Wander Stars - Switch Review
"A truly earnest story"
How would you feel about the pitch of Dragon Ball meets Cowboy Bebop? I could tell at a glance that Wander Stars was going to be heavily influenced by the grandfather of shounen anime, but I didn’t expect to feel like I was transported back to the 90s to this extent – playing this game made me feel like I had found an unknown gem in the depths of a video rental store, and I really enjoy that feeling.
Wander Stars is a turn-based RPG with roguelite aspects, heavy anime influence, and the opportunity for the player to put together their own special moves via combining Kiai words – but where it really shines is in its characters. Ringo and Wolfe are on a fantastic adventure across the stars, and you really don’t want to miss the next episode.
The Good – Your favourite childhood show
Wander Stars is a lot of things, but 'charming' is the one that best describes it to me. From the very first episode it establishes an expressive, out-there goofiness that puts a light-hearted spin on things and makes for great visual comedy and worldbuilding, but also allows its characters’ personalities to shine through.
And Wander Stars is all about its characters. The main characters are the fiery, impulsive kiai fighter Ringo and the sardonic Wolfe, who come together in episode 1 and establish an adversarial chemistry that’s a treat to watch but which also moves the plot along seamlessly.
The story revolves around Ringo and Wolfe’s quest to put together all the pieces of the Wanderstar Map, each for their own reasons – and it truly feels like every single thing that happens from then on is a direct result of the characters’ actions, making the act of following the story engaging and satisfying.
The game is a rare and very much welcome episodic RPG, with each episode telling its part of the story and having an awesome nostalgic title card sequence at the beginning. On top of the main story, episodes also give plenty of opportunities for the player to see character moments and interactions which range from jokes and bits to actual world and character building. Once again, it feels like watching a beloved yet not very well-known anime.
As for the gameplay itself, it is simple and effective: the story is told mostly through visual-novel-like moments, while stages are split between navigation and combat. Navigation happens in randomly generated boards where the player moves to different spaces to explore and fight, and combat is a turn-based system with a twist.
You see, in Wander Stars, players obtain action, element and modifier words throughout stages and put them together to form attacks. It’s a treat to create word salads such as a “Wide Big Extra Fire Smash” attack for massive damage – though with the game rewarding getting enemies to a specific threshold rather than straight up knocking them out, and giving out extra points if you can end the battle in one turn, combat in Wander Stars feels like a fun turn-based puzzle game at times.
TL;DR
- Charming world and characters
- Great character-focused storytelling
- Interesting, versatile combat system
The Bad – Is this a filler episode?
While I don’t feel like Wander Star committed any big cardinal sins, it does feel like the gameplay is carried by the story and characters a little too hard. The battle system is wildly entertaining, but it is also very, very easy to break.
A plethora of power-ups that Ringo can find and use throughout the episodes will give her immunity to elements and words, many times multiple at once, and it does not take much to get slightly lucky with a roll and end up with a basic upgrade that demolishes any difficulty the episode might have presented. Personally, I feel like there are too many pep-ups that give invulnerability and not many that give a more modest resistance to a word.
And speaking of words, while the game has a very large amount of them, it’s very easy to see which ones are the best choice in most situations. The game attempts to balance them by changing the number of slots and cooldown turns each word has, but by the halfway point it was pretty much established which words were staples and which ones were never seen again.
The navigation sections could also use a little more meat on their bones. While I love the boardgame-adjacent exploration and it is fun to go to specific spaces looking for power-ups or events, it feels fairly barebones.
The main issue is that, at any given moment, the entire map will be open for the player to explore, with some enemies on the way. Base encounters aren’t very challenging, and choices in those sections tend to boil down to which power-up the player will choose between screen transitions – the game could have benefited from cutting off paths or having some form of navigation gimmick. The few pursuit stages are good for variation, but they are few and far between.
TL;DR
- Combat is easily broken with upgrades
- Many words are power crept early and definitively
- Navigation sections are serviceable, but bland
Final Score: 7/10
You know how I said that Wander Stars feels like an old anime? I mean it, with everything that it entails. How many of those have had pacing issues, weird storytelling decisions, and so on? These old shows aren’t perfect, but that comes with trying new things and eventually finding their footing, and above everything else, Wander Stars feels like a truly earnest story. It looks and feels like it was made with love, by people who had a lot of fun with it, imperfections and all, and I love that.
Many old anime shows are imperfect products of their time, but the imperfections make them memorable in a whole new way. Wander Stars feels a bit like that to me. It’s not an incredible game, but I enjoyed my time with it as much as I did watching my favourite shows, filler episodes and all. I was very much engrossed in the adventure of Ringo, Wolfe, Canela and Ax across the stars and if there’s ever a sequel, I know I will be there, hoping to encounter those wandering stars once again.
Thank you for checking out our Wander Stars Switch review, thank you to Fellow Traveller (via Jasmine James PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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