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Fun but not a very sustainable game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There are a lot of classic tactics games - Final Fantasy Tactics series, Disgaea series and the whole lot of Nippon Ichi iterations. Stella Deus is by Atlus, with the same Atlus style graphics and interesting gameplay. But it just couldn't match up with its counterparts in the Tactics Camp.

This doesn't mean that it is a bad game. It is a very decent game but the flexibility it offers and the replay value of the game are not as high as many other Tactics game. First about the job classes. In the Final Fantasy Tactics series, the number of jobs that you can try is just silly - silly in a good sense that you can play with so many combinations that you just enjoy watching how your newly created job works on the battle field. However, in Stella Deus, jobs are preset. You can class up but with a limit and you need certain items to class up. So after a while you are already just using the same character again and again. Also the design of the generic classes are not that interesting either. So that really affects the gaming experience if you need to drill through 100 levels of generic dungeons.

The story characters and optional characters are really well designed. However, it is just very difficult to get the optional characters without a walkthrough. Example, you will not know that you need to overkill them several times to get them and also at the beginning of the game it is very difficult to overkill your boss enemies. So by the time you found that out, it is already too late. However, if you managed to get all the optional characters, the team becomes very interesting with all the variety of skills you can have in the game. That is a plus for your effort.

The game tried to provide different ways of keeping your interest in it. For example, the 100 levels Catacomb, Missions and Alchemy Fusion. But then after a while they are just more or less similar. Also certain missions don't come up without certain characters in your party and sometimes they can get ridiculously difficult to achieve the goal. For the Alchemy Fusion, they are very random. Random not in the sense of you don't know what you will get, but in the sense of you don't really understand why two swords fused together could become maybe a potion. So there is a lot of trying through the menu and after all the trial and error you will just go straight to the online walkthrough.

Story wise it does have a very good story - and make more sense than the Final Fantasy Tactics series. It is much darker and certain cutscenes are beautifully drawn. Other than that you have a lot of time scrolling through nicely painted character boards with sometimes really annoying voice over. Also the graphics are not as pretty as a lot of other tactic games. The special team attack skills are well drawn but for all the other skills you can see their budgetness. It's just not pretty to look at while you consume your MP to perform them. In the end, I just hack the enemies to death most of the time.

The game didn't provide a game save option to gamers who finished the game but strangely enough the final boss will still give you good items. That makes you think 'what is that for if I can't use it at all?' I think Atlus really need to think about this in the future. With no game save, it is very unrewarding to replay the game. All Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Disgaea and Fire Emblem have game save options to unlock more stuff for the game and that makes it more replayable.

In all Stella Deus is still a solid game put together but it is not a game that will tempt you to spend more time than you need to finish and replay it.

Really Easy or Really Hard, Interesting Tactics Offering

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Stella Deus is one of the few decent tactics games available for the PS2/X system, produced by a company with a reputation for tactics games. Personally, I rate it near the bottom of good tactics games, but it makes the list.

Sound is average, graphics on the higher end for tactics games, and special attack animations are on the long side. This makes game pacing slower than Disgaea, but not as slow as La Pucelle. General Viper, a sub-boss in the early game, has the worst English voice actor ever, but I liked the voices for Echidna and Spero. This isn't a big deal (at least the characters have personality). I set message speed to fast, and quickly clicked through annoying story scenes, reading the text before they finished voicing (I read fast, heh).

Personally, I find the heart of a tactics game to be the difficultly. In Stella Deus it is variable. You have two ways to play -- challenge yourself or blowout. The game becomes remarkable easy if you venture into the catacombs and level. Stella Deus has no random encounters, but you can always go into a fixed dungeon from town, and therefore can easily level your party until they reach level values equal to the basement level of the catacombs. If you do this, story mode is a joke. However, if you choose not to use the catacombs at all, this is perhaps the most fiendishly difficult SRPG ever! I can't think of a more ringing endorsement than that, for those of us who love these games. On the minus side, it is impossible to recruit certain characters in the uber-hard path (you'll be lucky to defeat enemies, much less overkill them).

This game would have been wonderful with higher enemy variety and faster combat. You'll want to run the catacombs eventually for the postgame bosses waiting at the end, and slogging through them is extremely tedious because you'll be fighting stupid enemies with bad AI. In my opinion this game is perfect when your party is about two levels lower than all enemy units. It is impossible to maintain that and see all the game has to offer though.

My recommendation: buy Phantom Brave, Disgaea 1&2, and Makai Kingdom first. If you've solved those, Stella Deus is nice next choice for a tactics game.

Stella Deus is neither fun nor very good.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: August 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Stella Deus is a tactical rpg from Atlus. The game plays very similar to past tactical rpgs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogres, and Disgaea. Unlike traditional role-playing games where the hero character, and the supporting NPCs who join him, can roam the roads, forests and lands between cities and regions freely, tactic games pretty much just linear road-links which takes a character icon from one marker to the next signifying a cities on the world map.

Like all tactics-based rpgs, Stella Deus uses job classes which can be levelled into much stronger ones, with class name changes included. This is done through constant battles and the exp gained from successful attacks (melee, ranged and magic), supporting actions, and use of items. Stella Deus has a way of creating high levels gear and weapons from current inventory which is pretty exhaustive in the amount of combinations can be used. Though some combinations just doesnt make sense in that some powerful weapons and gear can be made by combining a weak low-level item with a medium-level one while combining two high-levels can get a player a useless low-level item. As fun as the item creation system is this small flaw can make things frustrating at times.

The voice acting in Stella Deus is one the worst I've heard in games, so far. The people who did the voices for the hero, the supporting characters and some of the npcs I can only sum up as being below-par and just downright amateurish. It sounds as if the actors hired were just reading what was put in front of them without any sort of emoting required. It doesn't help that the story itself is pretty dull and uninteresting.

The gameplay itself is pretty much your standard tactics-style grid battle where the player positions his party as strategically as possible to gain an advantage on pre-positioned enemy units. After a few battles its really simple to figure out just how to position your party so that you pretty win every battle with little or no trouble.

All in all, Stella Deus doesn't match-up to the great tactics rpgs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and Disgaes. It doesn't even come up to the same level as the second-tier tactics rpgs like La Pucelle, Makai and Phantom Brave. I'd recommend this game as a rental, but even then I'd only do so if a person really wants to try it.

An Absolutely Vile Localization

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: December 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Well, like others who got this game, I was drawn in by the very fine art of the cover, and the fact that it's a tactics game. In fact this game is not unappealing on the outside, it's not until the game starts that the absolutely appalling voice acting reminds you that: Yes, this is a Japanese video game, only it has been poorly converted into English to scrape some money off the bottom of the US economy.

The art work may have cost a bundle to make in the first place, but the localization was apparently done by five guys in a basement. The main character sounds absolutely dull-minded, like he hasn't slept for three days and has a mild concussion. He is also apparently swaying back and forth in front of the microphone, because two adjacent lines of dialog have totally different volume levels. I don't mean slightly off, I mean one is like whispering and the other is like shouting, I'm talking 300% volume level change between two lines of regular dialog. This game could go from a 1 to a 3.5 or 4 if they gave you an option to disable voices or switch to Japanese voice-overs, but neither option was coded into the game. It makes me laugh that it's so abyssmally poor considering it was listed as a major feature on the game's own website.

In terms of gameplay, I can't speak much for it, it seems like a cookie-cutter tactics style game. Its features are on par with the first Tactics Ogre, or some other NES/SNES tactical rpg, that is to say the features are dated or non-existant. In light of that and the extremely poor voice acting, I could not suffer myself to defeat the first major boss. There are no random encounters and no means to level up before facing a boss that can kill most of your party in one hit. You must instead make your main character run around the edge of the map with the boss chasing him, while another character takes him down one hit point at a time until he finally dies, and I wanted no part of that.

Atlus ports a lot of very good games for American audiences, such as Atelier Iris, Disgaea, and the Shin Megami Tensei series, however this is hands down the most disappointing game I have ever played, and it is a mar on Atlus's reputation in my eyes. What is obviously some very good character and world art are completely squandered by the hideously poor voice acting and the ho hum gameplay. I rented this game from GameFly and sent the game back in disgust the very same day I recieved it.

Poor effort...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 27
Date: June 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was a great disappointment. I am a huge RPG fan, and have been unhappy lately with the offerings. Everything is "action" RPGs...real time combat, so many movies your sould screams with impatience, lots of button-mashing tricks to perform, you can beat a game without ever learning a strategy deeper than "hit the attack button." I have been pining for a decent RPG with turn-based combat that forces you to THINK. This game was not it.

The Plus:
No random encounters. Random encounters can be fun, but many games just have TOO many. I swear, I've played games where you beat an encounter and then fall into another one less than two steps latter. That can be frustrating, especially when you're trying to solve a puzzle or advance an interesting part of the story. Stella Deus eliminates that frustration. You fight when you want to fight!

Combat scenarios are great. Not the best animation, but I like the AP concept. Cool movement, especially use of the terrain.

Fusion. Other games have similar concepts, but this is REALLY easy to use. Intuitive.

The Negative
This could have been made over a decade ago. Non-interactive environments (actually, no "environments" at all, except in combat!). Fairly weak storyline. Easy to beat. Side quests are short (some less than a minute) and boil down to one or two quick battles or, even worse, you pick a quest and the game seemingly randomly tells you if you succeeded or not. BOORING!

I figured out an easy way to level up. Take a weaker character (not too much weaker, or the other characters will dodge all his attacks). Put him in the first level of the catacombs with a bunch of more powerful characters. I have found that a character killing a character two levels higher will earn about 50 exp. You can level up pretty quick. On the first level of the catacombs, after a few levels, you can ignore the opponents (they always miss) and just concentrate on having your party murder one another. Spero can die in the catacombs without ending the game (as long as one of your characters survives). You can level up pretty fast this way. Even if your characters are the same level, you can still level up faster by just murdering one another in the catacombs than just about anywhere else.

If your levels are five or more higher than the bosses, strategy is no longer required. You'll pound on 'em!

All in all, a poor effort. One star.

Its about time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: June 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've always liked SRPGs, but they're just aren't enough of them. Especially for the PS2. FFT is the best I've played, but I'd proprably put this right after it. Disgaea was fun with outrageous levels, but I wouldn't want to do that again. {2 much work} Lapucelle and Phantom Brave didn't really do much for me. The reason I instantly liked Stella Deus more than the nimon ichi {don't know how to spell it but u know who I mean} games is because of the story. Its no FFT, but at least its worth hearing. Disgaea was comedy driven, but Phantom Brave insulted me with its kiddy simplistic story. Stella Deus gameplay wise, is solid. Its not as complicated to learn as the others, but it isn't shallow either. Instead of set turns, its all a matter of AP.
Example: The more armor you wear, the more weight, hence the more AP will be spent on each action. The only promblem I have is the afore-mentioned lack of enemies. Cool bosses, every now and again, but mostly the same old enemy classes. Unlike FFT where you didn't see certain classes until later in the game, Stella Deus decided to show you all of them pretty much right off the bat. Also, {and for some reason none of the reviewers seemed to mention this} the graphics are the best I've seen in an SRPG. I know thats not saying much, but its true.

Mediocre effort. Tactical RPG fans need more depth.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Seeing the same 5 enemies over, and over, and over, with the occasional "guest appearance" is not my idea of depth, or replay value.
The battle system is well thought out. (even if it hasn't changed since Hoshigami) Instead of a move and then an action like every other TRPG out there, you have 100 AP (action points) to spend every turn. You can either use some of this to move and some to for an action in the traditional way, or you can move just a little bit, but not enough to place your next move after the enemy, and then basically get a free quarter turn. Also good is that you can attack as many times as your AP will allow. Some characters, if not moved, can get in upto 3 attacks a turn.
Now I will say that there is some depth to customizing your characters, but not nearly enough. Maybe if the game had come out BEFORE Final Fantasy tactics I'd have been fine with it, but it can't hold a candle to FFT's job system. To say nothing of Disgaea and Phantom Brave.
The whole item combination system is nice, but the recipes are a little too arbitrary. That is to say there's no logic as to why you would get any specific outcome. (cloth armor + herb = lance???) It's trial and error and that's it.
The quests are similar to Final Fantasy Tactics but even in that simple regard the game comes up short. The quests give either a fight or some info.
The big problem here is that after playing games with insane amounts of depth like the aforementioned FFT, Disgaea, and Phantom Brave...
Well this game just doesn't measure up.
Not only that, but those same 5 enemies you see over and over? They're also what your mercenaries look like.
Whoohoo.
Also there's a blue haze over the screen during battles and it gets annoying. Yeah I understand that it's the 'miasma', but I'd still like to see the games visuals sans blue fog.
So. Solid but not something you can really sink into.

Basically next gen hoshigami

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 20
Date: May 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Fans of Atlus' PS1 Tactical RPG Hoshigami are doubtlessly going to find alot to like in Stella Deus.

It's very much stylistically similar to Hoshigami with a few interesting tweaks such as Fusion - combineing two items to make 1 unique item (think bow + axe = cloth shirt?)and much more indepth character developement.

What i really liked about Hoshigami was it's unique twist on turned based combat - the ability to speed up a characters next turn by taking no action or little action. Stella Deus brings the same kind of strategic depth by also utilizing the same feature.

Another important point to make is that so far i've found Stella Deus to be one of the more difficult tactical RPGs i've ever played. Despite spending a fair amount of time leveling up i've had to resort to cheap tactics in a few battles. (such as getting a boss to chase one character while pumbeling him with arrows for an hour from an elevated position)This does alot to hurt the overall experience.

In short there are alot of other tactical RPGs for the PS2 i would recommend over Stella Deus (such as Disgaea Hour of Darkness and Growlanser Generations)but if you especially liked Hoshigami or want something a little different then Stella Deus is definately worth checking out.

The best since Final Fantasy Tactics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: May 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Granted it's not FFT yet it's the best Strategy RPG out there right now. the gameplsy is just fun, the grphics and the art design are pretty smooth and accomplish well on getting the player in the feeling of the game. The story is not as complex as FFt but its still pretty good, being far more serious than that of games like Disgaea or Phantom Brave.

i fu like SRPG's I highly recommend it.
a review from a fan to fans.

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