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« on: March 12, 2025, 09:50:40 PM »
Listen, don’t get it twisted: Immortals: Fenix Rising is a pretty decent Breath of the Wild-like. But if that game is “we have Breath of the Wild at home,” then Star Overdrive feels like one step further removed from that equation.
Having played the demo for about 5ish hours, I find the game to be quite pretty from an aesthetic standpoint. There’s lots of unique fauna and very little flora to be found in this opening zone, but with the context that this planet was being mined of valuable resources, a desolate climate feels justified. What is a bit more surprising are the juxtaposing lush greens that exist to the north of this starting area, our proverbial “Great Plateau.” Regardless, there's some strong environmental design, though enemies are a bit more of a mixed bag. There's a relatively low amount of enemy variety in this starting zone, and I'm not sure if that's an indication of the game as a whole, or just this vertical slice.
Pretty much, if you’ve got a hankering for racing across dunes on a hoverboard, this game is for you. If you’re looking for decent combat or sandboxy action, however, things are a bit more middling. Combat is focused on dealing incremental bits of damage to enemies with your keytaur. You do have the ability to counter enemy attacks, which can act as a speedy way of mitigating the length of battles. If you’re struck with an attack, damage is represented by the color of your energy shield. I never experienced death or complete depletion of my shield throughout the demo, but that was more due to my first skill tree upgrade being shield capacity- one of two upgrades you can immediately access a the start of the game, which is surprising, to say the least. I only encountered one enemy type that involved a more complex method of approach, needing to attack a large tortoise-like creature when it exposes itself after attacking (and being able to use one of your cassette powers to deal even more damage). Combat feels muddy due to the soft lock-on that snaps to the closest proximal enemy, and the lack of decent defensive capabilities. You can roll and dodge roll in midair, but movement feels incredibly sluggish at the start of the game.
This is maybe an indicator of what progression looks like throughout Star Overdrive, as movement both on and off the hoverboard are upgradable traits that aren’t really exploitable in the demo but telegraphed by the respective upgrade trees. The means of upgrading the hoverboard is via collectable objects and doodads strewn throughout environments and in treasure chests. Chests often have higher quality materials, all of which are combined with *another* collectable currency in order to craft hoverboard components. The grind for these materials and the ultimate payoff of the resulting components is, uh, humbling. Considering how big the stat spread truly is, it makes sense that the developers wouldn’t want the player to feel as if they could craft a perfectly appealing hoverboard right out the gate, and I find it particularly interesting that racing challenges have suggested stat spreads that will likely result in players modifying their board at a consistent rate. I just hope that you’ll be able to disassemble previously-constructed components, because the resource cost is pretty intense.
As for the base stats of the character, you’ll need to complete the game’s equivalent of shrines in order to earn the currency needed for the character’s skill tree. This tree has a fair amount of variety to it, from defensive buffs to combat techniques, but the aspects I would recommend prioritizing are the movement speed enhancements. I almost thought I was being pranked when I tried out BIOS’s jump at the start of the game, as “pathetic” doesn’t really even begin to describe it- it does get better when you add the jetpack function soon after, though. He’s also got a leisurely gait that makes each of these shrine sections, and really any off-hoverboard portion of the game a tad too plodding for their own good. All of this seems to be in service of allowing for consistent progression across the open world (which is absolutely massive if the size of the demo in comparison with the rest of the map is to be trusted), and boy, do I hate it. Zelda and even Immortals were very willing to let their base characters feel good to move, even if their overall stamina was lacking. I can’t say that is the case with BIOS, here, and that’s pretty unfortunate. I understand the slow trickle of abilities to some extent, but an open-world title should immediately grab the player, not tease an end goal down the long, open road.
Which reminds me, this demo closes with a battle against a stubby sandworm. It’s… fine, I guess? I think chase battles, like those encountered in Sonic Frontiers, are honestly some of my least favorite, especially because Star Overdrive’s first field encounter tasks players with latching onto the enemy with one ability and shooting it with the pulse ability when it breaches the sand. The way the game first explains this process makes it seem as if the player will need to continuously switch between these two cassette powers, but you are automatically tethered with the first and then allowed to switch to the second without consequence. Hell, you can even auto-tether to the sandworm if you accidentally run into one of the pillars it spawns as you surf in its wake. So how do you add a legitimate challenge to a game like this?
I suppose it's time to talk about Star Horizon’s most visceral appeal, which is the nature of the hoverboard and dune surfing. The game is very explicit about telegraphing “boosted” jumps off of bumpy terrain, which adds air time for you to engage in the game’s trick system. Performing tricks in specific directions using the Right Control Stick will either regenerate your energy for performing attacks or increase your base speed for a time. Both of these are important, the former for making sure you can perform some of the special cassette powers while surfing, and the latter because… well, speed is speed. Speed is going to get you to the time trial gates faster, and cassette energy is going to allow you the means to cross terrain that might make your journey to the next time trial gate less painful, or more efficient. Though the hoverboard is a light-traction, high-speed device, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to zone out and complete these with ease. There are other aspects of the hoverboard that will affect your completion of these time trials. The velocity/physics aspect of hoverboarding seems to be subtle, as customization options like adding a new coat of paint to your board and the damage that your deco has taken can impact your overall speed. You will need to unlock specific upgrades to traverse certain terrain types, as water and terrain/ramp materials specifically kill momentum.
There are boost gates littered throughout the environments that also act as time trial markers that are the most ideal form of traversal, and since the game telegraphs the locations of certain landmarks and collectables, it doesn’t really feel necessary to go off of the beaten path. In this opening region, there are one or two areas with exploration-based puzzles that focus largely on fairly simplistic “how do I get there?” movement and switch puzzle solutions, as well as scattered different graffiti designs that equate to new hoverboard components, which have some subtle differences when crafted with the accessible materials. So if all of that is the case, why have this large expanse to play around in?
The most obvious answer, and the one I’m hoping is the case beyond the demo, is that Star Overdrive has multi-region time trials that push the player to navigate even larger swaths of its open world, especially as you invest more materials into advanced components. If combat does become more complex, how do future cassette powers diversify encounters? Will the “shrines” of the demo (aptly listed as “mines”) increase in complexity, or will they only serve as a function of unlocking new cassette powers? Is this truly just a hoverboard time trial game, or will there be more to this world than this style of gameplay? How does completing hoverboard time trails unlock and/or power devices elsewhere in the world?
I don’t know, I’m just a scrub.
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