Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth

"Takes a while, but that while is fun once you're there"

Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT), Tactics Ogre (TO), as well as many other names spring to mind when thinking of Strategy RPGs. This one is a bit in its own league, as the difficulty from battle to battle will leave you in a panic if you're not sure what the hell you're doing. However, if you can get past the first few hurdles, the game becomes much more enjoyable when you're slaughtering 25 enemies in a single spell cast.

Story 6/10

To be honest, the story is very similar to FFT. You are a mercenary for hire, and eventually get caught up in a war between the nations as well some involvement of a legend of old. I can't say more otherwise I'd spoil it, and that's bad if you're actually interested in this game.

Battle 7/10

This is the core of many bad and good reviews for anyone. First off, turning off navigation will stop the annoying confirmation messages. As though a player is supposed to know that navigation really refers to confirmation/safety messages, is beyond me. This makes the battles much less tedious and more enjoyable.

Now, onto the actual fighting. The game features a new system called the Ready-For-Action Points (RAP, from here on). Essentially, everything you do is based upon this. Every player, enemy and ally, has a 100 point limit. If you go over that limit, you're going to have to wait much longer to regain a turn. Enemies will pretty much never go over the limit. However, it is possible to completely skip someone's turn and place them anywhere along the line via spending RAP points should you choose defend or session. This allows you to hit the enemy or move closer, and allow yourself a chance to nab a second turn before the enemy to move in and strike them down before they know what hit ‘em.

Next up, sessions. This is a rather hard thing to get into, as you need to use sessions to gain items and Coinfeigms (CF, essentially your magic). The biggest problem is getting spaces to session the enemy. If you leave a few enemies out there, they WILL move to block your session, and hit your sessionees. You will need some kind of immobilizing spell in order to make this easier, or kill all enemies until one remains. The next problem is if you kill them with a 4, 5 or 6 session (4, 5 or 6 sessionees respectively), there's a chance it will drop any of the items, skills or CF they're wearing. So unless this enemy has no skills equipped and has no armor, there's a low chance of getting that CF you actually want. This means you're going to have to upgrade your own junk in order to get the things you want, or spend many many hours hoping to nab that one coin.

Almost done with battles, one minor thing left. Battles are difficult if you have no clue what you're doing. If you're new to this genre, prepare to get your butt handed to you multiple times. Enemies in the battlefield generally have many advantages over you. For one, their CF doesn't suck. Unless you've been religiously upgrading, there's a good chance they got 8-10 of them that has AoE as well as 3-6 charges. They also will generally have better armor and weapons than you. To add more insult, they will always outnumber you. The only way to gain levels outside of story battles is the Tower of Trials. The only problem is, is that it doesn't realistically shadow the fights of the story. Enemies in here are usually much lower in levels and in numbers. However, if you do manage to get to levels high enough, story battles become ridiculously easy. It's insane.

Oh and don't even think about dying. There's a good chance you won't be seeing a revive spell until later, we're talking almost end of the game later. Once they die they're gone for good, so watch out.

Graphics 8/10

The graphics were actually nice. They worked the 3-D and 2-D magic well like FFT, my only complaint is that the spells were rather bland. 8 types of magic, and roughly 4 to 5 levels of spells. That's it for battle magic, as there's absolutely nothing else to do inside battles aside from melee attacks. The spell animations actually looked like it hurt once you upgrade it to level 4.

Music 2/10

Utter crap. Really, the songs got annoying after the second loop. Each song is like 20 seconds of the most annoying horns and trumpets you'll ever want to hear. I just turn off sound and blast other music. A real low point, considering Atlus has done better elsewhere.

Sound 3/10

Every weapon has the same sound when it hits, and every critical sounds the same. The dying screams are kind of funny. Once again, Atlus has done better elsewhere. Don't play this game for the sound or music.

Replayability 3/10

Considering the time you need to put in to get somewhere good, it's very easy to miss that one cutscene you need to nab that extra character. Honestly, all you get is an extra ending where one character is dead, two are dead, etc. Very possible to beat the game without recruiting special story characters, as the generics you get at the start are worth their salt. I really feel bad and congratulate the person who will actually replay it from the start just to get all the alternates.

Overall 7/10

This game is rather daunting at first, but you'll begin to pick up on AI and begin to notice what they're doing. If that fails, just outlevel them and destroy them no matter what they do. The catch-22 of this game is you're most likely not going to beat it at a low level your first time around. You're gonna spend more time in the Tower of Trials leveling than you are storyline battling. However, if you do manage to get past that hurdle you will enjoy slaughtering 25 enemies at once with powerful CF, as well as one-shotting people with your weak mage characters. That's where I see the fun in this game, the mass kills that you won't really get with other strategy RPGs. This is definitely a game fellow RPGers interested in the genre should look into.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/08

Game Release: Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth (US, 12/20/01)