About 15-16 hours into Sea of Stars and it's... okay.
Like I definitely think it's a little overrated. It's like a 7.5/10 so far. Strong points are the pixel art which is quite good, however the game itself is lacking that "it" factor. First of all, it needs voice acting. The character writing is average and it could have been saved with some decent voice work. The main characters are cardboard, and don't really have enough dialogue to flesh out their personalities (except the one overly positive dude who's like the participation-medal member of the party). Level design is fine, although it is carried too much by the excellent art direction and less by the actual design of the levels themselves. They're not bad, just not anything that is mindblowing. Serviceable is what I'd call it. Music is pretty good, but for something that has Yasunori Mitsuda as a guest composer I was expecting a little more. I don't think it's because it's substandard musically, but it just doesn't gel for me. Nothing super memorable so far either. Boss fights are actually pretty good and shows the game in its best light, the turn based combat is actually fun. Story is kinda middling so far. It's struggling to hold my interest. I think maybe it's because I don't care about the characters due to the first point about character writing?