Starbites Review

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I was really impressed with Starbites after finishing it. Even though the beginning was a little slow, the game quickly won me over. By the end, I absolutely loved it, despite a few minor flaws. It’s amazing how good this turn-based RPG is, considering its size and scope.

Starbites follows Lukida, a salvager barely getting by on the harsh desert planet of Bitter. She’s desperate to escape her hometown, Delight, because the town’s boss, Fennec, unfairly takes advantage of her work and keeps her trapped in endless debt. Fennec constantly adds to the amount Lukida owes, making it impossible for her to ever pay it off.

The game begins with Lukida finally getting a ticket to leave Bitter. She shares the good news with her friends, Gwendoll and Badger, but things quickly fall apart when a strange robot attacks her. After being defeated, Lukida finds herself back in Delight, and her ticket – her chance for a new life – is gone.

At first, I thought the story of Starbites would focus on the search for Lukida’s lost ticket, but I was mistaken. The plot quickly took a surprising turn, moving beyond that initial idea. I had some guesses about where the story might go, but certain important events unfolded in unexpected ways. Without giving anything away, this is where I really started to get hooked on Starbites.

Starbites’ story improves as it goes on, but it often feels messy in explaining why the characters need to revisit areas they’ve already explored. A major issue with the game is the constant backtracking, both in the main story and side quests. Players frequently find themselves retreading old ground to complete new, often simple, tasks.

The game doesn’t have many fast travel locations, which makes getting around a bit tedious. While there are plenty of places to save your progress, you can’t use them to quickly travel across the map. Only a few towns serve as fast travel points – you can return to these towns easily while exploring, but you’ll have to walk or otherwise travel back to any location you’ve left.

On the desert planet, you’ll encounter enemies while exploring. When you do, the game switches to turn-based combat, letting you control up to three characters. Each character has health (HP) and energy (SP) for using skills, plus a special Driver’s High (DH) meter. This DH meter fills up as characters attack and get hit. Once full, a character can activate it – even during an enemy’s or ally’s turn – to act immediately and deal extra damage, with the specific bonuses depending on their upgrades.

Ikinagames seems to have taken a page from Octopath Traveler with how it shows enemy weaknesses. When you meet a new enemy, empty slots appear under their health bar, indicating you haven’t discovered what they’re vulnerable to yet. Most attacks and skills have types like Cut, Heat, or Plasma. You’ll figure out enemy weaknesses by experimenting, but eventually, one of your characters will learn a skill to reveal them all instantly.

Like Octopath Traveler, enemies have a shield that decreases when you exploit their weaknesses. Once the shield reaches zero, the enemy becomes ‘Broken,’ delaying their turn and making them more vulnerable to damage. Some abilities strike multiple times, quickly reducing the shield, and can even gain extra effects through upgrades. If an ability targets two of an enemy’s weaknesses at once, it will deplete the shield even faster.

Enemy placement in Starbites battles is important. You won’t just face enemies lined up neatly. They often appear in groups separated by gaps, or spread out individually. This means you can’t always rely on area-of-effect (AoE) skills to quickly defeat enemies – you’ll need to adapt your strategy based on how they’re positioned.

Starbites starts off easy, but the boss fights become more challenging and require you to figure out how the game’s systems work together – almost like solving puzzles. I especially liked that the bosses provided a good challenge, as the rest of the game felt fairly simple. The game also offers three difficulty levels that you can change whenever you want.

Character development is highly customizable. Each level grants a skill point to improve abilities, stats, and moves while in DH mode. I especially like how impactful buffs and debuffs are. Even simple attacks recover some energy, and can be enhanced to restore both energy and health. Plus, you can freely reset your skill points anytime, making it easy to experiment with different builds and team combinations.

What’s really cool is that each character’s mech can be customized with different parts – like weapons, upper body, lower body, and additional components. Swapping these parts can sometimes create funny, mismatched mech designs, although I wish this feature was more consistent and worked with all mechs. Unfortunately, some mechs, particularly those unlocked later in the game, don’t change much no matter what parts you equip.

Engines and cores are extra items that can really shape how your character performs. Engines have a limited number of core slots, and each engine can only use one type of core. For example, an engine might focus on increasing your critical hit rate and allow you to equip up to two cores. These cores have different triggers – I could equip one that boosts my attack by 40% for the first two turns of a battle. However, I can’t equip two cores that both activate at the start of battle. I’d need to choose cores that trigger in other ways, like when my character’s health gets low, or when any character performs a basic attack.

Starbites really shines when you have a full team, letting you experiment with different character combinations. Even characters not actively in battle still gain experience, though at a slower pace, and they provide support to the characters who are fighting. When a frontline character stuns an enemy, these support characters jump in to deliver a strong follow-up attack.

Honestly, what really grabbed me about Starbites was how well the gameplay flowed and kept me engaged. Everything else was…okay, nothing terrible, but not amazing either. I did find the menus a little clunky to use, and running around the map started to feel samey pretty quickly. Once I got the Scanner, I basically had to hold the button down constantly to find all the hidden chests! It was a nice surprise to see actual, separate dungeons with little puzzles to solve – you don’t see that much in RPGs these days. Though, I will say, the dungeons went on a bit too long towards the end of the game.

My biggest issue with Starbites is the contrast between its beautiful 2D art and its less impressive 3D models. I really like the 2D art style – it’s a nice blend of anime and western comic book art, especially noticeable in the character portraits during conversations. However, the 3D character models in the game just don’t feel as polished or detailed as the 2D artwork. It’s a similar problem to what I saw in Star Ocean: The Last Hope with its 2D and 3D designs, though Starbites handles it a little more gracefully.

Okay, so the 3D models in Starbites… they remind me of those early 3D cartoons from the late 90s and early 2000s when shows were first trying out computer graphics. It’s… a choice! Honestly, the visuals are a little rough around the edges – I noticed some jagged lines and a really noticeable depth of field effect that was kind of distracting. I played it on PlayStation 5, and I can say it ran really smoothly at 60 frames per second, which was good!

During my time playing Starbites, I ran into a couple of issues. Sometimes, if I started a new battle right after finishing one, the game seemed to freeze for a moment while switching to the combat screen. The camera also acted strangely when moving between areas, occasionally panning around unexpectedly, especially after battles when it tried to refocus on my character.

I encountered a funny glitch where the camera got stuck focusing on two characters after a conversation. Once I regained control of my character, the camera stayed fixed on those NPCs, forcing me to carefully move off-screen to leave town and reset the camera’s focus. Luckily, it only happened once.

One of the funniest bugs I found in Starbites happened in Delight with a roaming cat. It usually hung out near a bar, but during one specific part of the game, a lot of characters crowded that same area. This caused the cat to glitch out and rapidly jump around, as the game struggled to figure out where to place it amongst so many other characters – it didn’t seem to know how to handle the crowd!

In addition to the main story and side quests in Starbites, Ikinagames added their 2023 puzzle platformer, The Ramsey, as an extra game you can play. It seems like the full version of The Ramsey is included, which was a nice bonus to discover.

Starbites is a straightforward but enjoyable turn-based RPG. It started a little slow, but I found it became much more engaging the longer I played. While it has a few glitches, requires some revisiting of areas, and has inconsistent graphics between 2D and 3D elements, it’s clear Ikinagames put a lot of effort into this game, especially considering they’re a small development team with big ideas. The game really shines when you’re building a team with strong combinations to overcome challenging battles, creating a rewarding gameplay experience. If you’re patient and give Starbites a chance, you’ll likely end up with a really satisfying RPG.

7

We tested Starbites on PlayStation 5. It’s also playable on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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2026-05-14 15:58