Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth

"Only for those who wish to spend hours leveling..."

Hoshigami, to me at least, was expected to be the closest thing I'd ever get to another Final Fantasy Tactics. Was it worth my 6 months worth of thinking about it? Not at all. I normally don't do reviews until finished with a game 100% but at 75% of the game done.....this game has made me angry like no other game, besides Alundra...which was at least a great. I've beaten Final Fantasy Tactics well over 20 times and beaten most other tactics-type games at least 2 times. Still, this game is INSANELY hard.

Graphics-7

About what you'd expect from a later-life PS1 game without high production values. That's about what you get here. Nothing will hurt your eyes. However, nothing will make you want to look at that spell/attack/section of game an extra time. I didn't think any of the spell animations were really focused on at all in the making of this game. Now that I think about it, the graphics weren't focused on at all, as a whole. This is pretty normal for a tactics/RPG though. People who like tactics games normally don't care about graphics one bit. At least none that I know, including myself. If you've played Final Fantasy Tactics (Will be called FFT from now on), then you'll know exactly what to expect from the graphics here, minus the cool looking summons.

Sound-7

About average here. The music is pretty good but there aren't nearly enough tracks. Nothing in the game is even worth an online download. Not that it's really bad, just nothing that will stick in your head. The sound effects for the attacks hitting are pretty good though. In fact, the only tactics game with better sound effects is Vandal Hearts 2. Really good effects for the cracking of an axe over someones skull, or an arrow going into someones chest. Even magic attacks sound pretty cool when they connect. Critical hits sound pretty painful...heh.

Gameplay-8

Before I go into this, I'll note that to be fair, I'll put difficuly in it's own section. I was expecting the gameplay in Hoshigami to be pretty great, based on what I'd heard. I was right for the most part. A lot of innovative stuff here. Instead of getting a single attack and a single movement within a turn, you have a system called ''RAP''. You have a certain number of RAP points to spend per turn, and the number goes up with levels. The RAP points you have are measured by a bar, not by numbers, which is easier I think. Each square on the battle grid costs a small amount of your bar. Same with attacks. Magic (Called ''Coinfeigm'') cost a bit more than a normal attack, with some powerful Coinfeigms costing an entire bar. About 3/4 of your bar is considered ''normal'' while the last 1/2 is ''over''. ''Normal'' can be used for movement, items, Coinfeigms, or attacks. ''Over'' can only be used for normal attacks. So basically the game gives you a VERY large amount of freedom to do whatever you want to do. Spend an entire bar moving a long distance for your arrow-user to get away...up to you. A troop right next to an enemy at the beggening of a turn? Bust off 3-7 attacks in a row! It's all up to you.....too bad that there isn't much other than normal attacks and a small of magic attacks. FFT had over 400 attacks, Vandal Hearts 2 had over 200, Tactics Ogre had a large amount, Hoshigami has...well, a very low amount. Besides the 75 or so magic attacks (that do pretty much the same thing, very low amount of varity), you have about 75 skills that you can equip. Seems like a good amount. That's what I though. Then you realise that 5 of them are exp-up 10% through 50%, 5 of them are counter 10% through 50%, and 5 of them are defence-up 10% through 50%. A good number of them are pretty useless too. Plus, a character can only equip 3 skills at once. ''I spent 5 battles leveling up my dev points (Skill points, 100 per skill) just to get a counterattack skill that almost never works?'' is something like what you'll be saying a pretty good amount during the game. Besides that, there's an attack called ''Session'' that can be done. Hit this to finish off a boss character and you'll normally get a pretty good item. It works like this-When your turn ends, you can pick to ''defend'' or to ''session''. Defending raises your evade and lowers damage you'll get. If you pick session, here's what happens-The character picks a direction and get set to ''session'' an incoming enemy. When you hit an enemy, pressing triangle allows you to do a much lower amount of damage, but sends the enemy backward 2 spaces. If there's an alli set to ''session'' on the square the enemy is hit onto, the character standing there will hit the enemy 2 squares in the direction they were set to session. This can be chained by all 7 characters, allowing a 6-hit session attack that will kill almost anything in the game. This sound great right? Well, it is.....when it hits. Sessioning takes a good number of turns to set up and a lot of space is needed. I had problems hitting anyone other than the final enemy left with anything more than a 2-hit session. The good items gotten by sessioning can pretty much only be gotten by 4-6 hitters, meaning that you'll almost always have to save the one enemy that you need to kill for last. This can ruin battles if you're not careful, and is sometimes nearly impossible.

Story-7

Pretty good, but I was expecting MUCH more from a tactics game, which normally have VERY good storylines. The story is mostly politacally-based, as are most tactics games. I have something against giving away ANYTHING in my reviews, so that's about all that can be said here. The story is pretty solid but not good enough to take any focus away from the battles.

Difficulty-1

1.....that sound that it would mean too easy doesn't it? I normally love a good amount of challange in the games I play but this game goes way overboard. The enemy normal has all this over you-Power, levels, map advantage (archer is always high up, ect), and almost always AT LEAST double the units you do. However, the most important thing that they have? The fact that they can keep fighting after the loss of a single unit. What does that mean? Well, when a character loses all HP in this...they die...forever. No such thing as revival after battle, no such thing as a revive item, no such thing as a revive spell. This doesn't mean much early on, but at all characters around level 30, buying a level 1 troop pretty much ruins the game. Death in 1 hit normally. This means that battles have to be done PERFECT. The way I played, if a character died...reset time. This makes it pretty much NEEDED that you're about 10 levels over enemies at all times. That's the main thing that ruined the game for me. Hoshigami is so hard that a person who can beat FFT using just the main character and no one else (me), had more problems simply beating half of Hoshigami's battles. After every battle...back to the tower to level up another 30 minutes to 2 hours.....GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Final Thoughs-

This game is only for those who are utter experts at tactics games AND have hours and hours of their life to waste leveling up. If you didn't understand even one tactics game-term I used in this review (units, troops, levels, skills, ect) or didn't understand the basic battle system (I purposly didn't explane about movement radius and grib-based battling) then don't even THINK of buying (or renting) this game. Go play FFT, beat it 10 times, then THINK about playing this.

Graphics-7
Sound-7
Gameplay-8
Story-7
Difficulty-1

Overall score-6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/02, Updated 01/03/02