I’ll Have a Starburger, Starfries, and a Space Coke, Please
Having played Starbites for almost 25 hours and obtaining my first ever platinum trophy on it, I can confirm with absolute certainty that it is an RPG developed by IkinaGames and published by NIS, and not a chain of intergalactic-themed fast food restaurants. There is a bar in it, but it’s called Salud’s or something. There’s a pun there about salad bars, but I’m not sure if it was intentional.
The game is set on the planet Bitter, where salvagers eke a living off of war-torn wastelands surrounding a multi-levelled city known as Delight. It’s got a definite cyberpunk thing going on, but it completely lacks the edge of the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 or The Ascent. There is a bit of swearing, though, which makes it pretty hardcore for a turn-based JRPG about a plucky, optimistic young adventurer assembling a ragtag bunch of misfits to save the planet.
Despite its lack of edge, the story of Starbites is legitimately interesting. The set-up involves protagonist, Lukida, being horribly buried in debt and working for the heartless mistress of Delight City, Fennec. Lukida, being headstrong and more than a little careless, keeps getting herself into scrapes that just pile on the debt, yet she still never loses hope that she’ll achieve her dream of getting the heck off of Bitter. As for Bitter itself, many years before the events of the game a war was raging on and above the planet’s surface, and then some unknown event caused every starship in orbit to come crashing down to the surface at the same time.
This apocalyptic incident isn’t the only mystery surrounding Bitter, and when Lukida starts digging into the planet’s strange past and uncovering secrets about herself at the same time I found myself genuinely invested. The other party members are entertaining enough, but I did find Makobo, the mandatory, kooky child character, kind of annoying. Stoic ex-merc, Badger, was cool but a little bland, Jerome was kind of wishy-washy (I still don’t really know why he was around, though I appreciated his super powerful follow-up attacks), and super-serious Marie was a nice foil to Lukida’s optimism.
That leaves Gwendoll, the mecha-bike riding action girl with the very revealing top and lips that don’t quit. I liked everything about her character apart from the in-game model, which looked kind of weird and doll-like. This does kind of make sense, though, as it was very heavily hinted throughout that she is an android assassin “unknown” or “doll” but isn’t aware of it, but this aspect of her character is never fully confirmed or really explored beyond the very obvious “hints”. Still, I like Gwendoll, she’s cool, and I guess it’s cool that we know she’s secretly a murder robot even if no one in the game world does.
The music provides a fine accompaniment to the on-screen chaos and brightly-lit cyber-nonsense. There’s a mix of rock, electronica, and classical to amuse your ears, and I did find a couple of standouts, especially in the various battle themes. Incidentally, I’m no musician but the title screen music of Starbites sounds to me like a near note-for-note piano cover of the title screen music in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Go find them both on YouTube and see for yourself.
The battle system in Starbites is standard, turn-based fare with a neat, Persona-like twist where you’re tasked with discovering and exploiting enemy elemental weaknesses. Each enemy has a number next to their health bar that counts down every time they take a hit from an element they’re weak to. Get this number down to zero and the bad guy will enter a “broken” state, missing a turn and taking additional damage until they shake off their mecha-depression. This means that you’ll be paying attention to the elements and number of hits offered by each of your characters’ available moves, and using that info to pile the damage on your enemies and mitigate the pain that’s coming the other way.
The playable characters don’t fight personally, instead piloting “motorbots”, which are essentially mini-mechs (or a bike in Gwendoll’s case), and their available attacks tend to specialise in a couple of elements each, so it’s wise to keep your party rotating depending on the prominent enemy type in a given area. The playable characters have extensive talent trees, too, meaning they can be customised into attacking powerhouses or defensive, support types depending on your preference. There’s also loads of equipment to upgrade your mechs, but only certain pieces are represented visually. I really enjoyed the battles in Starbites, though, and found myself suitably intimidated by bosses with huge numbers next to their health bars and trying to figure out the best way to break them quickly. The final boss makes excellent use of the breaking mechanic as well. I won’t go into it any more than that, but just know that it was a very nice touch.
Alas, it’s not all cyberpunk sunshine and holographic rainbows. Starbites does have some downsides that can’t be ignored. The game did drag at times; exploration is a bit pedestrian, some areas are annoyingly maze-like, and searching for crafting ingredients doesn’t feel rewarding when the crafting mechanic can be completely ignored. There’s an option to speed up battles, and while I didn’t use it at all early on, from the mid-point I was spending a lot of time watching attack animations play out in super-fast motion.
It’s also very visually bland. I used this simile on my RankOne profile already, but when you’re out exploring the wastelands Starbites looks like Stellar Blade if it was running on a potato. Textures are blurry, environments are flat, and the cyborg character models that mope around the hub area in Delight City are kind of dumb-looking. I do like most of the main casts’ character models and the mechs look great, but even these don’t stand up when the camera gets a bit too close, and when the developers put these textures on full display during a cutscene close-up, it can really take you out of the moment.
Still, if you pretend you’re playing a PS3 RPG from your back catalogue instead of a brand new PS5 game, then you should be able to put up with it, and you’ll be rewarded with a wonderfully balanced battle system, fun characters, a legitimately interesting story, and a general, cosy JRPG experience that you won’t regret. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the guy at the counter has just shouted out my number so I’m going to go and pick up my Starburger, Starfries, and coke. All this talking has made me hungry for space-themed junk food.