Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and it is a tasty one too. Developed by Paper Castle Games and published by Fellow Traveller, Wander Stars is a turn-based RPG that is so heavily inspired that I think it is almost fair to say it is a Dragon Ball Z ‘em up. You play as Ringo (not Liverpool’s best drummer), a 14-year-old woman with dreams of being a Kiai fighter, winning the tournament full of similarly colorful characters. Complications arise, things go differently, and eventually, we get the typical JRPG/RPG thing of forming a party.

Sent out by her granny, Ringo is ordered to pick up Coriander (Cilantro if you’re American), but as you might guess, that goes to pot (read “wrong”) and a wolf-man called Wolfe does an Akira as he literally arrives from space. I’m starting to believe Wander Stars, the DBZ-inspired RPG, isn’t very grounded in reality. As it turns out, Wolfe is in search of the Wanderstar Map, with his piece of the map/compass directing him into the path of Ringo herself. The Wanderstar Map is an ancient, mysterious bit of magic, mysticism, or advanced space tech, no one really knows because no one really knows exists.

Over the years of faux-E3, we’ve seen Wander Stars a few times, and it still remains one of the most unique games in that period. With art inspired heavily by Toriyama Akira’s work on Dragon Ball, Paper Castle manages to fit the most distilled 80s/90s nerdoms into almost every minute. Though unlike several other turn-based RPGs of its vein, Wander Stars isn’t about mana, bigger and bigger weapons, or even complicated move names; Instead, it uses Kiai. Kiai is a combat sport of honor and is really basic; punch is literally named punch, kick is similar, jab is just the same. With each attack, you can stack effect/mod words on top.

Broken up into 10 “episodes,” your main two characters are, of course, Ringo and Wolfe: one in search of her brother, who ran away after traumatic events, and the other acting as a mercenary for a mysterious third party. It all sounds paint-by-numbers as I describe it. Especially if you know Kiai from doing martial arts and the fact that you’re effectively shouting your moves across the room, however, it is the charm and warm feeling of Wander Stars that truly carries it. From the art style’s over-reactions to the writing that enforces Ringo’s attachment to her missing brother.

The combat itself is probably the most interesting and “unique” aspect, as you have a select number of words to start, such as punch, kick, big, super, special, and fire. Each has different effects individually, but builds to create distinctive combinations that opponents may be weak towards. Each character, or in the case of standard fights, character types, have different weaknesses, things they’ll resist, and at least one thing they’ll be completely immune to. It makes turn-based fighting more than the typical Pokémon “mash powerful attack and tank the hits” gameplay.

However, that’s not where it is most unique. Each fight with standard opponents can and are encouraged to be ended before you KO them, ending in a peaceful resolution. This allows you to become more powerful with the friends you make along the way. Yes, this is the most anime thing I’ve ever heard in a combat system, but it works. Ending a fight peacefully quite literally has capybara men and crab people asking “ca- can we be friends?” each one offering what is called “Pep Ups,” a sort of passive effect that helps in combat and in exploration.

Each pep up adds a word to your Kiai fighter’s repertoire. However, like all the systems available throughout Wander Stars, these are limited to your current build of character and can be leveled up to have more and more act (action), ele (elemental), and mod (modifier) words, even items you pick up and Pep Ups to have active. However, to level up, you need honor, with each fight providing a small amount based on your actions. KO-ing an opponent gets you Spirit Points, which can give you extra action slots in battle, but Peace Out-ing opponents by getting them between their breaking point gets you more honor for fighting honorably.

It’s one of the most creative turn-based combat systems I’ve seen in a while, outside of active turn-based systems like Paper Mario and Clair Obscur. It sounds simple and it is simple for the most part, but you ultimately need to put a little bit of thought into who you are fighting and how to fight them. For example, there are Capybara men who have a small breaking point window you need to hit to peace them out, while others might have a slightly wider range you can work within. Put that on top of the weakness, resistance, and immunity system, and there is so much more to think about.

All the heavy praise aside, there are actually bits of Wander Stars that fall like a wolf-man out of the sky. Sort of a backhanded compliment, there is part of me that wants to compare Wander Stars to the RPGs of the 2000s, particularly those on the PS2, for one reason or another. The most obvious point is the clumsy and clunky way you move around menus and keep the flow of gameplay. Throughout your adventures as Ringo and Wolfe, you’ll find new words to add to your Kiai selection, but you need to go in and out of menus to sort that every time. The most annoying part is when you get a new pep up, which often comes with an active buff of a new word too.

With this, you need to select the pep up you want, providing you have enough slots for the latest one you collected, and if not, you’ll have to unselect a specific one. If you deselect a pep up that’s useful, you’ll need to re-enable the adjacent word in your act (action) menu, which can and often will have repeats due to the fact that Pep Ups don’t have unique words. Sometimes different Pep Ups will have the same word attached, so you’ll have replicates of replicates. Oddly enough, I had this with the word Replicate.

It is clunky, it is archaic and it doesn’t flow too well for gameplay as you get out of cutscenes or a battle where you get a new word, open the menus, then move a little on the map, and you are thrown into another battle or cutscene straight away. The flow throughout Wander Stars and the search for the Wanderstar Map feels very stop-start, either through repeated animations or certain acts of episodes being story-heavy. I’m not going to complain that an RPG is story-heavy; it would be like complaining you got wet because you went swimming.

That said, the pacing of Wander Stars is similarly inspired by its anime/manga roots as much as its art style is. If you’re not a fan of reading text boxes with characters bulging their eyes out at the smallest inconvenience, then you might have an issue with Wander Stars. Ringo is an example of someone who will make faces, bend over like she’s been punched in the gut, or her face turn blue at the smallest things; if nothing else, the art style is expressive, but some will be eye-rolling at that.

Story-wise, Wander Stars is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Each character we meet along the way, including Ringo and Wolfe’s colorful personalities, shines throughout to paint a colorful and sometimes exciting (and sometimes queer) adventure. However, you are exploring the world and going on that adventure by moving around what is effectively a board game map, sometimes with multiple exits. Some exits, similar to Rogue-lite/like games such as Hades, offer certain power-ups such as a higher word limit for battles, more health, more words of a certain type, or even Pep Ups being increased.

The map is fine the first few times, then becomes tiring as you progress and in longer episodes. This is also where I feel I need to return to the PS2 comparison, as you’ll come across shops along the way to buy health items, new words, and sell things you don’t need. That all sounds fine, until you realize that you can sell words associated with Pep Ups, but you can only activate them before you are in the store or after you come out of it. You can see where this goes, right? Once you’ve been in the store, it disappears – even if you accidentally exit.

Worse still, if you’ve only explored a small section of the current map, open the shop, then find a new word later in that area, and you’re not going to use that episode, you can’t sell it because the shop disappears. It is things like this and constantly having to go in and out of menus to swap out new words that are tiring throughout Wander Stars. These are small things in comparison, but over a 15-20 hour experience, it builds into a mole hill.

From a performance standpoint, I think you could run Wander Stars on a laptop that’s several years old at this point, with requirements such as an i3, 2 GB of RAM, and 2 GB of VRAM. The only technical problems I had were instances of UI having a bad day.

When opening up the Pep Ups screen to swap out different ones, there was a bug where it would automatically scroll back to the top. Sometimes in combat, clicking on words wouldn’t activate them but slightly jolt the word itself around the UI piece it was in. The final “issue” was the fact that having the mouse hover over certain options would cause Wander Stars to rapidly highlight and unhighlight them before selection.

There are things in Wander Stars that you can tell are made by fans of JRPGs of a certain time. However, as someone who is typically tired by those same influences outside of DBZ in the art, Cowboy Bebop in the soundtrack (particularly in episode 3), and so on, I’ve kept thinking about it. Different attack combinations, better ways to play a touch more defensively, and some of the story elements, such as Wolfe and Ax’s initial interaction. It is fun and, in separate sittings for each episode, it is light.

If there is one thing I don’t like or understand at all (aside from stores disappearing), it has to be the Rogue-lite element to each episode. Once you’ve completed an episode, you have all the words you’ve learned ripped away and start fresh in a new area. I get it from a sense of rediscovery because of the limited number of actions, elemental, and modifier words you’ll use, but I still don’t like it.

It feels like once you’ve figured out a combo of words and Pep Ups you’ve picked up in an episode, said episode will end, and you’re going to have to start over again somewhere new. This would be like dropping the Keyblade in Kingdom Hearts once you’ve gotten through “Traverse Town” and fighting your way through “Wonderland” with a chocolate teapot on the end of a Bagger 288. Mechanically, you’ve learned the word; it feels like it should be available thereafter.

Ultimately, Wander Stars is a dark horse of RPG front runners in 2025, which is saying something given Clair Obscur, Avowed if you’re an Obsidian-sexual, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii if you’re more action-focused, and a handful of others. Despite being dyslexic, thus words and I go together like my chocolate teapot metaphors and animal abuse, I love the refreshing (verbs and adjectives) nature of the combat throughout Wander Stars that doesn’t feel slow or lacking strategic thinking. Some will take or leave the plot line for what it is, but it has its charm where it needs it most.

A PC review copy of Wander Stars was provided by Fellow Traveller for this review.

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Wander Stars

$24.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Such a unique fighting system.
• That art style is enough to sell art books on.
• Enjoyable, fun characters.
• A nice selection of accessibility options.

Cons

• A little buggy in places, as I've experienced.
• I don't care for the Rogue-ish elements.