No matter how far apart they become, wandering stars will always seek each other out. Indie RPG Wander Stars tasks players with embarking on their own sci-fi action anime adventure using the power of words to battle opposing forces encountered along the way. A delightful homage to classic anime, manga, and JRPGs, Wander Stars is a true gaming gem for those in its target audience.
Wander Stars‘ main protagonist is fourteen-year-old martial artist Ringo. She dreams of becoming a Kiai champion to go on an adventure looking for her missing brother. Ringo lives a relatively quiet, sheltered life with her adopted grandmother, Anzu, but all that changes when a scrupulous beastman from the stars named Wolfe visits their island. Together, the two form a reluctant partnership to search for the pieces of the legendary Wanderstar map that allegedly lead not only to epic rewards but may also be connected to Ringo’s brother. Because they aren’t the only ones searching for the map pieces, the duo must contend with all sorts of dangers.
That’s only the beginning of Wander Stars‘ plot. This RPG tale is surprisingly nuanced, both parodying classic anime and embracing what makes those stories timeless in a very heartfelt and original manner. Ringo is a sincere and determined main character, and Wolfe acts tough and like he’s a good-for-nothing ne’er-do-well, but he’s not so secretly a softie underneath the fur and claws. The sibling partnership that develops between them is delightful. Space pirate Ax and the young singing witch Canela round out the main cast, with both characters being excellent additions to the party’s roster. There’s also a complicated history, as well as a later evolving relationship, between Ax and Wolfe, which is one of the most well-written and believable dynamics I’ve encountered in an RPG this year. I also love the friendship that also develops between Canela and Ringo. The entire party has a found family dynamic that truly warms the heart: the further along the martial arts action drama goes, the more motivation there is to push forward.
Wander Stars has ten individual story arcs, or episodes, each featuring maps that guide you from one point to an eventual goal. There are many branching paths throughout the map when traversing from point A to point B, littered with NPC dialogues, story events, treasures to uncover, and, of course, combat. Since it isn’t possible to see or experience everything on a map in a single playthrough, the game encourages replayability. After completing an episode, you can increase the challenge level for future replays.
The turn-based combat in Wander Stars is perhaps its biggest draw beyond the story and characters. Once a fight begins, Ringo faces off against enemy combatants using Kiai. The power of words becomes abundantly clear once fighting starts: you pick an action word such as the basic punch or kick and combine that with a descriptive element word such as fire (” fire punch” would give fire damage to the attack, for instance) or a modifying word such as radical to increase damage output (a “radical punch” does more harm than just a punch). If enough word slots are available, you can even add modifying words and elemental words to an attack (a “radical fire punch” does considerable damage while adding a flame attribute, and a “very radical fire punch” adds even more if you have the spaces for it). The combat system is deceptively simple on paper, but it gets more complicated as you acquire new words. Plus, the party members teaming up with Ringo bring even more word types to the table: Wolfe has words like claw, Ax has ones like bomb, and Canela has both offensive and support magic.
All words have different attributes, take up a specific number of your limited action slots, and have differing cooldown periods before using them again. Specific modifiers can break through an opponent’s guard, target multiple opponents, increase the damage intake of specific action words (such as “sharp” when combined with “claw”), or reduce cooldown periods (like “explosive” with “blast”). One of Canela’s action words can put an opponent to sleep, while another attaches a forced weakness to its connected element for a specific number of turns. It takes strategy to figure out what words are best to string together to bring an opponent to the breaking point, and you can create some truly potent combos if you have enough action slots at your disposal. It’s creative and clever, and the closest combat system I can think of for comparison’s sake is the combo-based fighting system from the Legaia games.
Often enough, if you lower an opponent’s health down and manage not to knock them out entirely, you can end battles using “Peace Out,” which earns you more honor points (experience) upon finishing a fight. It also sometimes nets you a Pep Up, which is an equippable passive bonus that’s helpful both in and out of battle. Boss battles can only end in KOs, though, with all the HP and battle phases a boss fight entails. It is essential to be wary/more defensive when you get into the Danger Zone phase of a boss fight.
Once you’ve finished all of an episode’s acts and stages, you have the option to replay the entire episode or progress to the next. You enter an episode select menu where you can also level up Ringo using any honor points collected, which raises stats like health or the number of items or words she can use/equip at a given time. You can also spend honor points to permanently acquire new Kiai words that you can then bring into an episode playthrough if you so choose. It’s a fairly robust skill tree system. Once you’ve selected the episode you want to play through, you can choose which words to bring with you and the difficulty level you’d like to play at.
There isn’t much to complain about from a gameplay perspective, except perhaps that I wish there were a manual save option during a given episode. The episodes themselves are easily digestible, but the game only autosaves whenever you progress to a new map stage. If you get knocked out, you have the option to restart that map from the beginning with full health, but you lose half your accumulated honor points in doing so. Since boss battles are the likely point to experience game overs, their placement at the end of a map stage means you restart the entire stage instead of trying the boss battle again right away, so it’s mildly frustrating.
Wander Stars‘ art direction and UI will resonate with those who appreciate classic anime, manga, and JRPG designs. I love the character designs and how expressive they are during story scenes, as well as how the game’s presentation cleverly weaves in animation. It’s a true visual treat to behold! The only graphical hiccup is that enemy designs during battles remain static, whereas Ringo and her friends have more animated poses and moves. The script work is pretty excellent, with only one or two noticeable typos. I think the biggest critique I have with Wander Stars is that it lacks a cheesy dub (or any spoken dialogue voice acting of any kind) to really capture the feel of watching old-school anime, which is something of a missed opportunity. Still, that’s definitely more me nitpicking than anything else. The sound effects are fitting, and the soundtrack is absolutely superb, such as this amazingly catchy battle theme. The music definitely captures the feel of soundscapes from classic titles that the game references!
Wander Stars proves to be a major delight, especially if you’re a fan of the classics that the developers obviously have a lot of love and respect for. Yet, being a phenomenal RPG with an innovative turn-based combat system and a found family of characters you can’t help but grow to love for their own merits makes it a worthwhile experience on its own. While I find the ending satisfactory, much like many classic anime season closings it honors, I wouldn’t mind seeing further adventures of Ringo and company either. The stars may be far apart, but given constellations and the like, they can always find each other again. The creative Wander Stars is one of the brightest video game stars I’ve played this year so far.
