Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity

"Strong build up to climax only to fall short at the resolution, still an excellant game..."

This is my first review, so bare with my here. I'd first like to start by saying if any game gets an 8 thats pretty damn good, as i have yet to play a game that ever will recieve a 10. All right here we go.

Story:
Stella Deus, the story of a young man by the name of Spero and a Princess who want to save the world from The miasma, a misty cloud thing that spreads across the world and destroys all life, pretty basic yes? That's just the basic gist of it. Getting in your way is the imperial legion lead by the overlord Dignus who want to lead the world into chaos and destruction. Spero starts out working for Dignus after suffering defeat in his hometown as they want to use his friend Viser's alchemy to save the world (or do they?) Viser sends Spero and his friends Grey and Adara out to hunt for spirits which are than used to power alchemy, but of course they find out that this is bad and it turns out to be the cause of the miasma's spreading, so Spero and his buddies join up with Linea to go save the world. The story has quite a few plot twists and its views on religion as expressed through the group called the Aeque, (a religion believing that the miasma is God's will for a peaceful end for those who follow him,) are expressed in such a way that seems entirely realistic. While the story is not the best out there, it does offer memorable moments and everything leading up to the end is beautiful, only the ending is rather mediocre.

Gameplay:
This is actually what makes this game what it is, than again gameplay should make any RPG, sure story is important but youre still playing a video game, bad gameplay is no good. (oops digressing ^^;) The battle system is of course a strategy based one in which you command units across a map, (think Final fantasy tactics, Arc the lad, ya di ya da) towards enemies. Everything is set up in this game to show that movement is key to success in battle. You can equip various weapons and army and even items onto your character but every item carries a specific weight, after a certain weight is reached it starts raising your MOV stat which is bad. This is where the AP system comes in. AP is like MP, or HP only it replenishes every turn and it falls when you do anything in battle. For example say Spero has 13 MOV, its going to take 13 AP for everty square he moves, if his attack takes 28 AP, he can attack three times, and move across the map. However as said earlier, carrying too much heavy equipment can raise the AP required to move from square to square, this adds a bit of challenge with item management to the game. Movement is also important in battle because of one of the greatest features of this battle system, Team attacks. Depending on the positioning of the characters up to six characters can be used in one devastating team attack. There are two types of team attacks, regular ones involving basic attack animations, and the special ones which can be done when a certain combination of characters are used. For example, Trinity strike involves Spero and Grey hitting an enemy and Grey tossing it up in the air for Adara to blast with one big beam. The difficulty on this game depends on your leveling, though with a bit of strategy one can easily take out a boss that is many levels above them. Fusion is also a nice feature of this game as it enables you to create far more powerful weapons than those sold in shops.

Graphics:
The world of stella deus is drawn rather plainly which seems to be the point, as the world is barren and dying, however when there is need for such detail in the maps seem to be quite well done. The basic enemies of the game pretty much look all the same and look more like cyborgs than anything else, while your main enemies are drawn beautifully. The main characters are also well done, nothing to complain about here. Cinematics of this game are drawn in a unique and undescribable style, though it seems to be one of those either you like it or you dont styles.

sound:
Appropriate for every situation is the music, yet the tunes often get a little repeatitve, as someone else here said about the soundtrack, the game is too long to have such a short song list. There are some memorable themes done in here, but all and all the soundtrack is fairly average. Voice acting is slightly average though seems to improve as the game progresses, as if they took some actor in training and recorded straight through without any retakes, than of course the actors and actresses just improve the more you play. In the beginning both Spero and Viser seemed rather monotone, but towards the end Viser's voice was quite well done in a dramatic scene and hearing Spero scream out someone's name actually was pleasing to the ears.

Over all:

If you like strategy RPGs this game is for you. While it does have quite a few flaws the game does present a lot of unique ideas that can be examples for other strategy games to come. Viva la Stella Deus >O

total score:

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/06