Sometimes it's the combination of a neat art style with a unique premise that is enough to entice me towards a new game. Wander Stars features an eye-catching anime look and creative turn-based combat that involves turning words into actions. The result is a novel experience, but one with a few rough patches along the way.

Playing as a young girl named Ringo, you go on a journey to find your brother using your budding martial arts moves. The narrative plays out across visual novel-style cutscenes and fairly lengthy dialogue exchanges. The story didn't grab me too tightly, but its episodic nature was an effective delivery mechanism and fit well with the anime theming. Between story beats, you traverse different environments that look a bit like a board game map, with certain spots containing battles, treasures, or character moments.

The turn-based battles are the highlight of Wander Stars, with progression involving a few different factors. By choosing an attack command, such as kick or punch, an element like fire or wind, and a modifier like Super, Extra, or Wide, you can hit an enemy's different weakpoint(s), apply extra damage, or be able to strike multiple targets at once. Victory can reward you with new words for your arsenal, but you only have a limited number of slots to fit those words into. Once you run out of stamina, you pass to the opponent for their turn, but you can earn extra stamina by hitting an enemy’s weakpoint. You're also rewarded for taking an enemy down to a specific health threshold and then peace-ing out, rather than knocking them out entirely.

At the end of an episode, you can spend Honor, effectively experience points, to permanently raise certain stats or limits, like the number of attack words you can bring into battle. A star ranking system encourages return trips to each episode, but I found that once was enough for me. Some stuttering, some janky animations, and even a softlock put a damper on my time with it, but Wander Stars is a relatively fun romp while it lasts, particularly if you're in it more for the RPG mechanics over the plot.