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The hardest Tactics game I've ever played

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game when I first got it, it looked great. The first few battles made me think this game was gonna be pretty fun
...... About the third stage in I was going crazy....
The enemies... they outnumber you (ALOT at times)

One level in this game means the difference between being a god and not even worth being on the field
A level 5 person can take on probably an army of level 3's
And wipe out pretty much any level 4 person

So I kept playing, the story was pretty interesting.. .I liked that part alot
But I mean this game made me want to track down the creator of this battle system and kill him
Every stage is harder than the next....
From an army of archers you cant reach until the end of the stage
While they destroy your troops, and the other enemy warriors that are higher levels than you beat the daylight out of whats left
The only way I even got remotely towards the end of this game was magic..... I developed insanely strong magic early in the game

Of course soon, they caught up with you and had the same devastating magic.... Which can kill some of your best warriors in a matter of moments

This one battle its at a castle (I dont remember the name)
Well its 3 consecutive battles
The first battle I did ok in
The second battle I squeeked by without losing a character
The third battle........
.....The leader walked over... killed my main character in one hit with a magic move and game over

Dont get this game unless you like being frustrated beyond belief

Lots of potential ruined by bad writing and an inconsistant battle system

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Strategy RPG's... my favorite genre of games, the perfect balance between story and gameplay. I first acquired Hoshigami about a year after it came out, it took a lot of effort to find it since their weren't many copies to begin with. So, was it worth it? Not really, now to explain why.

First off some pluses, the game does two things which I really like in Strategy RPG's: First you get to choose what the main character says at various points in this game, so it's important to think before you respond, and second if any character dies in battle including special characters they are gone for good, including in the story line, this second part however, actually works against the game, I'll get to that a little later, first the battle system.

The battle system is different than most games in that it has the RAP system. Rather than each character getting to move once and then do an action like in most games, in Hoshigami every action costs RAP points and if you have enough points you can do the same move several times, most importantly attacking, this gives people defending a position a huge advantage in battle, the defender often getting 3-4 attacks off before the attacker gets one. This leads to a lot of strategy about where to move, taking ground and pulling enemies, or at least it would if the computer's AI wasn't so bad, it uses just the standard stand around until you get close enough and then it charges you, its dumb enough that it's pretty easy to exploit if it weren't for how strong your opponents are. Yes your opponents are often well above you in level, and even if they aren't they still manage to inflict an annoying amount of damage.

The games difficulty isn't its biggest flaw though, it's how easy it is to exploit. The game uses equipable magic called Coinfeigms, now Coinfeigms bought at the store are so weak that they are pretty much unusable, however you can merge them together to create better ones, while this is a mildy complicated and expensive venture, once you do you can create magic strong enough to level half the enemy army on the first turn, by the time I was finished with the first chapter I had magic strong enough to kill enemys from the 4th chapter in one shot. This took all the challenge out of the game and made the battles terribly boring, but at least I didn't have enter the Tower of Trials that often.

Yes, the Tower of trials, its like a practice arena where you can level up weaker characters, sounds good until you realize people that die in there really die, you have no idea how aggravating it is to finally get a character to fighting levels only to have it die in the tower before you can leave. I doesn't help that the tower has generic square maps most the time with generic mercenaries to fight, the whole process is enormously tedious.

The overall storyline for Hoshigami is actually pretty interesting, but it suffers from two major faults. First off the writing is really bland. There's not many translation or grammatical errors its just that the writing seems like it was geared toward 12 year olds, and just doesn't immerse you at all. Second is, as I mentioned before when a character dies off in the game that character dies off in the story, also many characters have to be saved, either in battle or by choosing the correct thing to say, the problem is the dialog doesn't really adjust very well. The problem isn't the story doesn't make sense if a character dies off, on the contrary, the creaters seemed to think you would get everyone in your party killed and would fail to recruit everyone, so the game ends up repeating itself many times. Your main character will seem suprised each time a plot twist comes around despite the fact that saving an NPC 3 battles earlier means that you already heard this particular plot twist. Also Characters once they've been recruited, and are therefore killable generally disappear from the storyline. Sort of disappointing since sometimes it's maddeningly difficult to save some of them just to have them fade into the background with all the generic mercenarys.

Despite this the game has a pretty interesting storyline with one big twist, if you manage to do all the pre-req's to see it, the kind that has you looking back through the game realizing you should have seen it coming if you were paying attention, and the overall storyline is good even if it is poorly written.

Overall I can't really recommend that anyone buy this game, its just not fun, even if your a fan of the genre, you'll find the battle system tedious and inconsistant, and the storyline poorly written and repetitive.

Facts

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was not fun for me. Final Fantasy Tactics was a much better game. Tactics was released in 98 and Hoshigami was released in 01. Tactics was released almost 4 years before Hoshigami. Check the dates.

Food for thought...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 16
Date: August 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

For all those compairing this to Final Fantasy Tactics and calling it a clone... This came first... by a long shot, this game was made before Tactics.

Side quests and more side quests...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Hoshigami is a good looking rpg tactical game. I enjoyed the MANY side quests and all the towers. It took well over 100 hours to complete them all. However I can honestly say that after all that I cant remember anything about the storyline what so ever. Its only been two weeks since i finished this game and i remember very little of the plot. I enjoyed defeating the dungeons, finding weapons, and using the well designed coin system, which was fun. If you can play strictly to enjoy the battle maps and side goodies i highly advise this title, however the story is lacking and forgettable.

A Frustrating Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Even with extensive experience involving various incarnations of the strategy genre, I have never discovered a game quite as frustrating as Hoshigami. Difficult challenges can be entertaining or provide an innovative approach to dealing with situations within a video game; however, the pure difficulty of this game is absurd. Many of the challenges presented are completely unwarranted and unnecessary. Inevitable defeat is manifested in the very battle of your own mediocre characters versus god-like opponents.

Imagine this scenario: For a solid 5 hours, you have been consistently leveling up and strengthening your troops in the same bland battle environments. When you suspect that you have gained the necessary statistics to confront your enemy, you enter one of the major "missions" of the game. However, one of the characters which you have dedicated 5 hours to building up falls in battle. What can you do? Nothing. I recall several occasions in which I almost broke into tears when one of my fighters was slaughtered, as if one of my own dear friends had passed away.

Another utterly frustrating situation involves saving a particular non-playable character during a battle. Under these circumstances, the character which you must save is often surrounded by enemy troops while your own band of soldiers is several turns away from arriving to the place where they must conduct the fight. Additionally, the enemy fighters will have obtained a high level equal to the strength of your own army. The special character will usually be a decent 5 levels lower than every other combatant on the battlefield. You will watch hopelessly as the special character will be massacred in a matter of minutes, thus resulting in failure of the mission.

Even standard battles requiring the defeat of all enemies on the map are unfairly challenging. Your group of seven fighters will often be outnumbered in a 2- or 3-to-1 ratio. While it would be fun to simply run head-on into the battle and fight off the opposing forces with brute force, such strategies will not prove to be successful. The placement of troops during a battle is absolutely critical and requires investment of time to scope out the statistics of all enemies in the area. Each character's elemental deity plays an incredibly significant role on their survival. Certain characters could be murdered in a matter of three hits from the enemy unit (note: refer to second paragraph to see what to do if a character dies).

Despite the frustration involved in actual gameplay, the other aspects of the game are rather lovely. Character designs and conceptual artwork for the game are of noteworthy quality. Although the background music becomes monotonous after a while (the battle music has a tendency of remaining the same), certain melodies are rather charming (such as the mystical introduction tune or the pipe music that plays in the Save and Load screen).

The storyline isn't particularly outstanding, but many of the characters possess a certain charisma that draws you to their separate personalities. A certain mystery surrounds some of the characters which may prompt personal ponderings and investigation. In this way, it seems that the game is driven more by the characters at times than the storyline.

In spite of its few redeeming qualities, Hoshigami is simply the work of sadists. Although at times amusing (primarily during character conversations), the core of the game--the actual gameplay itself--is severly lacking--or, perhaps better stated, severely frustrating.

People just dont understand

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

One of the best games ever made for the Playstation console. Why do I say this, Hoshigami isnt some push over games us Americans are used to. Where we just level up and beat are enemy to a pulp. Its not for the weak at hearted either. This is one hardcore RPG. One your enemy will always be somewhere around your power level no matter what. Its hard to, not some easy cheesy game. Youd better get some bawlz or red bull because your in for it with this game. The thing I like about this game is the deities. You get to be some sort of different color, and can change and teach you cool and different skills. The game has been given some silly and aweful reviews, by people here, and on the top game reviews out of fustration because it was difficult. I guess all games to them are suppoed to be for simpltons like them. Its sad :( Hoshigami is a great game and everyone should play it.

Don't even consider it as a coaster

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: May 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

My rating = -1/0 (negative infinity) stars.... this is a veterate FFT clone: It has the turn based battle system where actions and moves consume your turn gauge (not even an analog.....a facsimile of FFT). Even the target for your spells and attacks is a set of red squares. Don't get me wrong... I played FFT for over 300 hours and I still enjoy playing it (although I conquered deep dungeon etc.), but this game became intolerable after two hours. Why ? This is not exactly a FFT clone... because it is lacking a job system entirely... meaning that you can only choose between certain deities (sort of like zodiacs in FFT) that modify your stats.... that's it and there are only 6.... so there are really only two classes: Melee/Range and Mage. So you could look at it as a FFT restricted to jobs/classes (meaning there are none), but with horrible music, and a ridiculous difficulty. Having the identical battle system induces it's inheritance of the one/two character lvl up, because otherwise you will die of the monotonous battles before you can lvl your entire party (that consists of 7). Unlike FFT, however, there is really no place to lvl up besides ONE STRUCTURE (THE SAME MAP OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN THE PLACE YOU SPEND YOUR MOST TIME GENIUS ATLUS!) And most of the time you may spend yout time cursing when you need to rescue a character and it dies instantly from three hits from three different enemies that have a 10% chance of hitting (probability is .001). This game is so horribly monotonous and frustrating that I gave up offering it to my friends (since they knew better the bastards) and simply smashed the CD and threw it away. I don't think atlus could have done a worse job with this game considering that it was FFTs successor: Dont buy it, dont even play it unless you want to piss yourself off, and make sure you throw it in a dumpster that you don't like because I wouldn't even defile my garbage can with it.

Can't say it was wonderful

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: September 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Yucki poo.
That's the simplest way i can write this. Hoshigami is just not a game i like. The fighting sequences are very predictable, confusing, and L--O--N--G. Also, when equpping, and even hiring characters/mercenaries it can get very confusing and muddled. The only thin i liked(and the part that stopped me from giving this game a zero) were it's very nicely drawn characters.

...agh...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Yay, paychecks in, I'm going to the mall, oh lookie, a new tactics rpg, and look!! it's by Atlus! 45$? sure thing! ...

So I go home, put it in, it's sort of interesting... but not really dragging me into it, the way tactics ogre or vandal hearts did... but I press on, because, I did spend money on it...

First three battles... Not that difficult, but still, definitely harder then ones from other games I've played, but hey, that's alright, I don't mind a hard game, if it's fun...

But it's not, ever... I kept playing hoping for some big moment when I'd think it was all worth it, but it never came, I just wasted more and more hours, finally I beat the game, more out of habit then actually wanting to, as soon as I beat it, I put it back in its case, drove back to the mall, and sold it to the clerk at the store I bought it at for 9$... technically it's not his fault I bought the game, but since he worked at the store I bought it at, I felt I could get some revenge...

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