When Sea of Stars was released in 2023 it received a lot of praise for its callbacks to the golden age of JRPGs. Beautiful graphics and some truly great music captured the hearts of critics. However, some found the combat and plot to be not quite as impressive as the rest of the package. Sabotage Studio has tried to improve these aspects with a major update late last year that added new mechanics to combat as well as a revamped prologue. Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker looks to take these improvements a step further. With new classes for Zale and Valere, a new party member and more personal story for the main protagonists, can this DLC convert someone who failed to be charmed by the base game?
The Strength of a Name
The DLC begins after the completion of the main story with Zale and Valere receiving a message that something is wrong with Keenathan, one of their pirate allies. Keenathan has received word from the Sky Council that his real name is, in fact, not Keenathan. This sets in motion Zale and Valere’s journey to try and help their friend out by visiting the Watchmaker to engrave Keenathan’s name into a pocket watch to solidify his identity.
Upon visiting the Watchmaker, she tells you of a problem of her own that needs attention. Inside her large clock resides a civilization, Horloge, that she created years ago that was sabotaged by Aephorul, the Fleshmancer. Those who enter with a strong aura will manifest a twin that takes on the persona of the original’s dark traits. The Watchmaker’s evil twin has taken dominion in Horloge, forcing the Watchmaker to seal it away. She tasks the Solstice Warriors with liberating Horloge. Due to the risk of manifesting too many evil twins, only Zale, Valere, Arty and a few of your pirate crew are allowed to take on this journey.
Upon the small group entering Horloge, they quickly encounter The Puppeteer, the Watchmaker’s twin, and her minions, Pif and Pouf. They steal the Solstice Warriors innate powers and imprison the party. After breaking out, with the help from Arty who is now fully playable, Zale and Valere gain access to new classes that replace the powers that were stolen from them. From there the Solstice Warriors set out to defeat their evil twins and The Puppeteer.
It’s a solid setup and I liked the idea of going up against evil versions of our main characters. You’ll have encounters with these twins throughout the DLC and also run into the Puppeteer and her cronies from time to time. However, I feel like the overarching story of the DLC falls flat in the end.
I didn’t really care about Horloge or its citizens, and the story never fleshes them out enough to really give you a reason to save this small world, other than because the Watchmaker said to. The Puppeteer just comes across as a cackling cartoon character for the majority of her appearances and the story never really motivated me enough to care about beating her. I wish I was given more backstory to The Puppeteer or given insight into what she wanted to accomplish other than being evil just to be evil.
A Little Personality
One of my biggest complaints with Sea of Stars was the characterization of Zale and Valere. As the main protagonists, I should feel a connection with them, either as a player stand-in or as fully realized characters with distinct personalities. Instead, Zale and Valere kind of straddled the line between the two. What little personality and character they had wasn’t enough to distinguish them as memorable. This left me with very little care for their fates or to be invested in their journey.
It’s clear that Sabotage Studio recognized this flaw and looked to rectify it with Throes of the Watchmaker. Zale and Valere’s evil twins give us our most substantial look into the Solstice Warrior’s personalities and flaws. Zale’s twin believes that he only wants to be a hero for attention and vanity reasons. Valere’s twin represents an anger and rage inside of Valere that she contains.
This is a fun way to explore these characters and gives the Solstice Warriors a sense of identity. The scenes where they interact with their twins are some of the best moments in this DLC. The inevitable confrontation against these twins are also the best boss fights in the DLC, having some of the more interesting gimmicks to their battles. I still find Zale and Valere a little underwhelming as characters and wish that there was more of these personality traits in the main game, but I can still commend Sabotage Studio for giving them a little more to work with here.
New Classes, Old Gripes in Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
A major selling point to this DLC is the addition of new classes for Zale and Valere. These classes play into the circus theme of the DLC with Zale gaining the Juggler class and Valere with the Acrobat class. Each character starts off with two skills and will gain an additional skill after leveling up a couple times.
These classes are fun to play with at first, but they still have the same shortcomings as the original game. Only having three moves for each character to perform means you will just be using the same attacks over and over again throughout the ten hour experience. I was hoping these new classes would open up new and interesting ways to develop your character, but actually found them even more limiting than combat was in the base game.
On top of this, unlike in the base game, upon level up you don’t get additional attribute points to disperse to your characters stats. There are only six levels, called renown in the DLC, to gain and all the stat increases are predetermined. The only choice you have in improving your squad is by feeding them candies you can find in the world that give small stat boosts.
This just further trivializes combat and makes it something you want to actively avoid once you reach max renown. By the end of the DLC I would find myself getting annoyed when I entered a room with enemies in it. Why would I want to engage in these combat encounters if there is very little reward or incentive to do so? Also, not being able to use the classes outside of the DLC is a bit of a disappointment. I would have liked to be able to freely change between Zale and Valere’s classes upon completing the DLC and mix it up some more.
The Artificer Joins the Fray
Early on the DLC, Arty gains combat abilities allowing him to join Zale and Valere in battles. Arty works as an all-around character, boasting high defense, good physical stats and a heal. He can launch the other party members out of his cannon and bounce them off a trampoline to hurl them at enemies and use his lasers to attack.
While he is fun to use at first, he suffers from the same problems mentioned above. His limited move set leaves a lot to be desired and his trampoline move takes a long time to build damage making it tedious to use. I understand how Sea of Stars wants to make its turn-based combat engaging, but after coming off of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 I couldn’t help but compare how much more fun and exciting the active time components were in that game.
I was also slightly disappointed in Arty’s role in the story. For the most part, he serves as a deus ex machina whenever an obstacle presents itself for the party. Almost every problem is written off by Arty having just the thing to get them through the situation but he just withholds this information just because he wants to wait for “the right time”. It’s humorous at first, but they return to this well way too many times for it to remain fun. It’s also a shame that you can’t use Arty in your party outside of the DLC.
Puzzles & Mini-Games Galore
Just like the base game, Throes of the Watchmaker boasts a large number of puzzles to solve. These puzzles offer just enough challenge when traversing through dungeons and successfully break up combat encounters. There were more than a couple times I had to pause for a minute and really examine my environment to figure out how to move forward.
There are also an assortment of optional hidden puzzles that you can complete in order to gain coins that fit into a mysterious clock at the center of Horloge. I do recommend going out of your way to collect all of these, as there is a pretty good reward for those who are into Sea of Stars lore.
There are also a number of mini-games to play in Horloge. After you gain all of your teams abilities, you are able to then use them in games that give rewards and tokens to spend at the stores around town. These are relatively simple games and only took a few attempts to get the best ranking in each, but they were a nice diversion from the rest of the game.
Lastly, Throes of the Watchmaker brings back the Wheels game. There is a new figure to collect that you can then use to challenge three difficult challengers in Horloge. Wheels never really clicked for me, but for there is enough here for those who did enjoy it to sink their teeth into.
Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker is More of the Same
All in all, Throes of the Watchmaker is worth the time of those who loved Sea of Stars and are looking for a reason to return to this world. Horloge is an interesting location to explore and being able to see a side of Zale and Valere that was absent previously should give you just what you wanted from this free DLC.
For those like myself who came away from Sea of Stars feeling a bit empty or disappointed, there isn’t much here that will change your mind. The same shortcomings are present here, and the additional classes and party member don’t add enough to the combat to allow it to really elevate it beyond where it already was. I really hope that Sabotage creates a sequel that can improve on my issues because I desperately want to love this series. As it stands, Throes of the Watchmaker is just a decent addition to decent game.
Lastly, Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker is available now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Disclaimer: Sabotage Studio provided a Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker DLC key to Final Weapon for review purposes.
