It made me miss Arc Rise Fantasia, another flawed gem from the late, great, irritating Imageepoch. And round and round and round.Īnd back and forth and back and forth for the first 20 hours of the game while I was ripping my hair out, JUST TALK TO ONE ANOTHER, DAMMIT!!! Stupid Alto. When she tried to tell them something they wouldn’t listen. When they asked her a question she wouldn’t answer. BUT STILL! I was forced to sit through a whole load of nonsense and made to do a whole lot of dumb stuff when everything in me was screaming NOOOOO, THIS IS ALL WRONG! Hilda this, Hilda that, Anthem this, Anthem that. And that the Anthem Program was a bad idea. That’s why I could tell from the start that Hilda was actually trying to save the world instead of destroy it. I’ve played too many JRPGs, that’s the problem. No, what really stuck in my craw was the story. Those are the main things that bothered me, but hardly enough for me to quit over. Or a battle where you have to protect a character who won’t stay put? Hmm, Sakuyaaaa? You will also be forced to use all characters at some point, which sucks if you benched characters like Archibald and Keith as soon as you got them. A battle you lose if any enemies die? And the enemies have Self-Destruct and aren’t afraid to use it? RRGHHH. The game also gets a bit too easy from midgame onwards once Delay, Follow up and Sickness orbs become a thing.įurthermore, some of the victory/defeat conditions are annoying. Animations are also a pain to sit through so I turned them off after two chapters. There’s always a little pause as each enemy decides what to do even when they end up doing nothing at all. Stella Glow is better than most, but it’s still boring to sit around waiting for your next turn to come. Niggling nitpicks: Isometric SRPGs tend to be a bit slow, especially when they’re speed-based. La la, the power of friendship will always overcome evil and dumb decisions, la la At least as far as gameplay is concerned. It’s a very low-stress high-reward kind of game. Apart from the Follow up Orb (which is a must-have IMO) everything is a nice bonus to have but you can still get by just fine with store-bought weapons and items if push comes to shove. Same with the treasure chests dotting the map and the stealable items most bosses had. At the same time missing them didn’t destroy your game completely. Most of these are very doable AND they give great rewards. They copied the ‘Brave’ system from Summon Night games where you get bonuses for achieving certain conditions. It reminded me a lot of the great passive-attack fests in Shining Hearts, Glory of Heracles and Exstetra, but on a much smaller scale. But even before that it’s fun to see nice effects going off at random. Nonoka + Control Condition + Delay + Sickness orbs) you can make life considerably easier for yourself against tough bosses. Stuff like pre-emptive attacks and critical hits and follow up attacks that give you an extra turn when you kill an enemy are all very nice bonuses to have. I also liked what they did with orbs giving extra, often random boosts. There was always a point to using someone in particular versus another character, but no one character was completely useless. Even characters that used the same weapon (like Popo and Keith or Nonoka and Rusty) had different speeds, ranges, skills and passive abilities. All the witches had highly distinct skillsets, personalities and abilities. It’s a very player-friendly game.Īs always with Imageepoch the characters were clearly differentiated. Generous EXP from enemies + full HP/SP refills on leveling up. Lots of grinding opportunities but very little need to grind. Nice compact maps so you don’t cross empty terrain just to reach one enemy. No height effects as far as I can tell but some minor terrain differences. Standard isometric SRPG game with all the standard SRPG features like back attacks giving extra damage and side attacks extra accuracy. Why can’t I ever be indifferent to Imageepoch games? Why do they always get such a rise out of me? Why did you have to die, Imageepoch? Who is going to piss me off now? _ Notes on Stella Glow‘s gameplay It’s good to finally get it off my mind and off my playlist, but… I wish I’d never played it. With one or two exceptions they are all technically sound, so you end up playing more than you should even when the story makes you want to bash your brains out against the nearest sharp corner. That’s the problem I have with Imageepoch games. I almost dropped it several times along the way, but the SRPG gameplay kept drawing me back. Finally finished the wretched game known as Stella Glow.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |