Cosmic Star Heroine sets out to bring the best of both classics and modern JRPG’s into a neat and compact package. Inspired by Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star, and Suikoden, it is likely to induce some nostalgia. Though, not having played those games myself, the nostalgia is sadly lost on me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the experience. Largely owing to the captivating premise and a great battle system. And although Cosmic Star Heroine is far from perfect, it delivers on many fronts and I can recommend playing it if you’re a fan of turn-based JRPG’s.

Developer: Zeboyd Games

Publisher: Zeboyd Games

15 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $13.49

A Strong Female Lead

You take on the role of Alyssa L’Salle, an elite agent of the Agency for Peace and Intelligence (API). She’s a strong, talented, and independent individual who takes her job seriously. This is why, despite her audacious and brash attitude getting her in trouble many a time, she has a perfect track record. Your first mission as Alyssa is to deal with a hostage situation, which functions mainly as a tutorial and has Alyssa defusing a bomb in true heroine fashion. Guided by tech-expert Dave from a distance and joined in battle by your close friend and colleague Chahn, you’ll handle this situation no problem.

Intrigue and Espionage

The story really starts when you get your next assignment: to check out what the terrorist faction Astrea is doing within the mutated forest on the planet Rhomu. Once there, you find some disturbing info that upon further inspection reveals the API has ulterior motives. And so you decide together to go rogue and fight for the greater good, becoming enemies of the government. This is the plot of Cosmic Star Heroine. Mostly linear, intriguing and fast-paced, the story unfolds quickly and has a satisfying ending.

Brisk Pacing

Cosmic Star Heroine respects your time. Grinding isn’t necessary and you won’t find hour-long cut-scenes or giant monologue’s. I believe this is done with good intentions, but it does result in less character development than I’d like and a string of somewhat questionable story development and confusing character choices that make it hard to stay immersed at times. It seems that to compensate for this, the occasional quip was thrown into the script. These admittedly made me laugh out loud more than once. I’d compare the story to that of an action movie where the action comes first and the story is there to move the plot along. And in Cosmic Star Heroine, the action comes in the form of a great combat system.

Engaging Combat

Unlike most other turn-based JRPG’s, Cosmic Star Heroine has no form of magic points. You can select from up to seven abilities to attack. They typically can be used only once, after which a character will need to recharge for a turn to reset the cooldown. Everyone has their own mostly unique abilities to choose from and you unlock more of them by leveling up. This allows for characters to have different builds and so you have a lot of flexibility in choosing your own play-style.

Characters will enter hyper mode every other so often, boosting your abilities considerably in strength. Aside from abilities, you can use items and programs. Items are like an ability that can be used by anyone in your party. While programs are specific to each character and depend on the shield you have equipped. Both items and programs can be typically used only once per battle, but are reusable in each new encounter.

No Grinding Necessary

Enemies wander around on the map, which is where you fight them. There is no transition screen. Upon defeat, they will never respawn. Not to worry though, grinding is possible. Simply hit “Battle” within the menu and it will spawn a random group of enemies corresponding to the area you are in. I never felt the need to use this feature though, as the difficulty of enemies and bosses was just right throughout the game. And I always had enough credits to upgrade my gear. I must admit I like to beat all the monsters I come across. And so in combination with my wanderlust, I never experienced any fights that felt unfair.

Style Points

Like any JRPG, your character’s stats determine how strong their attack, defense, speed, etc. will be. As well as there being the typical various status ailments and buffs. But unique to Cosmic Star Heroine is the style stat. This augments in battle when using different abilities. The higher it is, the stronger your attacks are. It also allows for certain burst abilities to use up the style points for powerful finishing blows. All of this makes for a very engaging and complex combat experience.

Limited Guidance

Sadly, there is limited guidance within the game on the battle system. It is possible to learn about mostly everything by talking to all the various NPC’s in the API at the start of the game. But it’s a big ask to expect players to remember everything in the first half hour of playing. It would make a lot of sense to have some in-game guide or at the very least an online one. I ended up not fully grasping everything there is to know about the combat, but was able to use what I did understand to complete the game on Heroine difficulty without battles ever becoming frustrating.

Difficulty

For those that will take the time to figure out how everything works there is the Super-Spy difficulty setting. I suggest leaving this for a repeat play-through. Because enemies become extremely tough to beat and doing so awards only half the credits. Interestingly, it’s possible to change the difficulty setting of your save-file at any time. So you can always try it out and change back to Heroine or any of the lower difficulty settings if it ends up being too difficult.

Alluring Aesthetics

It’s a pleasure to walk around in the world of Cosmic Star Heroine. Everything looks and feels great. And I particularly enjoyed the larger artwork of characters that appear during certain dialog. It allows for some facial expressions to be depicted, which helps with immersion. The cutscenes help with this too, but although definitely beautiful, they were somewhat stiff at times.

The Sounds of Heroism

The music for Cosmic Star Heroine was composed by HyperDuck Soundworks who did a formidable job. I was happily surprised to hear a rock-influenced soundtrack that I felt fit well with the atmosphere and setting of Cosmic Star Heroine. Over a hundred minutes of original music is included, which keeps songs from becoming repetitive. And they especially did a great job on making a long enough battle song, which lasts for nearly 4 minutes before looping.

Pet Peeves

I experienced a few small annoyances during my play-through that I feel are worth mentioning. These are by no means deal-breakers, but I think it’s good to know about them up front.

Multi-Character Combo Techniques

For starters, Alyssa is the only one that can use the multi-character combo techniques that are advertised to be in the game. They can only be used when wearing her “Heroine” shield in the form of programs. You’ll want to have the shield equipped all game because unlike other shields, it augments its strength as you progress through the game. And although the combo techniques are powerful, it somehow didn’t feel that special to me.

Textual Inconsistencies

Secondly, I felt there are quite a few textual inconsistencies in the game. Some of which are just typo’s, but others are possible bugs. For example, Chanh has a move called “Protective Barrier”, which reads “Defends 25% for party. Recharge”. It sounds like this would give 25% extra defense to all allies. However, it looks and acts like only she gets the 25% buff. There are a few more of these inconsistencies, and it’s not very fun to learn about them via trial and error.

Incompletable Sidequest

Furthermore, I encountered a sidequest that became incompletable. I’m okay with missables, but it’s annoying to start something and not be able to complete it. Granted, the sidequest in question wasn’t a large time-investment nor do I expect the reward to be of major significance, but it’s still a little annoying.

Thieving NPC

Lastly, most insignificantly and yet most annoying of all, there is an NPC at the beginning of the game that steals 50 credits when you talk to him. When you leave the area and return, he’s back. And if you would expect that maybe you can confront him about his thieving ways, or mistakenly talk to him again, you’ll be another 50 credits lighter. Grrr…

Conclusion

Cosmic Star Heroine left me feeling satisfied, yet somewhat disappointed at the same time. Not because it was bad, but rather because I feel it could be even better. I really liked the atmosphere set by the gorgeous pixel-art and wonderful music. And the turn-based battle system offered some unique and noteworthy ideas to the genre. But due to the lack of a proper in-game (or online) battle guide, I didn’t get a full grasp on what some of the more niche abilities do. Instead, I focused on pushing out maximum damage as best I could. And although I appreciate the brisk pacing, it made the satisfying final scene feel not as impactful as it could have been.

Overall I did enjoy playing Cosmic Star Heroine. I recommend it to anyone looking for a compact and fast-paced JRPG experience!

If you plan on picking up Cosmic Star Heroine, consider checking out Step’s JRPG survival guide. Or maybe you’re looking for a more fleshed out storyline. In which case I’d suggest checking our opinion on Octopath Traveler. Alternatively, Ys VIII: The Lacrimosa of Dana might tickle your fancy.