Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth

"A potentially good strategy game ruined by one-to-many flaws"

My Christmas was quite nice -- I got the guitar and amp I wanted, along with a few other things. Unlike previous years, I didn't get any game-related items, so I thought that using some of the money I got to buy Hoshigami would be a good idea. Big mistake.

While Hoshigami was previously hailed to be a ''true successor of FFT'', I quickly found out that this was not to be. Expecting to find a lucrative strategy game that I would quickly get into and waste the rest of my Christmas break on, I instead found a game that was boring, repetitive, and nearly unplayable. I myself thought TheGIA's review was utter biased nonsense until I found out for myself.

Gameplay 4

This is Hoshigami's main flaw -- the game is very, very, VERY hard to play. The menus themselves are relatively easy to sift through, but when it comes to execution, they are horrid. Battles themselves take place on large grid, much like similar strategy rpg games such as Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics. You can dispatch 7 troops at a time, but in most cases the enemy outnumbers you 2:1. Alright, so you've placed your troops, and now it's time to actually get to it. ARGH! MENUS. MENUS. MENUS. You have the usual ''Move, Attack, Item, Status, End, and Magic (CF)''. However, every time you attempt to perform an action, it prompts you with a bunch of text. A usual action session goes like this:

1. Move
2. you pick place, hit X
3. Are you sure?
4. yes
5. Attack
6. select target
7. Are you sure?
8. positive
9. you attack -- this is kinda cool, there is a little line that goes up -- if you get it closer to the end it does more damage, but if it goes past it does low, (think of the original Mortal Kombat's mini-game)
10. End
11. Defend or Standby?
12. defend
13. Are you sure?
14. yes, dammit
15. Choose direction
16. face forward
17. Are you sure?
18. YES!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

So now. You have 18 confirmations to make for ONE character. You have seven characters. On average, you'll doing around 100 button presses just to move your guys per round. And battles take several rounds. What do you get? A long awful chain of button mashing just to perform some simple commands. EVEN WORSE is the fact that the ''Options'' on the world map seem to have no disable of this ''feature''. If there is, someone e-mail me, please.

As for the other aspects of gameplay, they are more or less so-so. Characters are given elements which effect how they perform against other characters. Equipment, recruits, and items can be bought/hired at towns. Magic is handled through ''Coinfeigms'', which is a lot like a simplified version of FF7's materia. However, you can engrave seals to the coins to enhance their effects. If you've ever played Front Mission 3, you'll be familiar with the RAP system. Basically, you can only perform so many actions per turn. Attacking and spell casting take up a bit, and moving takes off depending on how many spaces you traveled. Using this method, you can set up Combo Sessions where several of your characters gang up on an enemy. This is the only way to obtain their Equipment, and is somewhat frustrating to set up. Magic, which later becomes overpowered can often knock off many enemies at once, but you'll be left without their much-needed equipment.

It's also a very slow process to level up, in which case you'll need to go to a Tower. They are upwards of 20 floors, and you can only save every 5. Like in the other battles, you can't revive, meaning a death is a permanent loss of a soldier (until you get the Revive coin which comes much later). Since you'll lose troops so often and easily, you'll either be training new ones or resetting quite often in the battles, making this game more difficult than it needs to be.

Story 5

Ever get tired of reading an old book? This is somewhat what playing Hoshigami is like -- it's a rehash of old ideas. However, it's not HORRIBLE in this department, because it pulls it off in a bearable manner. Basically, it takes place on a land with three distinct regions -- Nightweld, the Valaimian Empire, and Kingdom of Gerauld. As usual, a corrupt organization tries to gain control of it all and civil war breaks loose.

The characters in Hoshigami aren't bad. Fazz, the protagonist, is a mercenary (didn't see that one coming), and his best friend, Leimrey, teaches the youth how to fight (this bottle, of stevens, awakens ancient feelings...) There are, of course, other characters, but it's not so much their dialogue or their actions that are good, but rather their design -- the anime and profiles are nice, and the important sequences are told by large character portraits. Oh, and least they don't ask you to confirm your selection.

All in all, the story is decent, though nothing that made ME want to keep playing.

Audio/Video 5

Another big flaw is the music. It's so infuriating. I'm not a live performer, but it doesn't take Mozart to tell you that it's bad. Even worse, there are very few battle pieces, and they loop quite quickly (to make you even more tired of selecting OK!). None of them are really catchy either. The sound effects, likewise, are nothing to write home about, but at least they don't happen so often that it's annoying.

On the other hand, the graphics are quite nice -- colorful sprites amid 3-dimensional backgrounds compose the battles, and the anime portraits add a nice touch. The FMV scenes are mediocre at best, but move the story along quite nicely.

Replayability 5

Hoshigami has several endings, dependant upon who is still alive, among other things. Unfortunately, the game is so downright annoying, it's unlikely that most people would come back to play through it again. Also lacking is a diverse job and skill selection found in most other strat-RPG games, so there aren't many new takes you can add to battles.

So we have a 4 and three 5's. This game WOULD get a 5, if not for the fact that gameplay is a large issue when choosing a game. This means that when it comes to...

Buy or Rent?

...I'm going to adamantly say -rent-. Decide for yourself if you think you can live through before burning your hard-earned cash. Some people will praise it, but I happened to be one who despised the game. I realize that MY opinions are not the single truth, as some people really do like this game, but remember the old phrase let the buyer beware.

Overall 4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/01, Updated 12/28/01