In Stars and Time is a game that—and I say this with all the love in the world—I don’t see myself replaying, 100%ing, finishing in that sense that so many gamers use.
Of course, I’d love to witness everything that Adrienne put into it (i am never sure whether it’s better to refer to her by that name or insertdisc5, also i should add a link to her site bc good games and good vibes), but at the same time, I encounter that wall of forced experience again whenever I think about replaying it for the sake of achievements, think of replaying it knowing I would make different choices, not able to trust myself to not just get a few more things differently. That wall is what ruined Undertale for me, long before I even played it. It’s a large part of why I avoid fandoms, not wanting to be exposed to theorycrafting the heat death of interesting thought and encountering a deluge of spoilers long before I would ever be done thinking about the game with just some friends.
I will probably play the prologue, and then if I feel up to it, go back for one more run with that experience held tight. And then Siffrin will be free, to have fun, with his friends.
This is…these are not reviews, and I neither avoid nor deliberately get into spoilers. If they happen to be here, they will be here; tread at your own caution. The concept of the reminiscence tag here is not to serve as a review of the game, I kind of hate formal game reviews; I get why they exist, but I really dislike the culture of them and how soon they fall. Steam reviews, often almost entirely in jest, comments on Bandcamp albums, rants and raves on social media, those are more meaningful to me in whether I pick up a game than a few arbitrary metrics rated before the game has proper time to settle into its own.
How do game reviewers not go insane? Or maybe you need to have a particular mindset to be okay with doing that, something I don’t have and never will.
…where was I.
isat is one of those games that strikes my preferences very well, the writing and characterization (not just of Siffrin, who i pilot, but the entire world) are immensely well-done, the aesthetic of the world in its limited greyscale and tasty pixels serving to bring things to a life deliberately familiar and yet still foreign to me. Craft, the way it’s delineated, the way it’s used, the freedom of expression within a simple trio of rock-paper-scissors, it works. it works so well.
i am deliberately trying my best to avoid ascribing any aspect of perfection to how i praise this story – it’s not for everyone. it’s for me, it’s for others, but it’s not something everyone will enjoy. but more importantly, it’s a game about perfection, about imperfection, about what chasing perfection does to someone, about what focusing on that over slowing down, breathing, being able to enjoy time with companions and friends does the more it happens… it’s why i can’t ever bring myself to 100% it. that’s not me, and while the option exists, to stumble into everything in an unnatural way, outside of finding most things myself and leaving the few outliers for the second run i want to do purely to see what i missed the first time in the overall story.
but even then…
isn’t it wrong to replay a game like this? at least, that’s the question i find myself asking.
I’ve long been a bit annoyed by many RPG systems being unable to innovate properly. What one could call MOTHER-type games, Etrian as a matter of course in my own experience, fun twists on the base formula like Bravely Default manages, even the limited mechanical puzzle of the Press Turn system, they all do something neat, something fun, something interesting, even if it doesn’t break out to anything other genres (please no more action AAA games i am tired of dodge rolling and parrying slowly taking over the universe). But very rarely have I seen a system that works with the rest of its world this well. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but I certainly don’t have any other good examples off the top of my head right now.
And I don’t really consider Undertale’s as one that works with the world, just to be extra divisive. Maybe OMORI’s, since emotion and perception are as much a thing for combat as they are for exploration and narrative? Craft is as much a way of life, a study, a way to redefine for the world what you are, as it is combat prowess, power, might. And sure, maybe not everything needs to be as well-fitting as Craft is in the wider world, even as limited a glimpse we see into its different cultures, but it’s sick as hell. I am a believer in magic in its many forms of existing, and this is that. The weapons being daily-use objects, found lying around in their other use cases most of the time, is just a cherry on top of that for me.
The game itself, the world itself, is Craft. To me.
I think that something else that really just hits right for me is how the game forces a rejection of a perfect run, a perfect loop, a perfect anything. Self-insert protagonists have their place (and I try my best to avoid those places), but there are none of those here. Siffrin, Isabeau, Mirabelle, Odile, Bonnie, they all have such well-written character to themselves, the entire town has such well-defined personalities, it’s easy to forget that what we see here is less than 2 days of their long journey, of the rest of their lives (yes, even counting the prologue). And sure, the timeloop helps with that, letting us see more, but they’re written with the care that can be afforded them because Siffrin themself is also his own person. There is nothing the player can do, even at the far-flung fringes of the fraying loops and his fraying sanity, that is not something they would already consider doing.
The Siffrin I played as is a progression anyone else could take, and in that way, unique to me among the possbilities. But he is still Siffrin, and they will continue to still be Siffrin, and there’s something almost indescribable to that that I find comforting, in a way so many other stories leave a small yet noticeable void in.
i want to end by appreciating the overall plot, the way the threads guide the player to think like Sif does, to look everywhere for answers, to try and complete everything in one loop in the perfect way and not let anyone get hurt and not end up hurting anyone and taking care of it all themself and then rug-pulling all of that, a defiance of the premise that he’s been running on this entire time, a climax of pain and hurt instead of tranquil and sterile perfection, and then… a happy ending, despite it all. because of it all. because sif is not alone, as much as they have reason to think they are.
happiness is not perfection, but in a very very old turn of phrase at this point, it is magic.