiment with status effects and party comp in, this game is for you.
Steam User 1
This game is good, just good. It's clearly inspired by Chrono Trigger but with a twist on the battle system. The story and characters are boring and nonsensical but it doesn't ruin the experience. I feel like the game is a test drive for future game development, so hopefully the developer continues to expand on a better story and characters in the future.
Steam User 1
Amazing work by Zeboyd, definitively a big improvement from the first two games. Not that they were bad, but Cosmic Star Heroine is just on another level. Great art and music, and I was happy to see return of the old characters as well as meeting the new ones.
Steam User 1
When you combine the charms of the SNES RPG with some banger sound tracks, creative combat mechanics and a fun story with some excellent pacing. That's this game in a nutshell! Visuals and style is very reminiscent of the the Chrono Trigger era of JRPG games, its super easy to pick up and play, the story kicks into high gear and before you know it you see the credits roll.
I highly recommend this game!
Steam User 1
What a great return to the older style of game that I grew up on. Crono Trigger in a future setting with all sorts of little nods and references to games of our past. I found some blood on the ground. It was CHRIS's Blood!!!! I was like LOL.
Resident Evil. For some reason Chris's blood always stuck in my head for decades because of the campy way it was said. Who's blood? Chris's blood! Good times! I won't spoil any more of the other great call backs and references that this game offers.
Will always value and enjoy games like this created in the present time. So many functions and things that we couldn't do at the time can now be done in this older style. I would very much like to see a come back return to games like these. Same 16 bit type of graphics that are a labor of love creating the bit map renderings and artwork. But with a touch of present day flavor. The possibilities that could come from this would be like a stringed or keyed instrument. Infinite to the human experience!
Thanks for making this wonderful game! I have very much enjoyed its cute quaint game.