At first glance, Cosmic Star Heroine might look like just another clone in an endless series of attempts to revive the 8/16bit era JRPGs. As someone who's old enough to have actually played many of the originals not long after they were released, I believe I can offer some valuable insights, regarding whether or not Cosmic Star Heroine is anything like the games its creators named as their sources of inspiration, namely Phantasy Star and Chrono Trigger. While I've never played Chrono Trigger before, I have played both Phantasy Star 1 and Phantasy Star 4 multiple times, and I'd dare say I know those games very well.

So, is Cosmic Star Heroine anything like those games? Well, my short version of the answer is "Yes, it is somewhat like them". But what exactly do I mean by that?

I mean that Cosmic Star Heroine, like many other such games, takes the main formula behind the old JRPGs and tries to make it work. Except unlike other such games, Cosmic Star Heroine does most of the things right. Specifically, it engages the player with an interesting and dynamic story, and doesn't rely just on the "magic formula" to do the work. Also, unlike other games, the story will pull you into the interesting part right from the beginning, so you don't end up yawning between scenes. Then again, this might also be seen as a drawback, as you don't get the freedom to explore and interact with the world on your own, as you could, for example, on either of the Phantasy Star games. So while being interesting and fast paced, the main story branch is also linear and fixed.

The battle system seems solid. While I might not even be halfway through the game, I get the feeling like the battles are complex enough to be interesting on one hand, but familiar, intuitive and make me feel right at home on the other. Characters seem to come and go, similar to what happens in Phantasy Star 4. This adds some depth both to the story and to the tactical aspect of the battles, since you end up having to learn each character's strengths and weakneses, so you can use their abilities to your advantage.

You can choose one of four difficulty levels, and you can change it freely along the game. I've been playing mostly on "Heroine", the third on the list, which is supposed to be a bit challenging (although not the hardest). Most of the battles are pretty easy for me, but twice already I had to lower the difficulty to "Agent", which is considered easy (yet not the easiest) so I could get past a couple of fights I considered very difficult. I believe those spikes in difficulty are quite extreme, and it's possible they'll be addressed by the devs during future patches, but since changing the difficulty level is as easy as pressing a button, it's not a real problem, and might even be an advantage for players looking for the extra challenge.

The soundtrack is really nice, and so are the graphics (pixels). There's nothing really ground breaking about those aspects of the game, but they're more than enough to help make everything believable. I admit I was a bit disappointed, as I was expecting at least some better looking cut-scenes and maybe some voice acting (maybe like the stuff from Vay or Lunar), but the game does seem to work well enough without any of those.

All in all, Cosmic Star Heroine seems like a really good game, and one of the few from the recent years, in my humble opinion, to actually do justice to the old JRPGs.

At first glance, Cosmic Star Heroine might look like just another clone in an endless series of attempts to revive the 8/16bit era JRPGs. As someone who's old enough to have actually played many of the originals not long after they were released, I believe I can offer some valuable insights, regarding whether or not Cosmic Star Heroine is anything like the games its creators named as their sources of inspiration, namely Phantasy Star and Chrono Trigger. While I've never played Chrono Trigger before, I have played both Phantasy Star 1 and Phantasy Star 4 multiple times, and I'd dare say I know those games very well. So, is Cosmic Star Heroine anything like those games? Well, my short version of the answer is "Yes, it is [i]somewhat[/i] like them". But what exactly do I mean by that? I mean that Cosmic Star Heroine, like many other such games, takes the main formula behind the old JRPGs and tries to make it work. Except unlike other such games, Cosmic Star Heroine does most of the things right. Specifically, it engages the player with an interesting and dynamic story, and doesn't rely just on the "magic formula" to do the work. Also, unlike other games, the story will pull you into the interesting part right from the beginning, so you don't end up yawning between scenes. Then again, this might also be seen as a drawback, as you don't get the freedom to explore and interact with the world on your own, as you could, for example, on either of the Phantasy Star games. So while being interesting and fast paced, the main story branch is also linear and fixed. The battle system seems solid. While I might not even be halfway through the game, I get the feeling like the battles are complex enough to be interesting on one hand, but familiar, intuitive and make me feel right at home on the other. Characters seem to come and go, similar to what happens in Phantasy Star 4. This adds some depth both to the story and to the tactical aspect of the battles, since you end up having to learn each character's strengths and weakneses, so you can use their abilities to your advantage. You can choose one of four difficulty levels, and you can change it freely along the game. I've been playing mostly on "Heroine", the third on the list, which is supposed to be a bit challenging (although not the hardest). Most of the battles are pretty easy for me, but twice already I had to lower the difficulty to "Agent", which is considered easy (yet not the easiest) so I could get past a couple of fights I considered very difficult. I believe those spikes in difficulty are quite extreme, and it's possible they'll be addressed by the devs during future patches, but since changing the difficulty level is as easy as pressing a button, it's not a real problem, and might even be an advantage for players looking for the extra challenge. The soundtrack is really nice, and so are the graphics (pixels). There's nothing really ground breaking about those aspects of the game, but they're more than enough to help make everything believable. I admit I was a bit disappointed, as I was expecting at least some better looking cut-scenes and maybe some voice acting (maybe like the stuff from Vay or Lunar), but the game does seem to work well enough without any of those. All in all, Cosmic Star Heroine seems like a really good game, and one of the few from the recent years, in my humble opinion, to actually do justice to the old JRPGs.