Wander Stars Feels Like A Lost Anime Series Where Words Are Your Weapons
Tune in next time.
The heyday of blockbuster turn-based RPGs may be well in the past, but on the indie side, the genre is still alive and well. Just after Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 reignited a love of turn-based games among a huge number of players this year, one of the most inventive RPGs in years is showing off its unique battle system in a public demo and a closed beta.
Wander Stars wears its anime inspiration on its sleeve. One look at its character designs shows that its art is heavily inspired by retro anime like Dragon Ball Z, and the similarities don’t end there. The whole game is structured in a series of episodes with their own story arcs and mechanics, focused on high-energy martial arts fights complete with over-the-top attack animations.
The anime-inspired RPG Wander Stars has a short closed beta ahead of its August 1 release.
In Wander Stars, you play as Ringo, a precocious kid living with her incredibly jacked grandma in an isolated town. While out getting groceries, Ringo has her necklace stolen by an anthropomorphic wolf named Wolfe, and quickly realizes she’s held the key to a legendary map without knowing it for years. Wolfe is just one of the many characters trying to collect all the pieces of the Wanderstar Map, which points to great fortune. After another treasure hunter gets away with the prize, Wolfe joins Ringo — partially out of fear of her grandma, who is, again, incredibly jacked — on a quest to get it back and maybe find her brother in the process.
While Ringo is just a little kid, she’s more than capable of holding her own thanks to her training in Kiai martial arts, which forms the backbone of the game’s combat system. Rather than choosing from a list of preset spells and abilities, you have a huge dictionary of words to choose from, and combining them in different ways can grant unique effects. At first, it’s as simple as combining Super and Kick to add more damage to your basic kick attack, but the complexity quickly ramps up. As you gain levels, you can add more words to your pool and use more of them at once. More advanced words let you add elemental aspects to attacks, strike more targets at once, or repeat your last word for more damage.
The word-based battles of Wander Stars let you craft your own attacks.
Even at that basic level, Wander Stars’ combat feels totally unique. New words are added to your inventory quickly, and finding the best way to combine them is extremely satisfying. Wander Stars also relies heavily on exploiting enemies’ weaknesses. Each enemy has a random list of weaknesses and resistances to individual words. Hitting them with a word they’re weak against not only does more damage, but also grants you a spirit point. At the beginning of the game, you can use four words per turn in battle, split up into as many different attacks as you want. Spirit points let you restore one use of a word, meaning if you can stack multiple attacks against weaknesses, you can stretch your turn further and further, limited only by the time it takes for each individual word to cool down before it can be used again.
Even in great turn-based RPGs, it’s not uncommon to get stuck in a loop of doing the exact same thing every fight, because it’s what works best. But since every enemy in Wander Stars has a unique set of weaknesses and resistances, it does away with that problem, demanding a newly crafted strategy every time.
Wander Stars’ story feels like watching an old-school anime series.
Wander Stars is more interesting in the long term because of randomness, too. At the start of each episode, roughly an hour long, Ringo herself is given a new set of weaknesses and resistances, as well as a new set of starting words. Having to rebuild your stable of skills every time means you’re always trying to find the best way to use what you have available, adding an almost roguelike twist to the game but still maintaining the feeling of an authored story.
Wander Stars’ limited beta offers the game’s first three chapters, while a public demo shows off only its first. Both offer a look at one of the most promising RPGs of the summer, with a cute anime-like story to carry you through one of the most interesting turn-based battle systems ever.
