With Buried Stars on PC, You Have No More Excuses to Not Play It

After being on the Nintendo Switch platform for more than a year, Buried Stars makes its way to Steam.

This Korean visual novel received high regard in our review, and we also did a video on the good things about it here. But now I’m sure everyone is asking: Is the PC version worth getting? Or should you stay clear from it?

To start things off, there is no “exclusive PC content” here. Instead, this is the same game as you’d see on the Nintendo Switch, and that may come with its fair share of advantages and disadvantages, depending on who you ask. Still, with the PC version on Steam, the game is now accessible to many players, and even if you’re outside the US, the game’s price is adjusted relatively in Steam’s regional pricing so that you can nab it for a very fair price.

While I didn’t review the Switch version, my thoughts on the game mirror Jacob’s; this has to be my favorite game in regards to the atmosphere it sets, thanks to its depth perspective. The stage the characters are in is rendered in 3D but their sprites are rendered in 2D. As you go through the cutscenes, the sprites overlap on top of each other, creating the classic “2.5D” experience that you might be familiar with from games such as Danganronpa. The transitions between cutscenes are also amazingly well-crafted.

The localization…well, I said this was the same version as the Nintendo Switch release, didn’t I? Unfortunately, it seems that the game did not have any revisions or corrections done for the text in the window of time between the Nintendo Switch version and the PC release. It’s a shame, but none of the localization errors I encountered were deal-breakers that worsened the experience. I still enjoyed it.

The PC version is otherwise very stable. I had no hiccups or frame drops, and the game does a pretty nice job at allowing players to switch controllers on the fly, whether you want to play with a keyboard or controller. I didn’t notice any noticeable improvements on the loading times, but the cutscenes didn’t take long to load, even on an SSD.

My only gripe is that you cannot play the game on a “windowed” mode resolution like 1400×900. The only options for resolution are borderless or full screen at 720p and 1080p. Even if you reduce them, the game will just look blurrier, as the window does not resize to fit the new resolution.

With Buried Stars on PC, you have the perfect opportunity to play it, and I totally recommend the game for anyone who enjoys the genre. You don’t need a powerful PC to run it, let alone a lot of storage space. I can guarantee that if you’re an adventure game fan and like thrilling stories, then you definitely have no more excuses to hold off in playing this absolute gem of a game.