In spring of 2005, Atlus introduce Stella Deus into the gaming market. Stella Deus, like with so many other rpg games on the Playstation 2 was over looked by the general buying public. This happens when the gaming market is flooded with so many rpg games that there isn't enough money spread around from gamers to buy every single rpg games out there so they can only pick and choose which games they think is best to buy. Other problems that can contribute to an rpg game being over looked is the lack of promotional advertising from the publisher or that since the game isn't base on an already heavily established series that fans are aware of, fans just tend to not bother spending money on an unknown game that they never heard of. Stella Deus faces all these problems. Of course some rpg games deserve to be overlooked while some rpg games are truly a gem that gamers shouldn't overlook at all. The question is which one does Stella Deus fall into? This review will help answer that very question.
STORY
I shall rule this world!
You dare challenge god?
A deadly mist called the Miasma has spread across the land of Solum. Anything that is engulfed in this mist has been turned to nothingness. In this age of despair, the people of Solum have turn to the religious group, the Aeque, for their hope of salvation. Under the teachings of the Aeque, the Miasma is a sign from the all mighty god that this is the peaceful end to mankind that god wishes and the people of Solum must embrace this fate into their hearts and not fear the coming Miasma. However not all of Solum agree with this approach. The Imperial Legion under the command of their overlord, Dignus, set forth on a path of destruction and waged war against the Aeque, the teaching of God, and the people of Solum. If God's will is for people to simply wait and die, than the Legion will destroy God himself. The Legion will use the forbidden science of alchemy to fight against the Miasma and to save the world. But the use of alchemy would require the hunting of the world's spirits to near extinction as it is the spirits who power the science of alchemy. Amongst the clashes of both groups and their political views of the world, a group of friends led by a boy name, Spero, believed that the world destruction is not God's will nor killing spirits will be the solution to saving the world from Miasma. Spero and his friends believe that the spirits are the salvation to the Miasma and the means to save the world. This ideology goes against both the Aeque and the Legion bringing Spero and his friends to an all out clash with both groups. The answer lies within the Gate of Eternity, is what Linea, a shaman, believes to be the way to save the world. Find and open the Gate of Eternity and more spirits will filled the world once again, and with more spirits, the world will once again be save as the spirits have the power to drive away the Miasma. The long journey and search for the Gate of Eternity begins for Spero and his friends.
Now if you look at our summary, the plot looks interesting but looking interesting doesn't mean the story will be interesting. On the contrary, the story is very dull and lacks any sense of believability. It's the execution in how the story is being told that fails. Combine that with the lack of character development and the lack of explaining the history of Solum too. The story is base very much on religion and in a sense the anti religion antics as it tends to portray those that believe in religion as nut cases who believe in anything. Whenever you base an entire rpg story on a religious theme, it's going to turn out bad. The whole notion that the world is coming to an end thanks to the Miasma and that it's god's will so therefore do nothing but wait for your death to come is not believable at all. The idea that the entire population of Solum are just sitting on their butts waiting to die doesn't come off very well. Then you have the whole Legion hunting spirits kind of thing that makes no sense. On this part, the game really doesn't go into any good details on what the spirits connection is to the earth that they live in. We know spirits are living entity but entity of what? We don't know. The whole alchemy is bad because technology can create weapon is so over done in rpg history that it's boring. How many rpg stories have you read where an ancient race have advance so much in technology that their technology for war ended up destroying their race? Quite a lot I bet. This is just a recycle of other old rpg plots. As the story moves along you just become more and more annoyed with the story than intrigue by it. It's hard for you to want your main hero to save a bunch of religious nut cases where they believe that they should just sit and die on their butts because the end the world is god's wish. Heck to be truthful, you'd probably be rooting for the so called bad guys, The Legion, to kill these nut cases. The point of most rpg stories is to bring hope and excitement to help save the world. It's not a good sign when you the player are hoping to join the bad guys and kill the so called people you are supposedly trying to save in this game. The real message here is simple, leave religion or the theme of religion out of video games please.
Score 5/10
CHARACTERS
We're suppose to be good friends.
The game features about 14 casts of characters. This includes the bad guys as well as the good guys. However the story mainly focuses on the top two main characters, Spero and Linea. Character development overall is generally lacking. You get bits of here and there about where these characters are from but nothing too concrete. Their personalities also lack the kind of charismas that would make gamers fall in love with them. They come off very boring and annoying at times. You just can't seem to relate to any of these characters at all. Add in to the fact that the bad guys seem to be so uninteresting and dull that you can't seem to even care enough to hate the bad guys to even want to fight them. The story never really puts any focus on what the objectives the bad guys were trying to do or any really sinister deeds that would make them such bad guys to begin with. Another factor is that some of the characters act so unnatural that you can't believe that real characters or people would act this way. And when this happens then the story will start to look too fake to be believable. This is one of the most lackluster casts of characters around.
Score: 5/10
GRAPHICS
Am I not beautiful?
Visually speaking the game uses hi-resolution artworks for pretty much everything. Story cut scenes are played out with each character talking through a bubble displaying their text messages with the artwork of that character. Battle scenes and background environments are also done in nicely drawn artwork graphics. The character designs are drawn with a nice cartoony touch but lack the rich attention to details that you would expect. Outside of the main casts of characters in the game, every other character seems to be drawn with less originality and lack inspiration to them. The colors used in the game are very nice to the eyes with a bit of softness touch to them. There are few small CG scenes in the game that comes off very well done giving that nice touch of sketch art appearance with a cel-shading effect to them. However even though the artwork is nice, the overall effect or look of the world in Stella Deus is too simple when compare to the much more bigger and heavily graphical 3-D approach of the other rpgs out there. I find the graphic to be pleasing but too simple because I wanted to see more from the land that is known as Solum.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
I..I can't hear anything.
Music is a bit of a disappointment here as I can't recall any of the musical tunes in the game being stellar at all. The main theme of the musical scores is the battle theme which comes out very dull and uninspiring. At times I find the battle music to be an annoyance as well. There are towns and characters musical scores I'm sure but due to the lackluster of the tunes, you can't tell which is which. The musical scores are nothing more than just random music playing in the background of this game. And that's not good as you don't want the music to simply be random background music playing in the background where no one pays any attention to, you want the music to be grabbing gamer's attention during the game. Another problem is that the volume of the music tends to be too high for its own good, especially over the story cut scene where the voice actors are speaking. This isn't good when you'll trying to hear what the voice actors are saying but yet all you hear is this annoying music playing over their voices. Overall, during and after the game, you won't recall a thing about the musical scores of this game.
Score: 5/10
GAMEPLAY
Time for a good Rank Up
Team Combo Attack
Game Information
Genre: Strategy Rpg
Publisher: Atlus
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 76 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: April 2005
Stella Deus gameplay is very linear and simple for gamers to get a hang off very quickly. The concepts behind most strategy rpg games are, you have a story cut scene which is then follow by a world map showing you where to go for your next destination. Upon arriving at your destination, you'll quickly be entered into a battle map fight. At the end of the fight, you'll get a story cut scene again. The process then repeats itself as you move onto your next destination. Stella Deus carries this same gameplay concept. Once you arrive at a town, there are no town explorations. You basically get a menu option when you arrive at a town after a story cut scene. The menu consists of options that allow you to shop for equipment and items, visit guilds, save the game, and customize your skill settings, and even rank up your fighters. Battle maps are done in the way of your usual 3-D map settings. You can place up to 6 party members on the battle maps. From there you move your characters in a turn base fashion. The victory condition of each battle maps will vary. The game itself can be hard or easy depending on the level of your fighters. Some features you should be aware off are:
AP:Action Points are the backbone of this game. Every move and action that you can take depends on what remaining action points you have left. At the start of each turn, a character has 100 AP. For each action he or she takes, their AP gauge goes down. Once the gauge reaches zero or too low that no action can be taken, their turn is up. Understanding how to manipulate your AP around can help you win a situation in your favor. Being able to move in and hit your foe and move out before your foe can even get a turn in is the best strategy to win all battles in this game. Ranks: In addition to the basic of just leveling up, a character can level up in Rank. A rank is basically a title that a character can achieve. Each so call rank up or new title achieve, a character can learn new addition skills that weren't available in the previous title as well as receiving addition stats boost with the new rank up. However for a rank up to occur, you not only need to meet a certain level acquirement, you also need to acquire a special rank up item for that job class. Skills: Skills are broken down into three categories. They are Action Skills (special attacks and magic), Support Skills (skills that help boost stats or give special effect stats), and Zone Skills (skills that give an effect on a zone surround the character). In order to use a skill you need to first have that skill equip once you learn that skill. You can learn a skill once you have enough skill points require to learn it. Each character comes with a set of skills they can learn. But all characters can learn addition skills through the use of using a skill scroll. Team Attacks: This is probably the best feature in this game. Basically a team attack occurs when you have at least a minimum of 2 party members in the same area as the target that the one party member is attacking. If all the so call party members that are going to participate in such a Team Attack has the require Team Attack skill point still available to use, then you can choose to unleash a devastating Team Attack. It's really fun to see a Team Attack consisting of all 6 party members doing massive damage. However keep in mind that the enemies can also use Team Attacks against you. This is where the balance of the Team Attack is unfair against you. The enemy can Team Attack you from a very far distance while you on the other hand can't. And Team Attacks can literally wipe out all your party members quite easily. Guild: Each town has a guild. This is the place where you need to go in order to pick up any side quests that available or to fuse items together using fusion. Fusion:One of the most unique feature in this game is the ability to create pretty much anything from equipment to spell using fusion. The art of fusion is to combine different items to make one item. Fusion can be fun and rewarding but it ends up not. There are two problems with fusion. First problem is that you'll need lots of money to create really good items through fusion. Money will be hard to come by unless you cheat. Last problem is that there's no hint of how to create stuff with fusion. You literally have to blindly fuse items together to see what you get as an end result. So unless you have some sort of walkthrough or guide on how to create good items than chances are you'll never be able to find out how to create anything good on your.
There's nothing too fancy about Stella Deus gameplay. Most of the components in this game are like with most strategy rpg games that there's no real need to read the instruction book. The only learning curve is understanding how to rotate the AP on your characters to give you an advantage during the battle. This gameplay might be a bit too simple for the more experience strategy rpg gamers out there. In fact the gameplay might border line on a bit too dull for those that are looking for something more than the usual basic strategy rpg game. It's a good beginner tools for those that are looking to try out a strategy rpg game for the first time. As an experience gamer, I find the gameplay to be generally lacking in the fun factor. Another contributing factor to the lack of fun is due to the lack of good story and characters.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
The Catacombs of Trial
This game surprisingly does offer a lot of side quests for you to do. These side quests can range from small extra battles to just delivering and creating certain items for people in various towns.
You can access these side quests from the Guild in towns. Some side quests are one time quests while some are repeatable quests. The concept behind these side quests is to help you earn extra money as well as receive some items as a reward. The side quests themselves are kind of boring overall. However you can spend a lot of hours on them if you truly are a motivated player who wants to complete every single side quests in the game. With the exception of the side quests, the game does offer one bonus dungeon for gamers to spend some extra gameplay hours in. This bonus dungeon is called the Catacombs of Trail. The Catacombs has 100 floors for you to climb. If you plan on climbing to the top 100th floor than be prepare to spend some major gameplay hours on it. I would dare to say that climbing the 100 floors takes longer than actually playing the regular story game from beginning to end. The Catacombs is a great place for you to send your characters to for some leveling outside of the regular story gameplay. Another useful purpose besides leveling your characters there is that you can acquire some good equipment and skills in the Catacombs that you can't get from shops. In fact if you are into Fusion and creating your own equipment, than the Catacombs is a good place to look for the ingredients needed to make those high level rank items. However in terms of actually receiving a good reward for spending all that time climbing to the very 100th floor, you don't really get much. There's no extra hidden boss fight for you to fight and the reward that you get from completing the 100th floor is a nice accessory for one of your characters. But in all honesty, the accessory becomes useless because once you reach or completed the 100th floor, your fighters are so powerful that they don't really need such an accessory. Yes, if you combine all the side quests and the Catacombs of Trial together, you probably be looking at 40 hours or more worth of extra gameplay. Downside is that those 40 hours can be 40 hours of boring gameplay where things keep repeating itself from the same fight over and over again depending on how you look at it and who's playing the game. There's no New Game+ option for you so any replay will come from the fact that you really wanna try and play the game again. But I doubt many people will even think about replaying this game again.
Score: 7/10
Unfortunately in the end, Stella Deus plays out as just a regular typical strategy rpg game. The story and characters are too plain to captivate gamers and the gameplay is just your usual basic run of the mill typical strategy role playing element that there's not much for gamers to be excited about. In this day and age, gameplay needs to be cutting edge with an addictiveness feel to grab gamer's attention span. If not, than the story and its characters need to be interesting to keep gamers pushing forward with the game. This game neither has a cutting edge gameplay nor an exciting storyline. By the time you are halfway into the game, you be just wishing to either get the game over with or just plain abandoning it for another game. Stella Deus isn't bad, it's just an average game amongst a console where there are so many better rpg games that there's no real reason to pick up this rpg game unless it's on a cheap discount or you really have no other rpg games to play. The game came with little fanfare and it will leave with little fanfare.
