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My sojourn through the Sony booth did pay some dividends, though. Along the way I happened to bump into Robert Boyd, who is currently in the midst of working on Cosmic Star Heroine, a retro-style 16-bit RPG that riffs heavily on Chrono Trigger and Sega CD RPGs like Lunar. I hadn't had the opportunity to play Cosmic Star Heroine at that point, so I decided to stop by and try it out, and I'm glad I did.
Playing it there on the show floor, all the complex systems that Boyd's described on Axe of the Blood God started to click. Basically, it's a combo system in which moves have to be planned several turns in advance. You can use a powerful attack right away, but then it's unavailable until you rest. It's much better to time things so that you buff a character right when their power meter is full and they can attack every enemy at once.
I have great respect for Zeboyd Games' understanding of JRPG battle systems. Their approach to Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Doom was a near flawless melding of Grandia and Final Fantasy XIII that featured a huge number of meticulously crafted encounters. Cosmic Star Heroine is superficially similar to Chrono Trigger, but is otherwise totally different, bringing its own unique ideas to the table. I was impressed with how well-paced it all felt, and I can't wait to play more.
Zeboyd Games has quietly been one of the best indie RPG developers for a while now, Cthulhu Saves the World in particular standing out for its outstanding soundtrack, strong battle system, and hilarious script (as I told Robert, I got into Cthulhu Saves the World because it made me laugh within the first five minutes of booting it up). Cosmic Star Heroine is their magnum opus, though. It is miles beyond anything they've done before, with lovingly crafted cutscenes and an atmospheric soundtrack; and in terms of presentation, it stands with anything I've seen on the SNES. It makes me glad that I got lost in the Sony booth.
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