Stella Deus fin

It's been over a year since I first played Stella Deus, but I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago. It was somewhat disappointing in its story arc. The fourth chapter felt like it was lengthed artificially by four fights that were virtually the same.

It's a shame that the cliched story of Stella Deus could turn some people off to what is an otherwise enjoyable game. Like most games I play these days, I find myself enjoying them in spite of the story and not because of it, Stella Deus was no different. I think it might be the widespread abuse of voice acting. Voice acting works when it's coming from a moving character, but from a static portrait I find myself reading ahead and skipping the voice tracks. If, however, you can bring yourself to experience another tale of boy meets girl and they save the world together, then finding a copy of Stella Deus is worth it; especially if you're into the strategy RPGs.

The game works on an AP system. Any actions your character can perform take up AP. Since movement, attacks, and magics all scale on the same AP system, this creates a somewhat unique sequence to battle. It's not always worth it to rush the enemy and overpower them, and careful planning can setup a nice string of attacks to decimate your enemies. The one major drawback to the game mechanics is how big of a deal levels make in the game, and since there's a place where you can go to level your characters (the Catacombs) at will, it makes the game easy. Combine that with the money glitch, and the ability to fuse the best weapons in the game with enough time, patience and research and the game goes from moderately difficult to "even a 5 year old could beat the game." Of course, it's always the choice of a player as to whether they want to go down these roads, but even if you never step foot into the catacombs and simply do all the sidequests available in the game, you'll still end up overpowered for the majority of the game.

Despite the quirks in the combat system and the cliched story, I enjoyed Stella Deus. It's got a nice mix of enjoyable gameplay, enough penmanship to at least make you interested in the characters, and overall it was fun to play. There's still nothing quite as good to me as a well executed strategy RPG, and that's what Stella Deus is.