Stella Glow seems to be a simple SRPG with witty dialogue and featuring yet another ’end of the world as we know it’-backstory. But it adds some interesting twists to the genre and one of the better animations I’ve seen in this genre on a portable system!
A song of Crystals and Destruction
Stella Glow starts off with a typical backstory featuring a boy, Alto, adopted by a poor family in a tiny village next to the woods. He doesn’t seem to remember his past and carries a strange artifact around his neck. As a divine prank of destiny that very necklace seems to transform his new adoptive sister into a powerful witch!
Witches are the only creatures to master the art of “singing” and their songs can both destroy or heal their surroundings. Whether the witch is good or evil is up to her! Hilda is one of the latter and she crystallizes everyone in town while Alto and his sister (soon to be witch) Lisette have no choice but to fight back powerless against Hilda and her minions!
Luckily they reach the capital city of Lambert where the Queen recognizes the powers of Lisette as being the Witch carrying the Water Qualia. She assigns Alto and Lisette to the Regnant Knights, their only hope to find the other witches and try to get them on their side to uncrystallize all of Hilda’s victims and save the kingdom!
Get ready for a lot of cute girl talk and hidden subtle adult jokes
The game’s characters are thought out and each of them has its very own personality, often witty yet believable. While you aren’t in battle the game runs these 2D pictures of the characters with facial expressions just talking to each other and explaining their goal in this war. For the most part, I’d say 90%, the dialogues are fully voiced in English and it’s one of the game’s most welcome features! No other SRPG, at least on the 3DS, has this amount of voice-acted dialogue to accompany the game’s rich lore and funny dialogue! These are often weird and carry this typically Japanese sense of sexual tension without showing anything inappropriate.
The game offers more than these 2D dialogues of course; every chapter has parts of Free Time; where you can interact with various shops and characters and Missions. These alternate in a way that is known on beforehand to the player through a device given to you by a mysterious character called Sense Data. Another witty twist the game throws at you! During the missions you will venture around the world map where you can engage in the part the game really excels at; BATTLES!
Master the grid, enjoy the 3D battle animations!
The battles take place on a chess-like grid system. Everyone in your party has its own movement radius and it fits their style of combat as well. A bulky powerful warrior will move over fewer tiles any given time than a lightweight dagger-carrying assassin. There’s also a difference between attacking foes from behind and the sides rather than from the front. The former will result in more HP being removed from your enemies.
Your order of attack is shown on the typical timeline featured in most of the SRPG’s. You can choose to attack, use a skill/item or you can choose to wait and advance in the timeline. These choices can be critical to finishing victorious in some missions. Every character has its weaknesses and strengths. You can, of course, buy better weapons or equipment but knowing your characters and using them accordingly is key to excel at the game’s battling system. It’s when you learn to use their active and passive skills or tuning a Witches song to your advantage that you’ll truly be amazed by the strategic depth the game has to offer. It takes a while to getting used to and you can easily play for 2 hours and still get tutorial messages teaching you new dynamics. But it’s worth it. I love it when Alto gets attacked while standing next to Archibald when the latter’s passive skill will trigger a cool animation of him jumping in front of Alto and blocking the incoming attack!
You can choose to show the attacks on both your party and the opponent and it’s definitely something I’d strongly advise you to do! Turn up that 3D slider and enjoy the battles! You can of course chose to remove these cut scenes and have a quick battle in the grid only but you’ll miss out on all the cool animations and effects of the different skills and 3D models!
Slow in the beginning, hectic and brain teasing in the end
In the beginning, the game’s pace is a bit slow but I feel it’s necessary because there is so much to learn and there’s a lot of lore and introductions to new locations and characters to be made. This may scare some of the players away after the first hour but keep playing, the battles get harder and so much more strategically demanding! You will be replaying battles again and again in the end. When the witches get involved these battles are so hectic and you’ll need to keep tags on the timeline and plan ahead! Not your simple brainless SRPG I’d say.
Stella Glows sets the bar for future SRPG’s on the system
I’m not saying the game is perfect, there’s still the problem with pacing in the beginning and I already explained this was due to the amount of stuff you’ll need to learn keeping in mind not everyone is an adept at SRPG’s. The developers have taken into account this might be the very first game in the genre some of us might play. It offers a strong story, not the most original but it is a story that drives you to find all the witches and undo Hilda’s wrongdoings. It offers enough customization in terms of weapons and orbs you can equip them with but I feel like some of the dialogues could’ve been replaced by beautiful cut scenes. I mean at some points the game shows these very fast paced anime styled introduction movies and these were very well crafted. Why not animate the entire dialogue part? I do understand that this is a portable system so I guess the fact that it’s 90% fully voiced is already a big deal! Maybe it’s something for a next installment?
Conclusion:
Stella Glow is a great SRPG that sets the bar for the next ones in terms of 3D animated attacks and musical score. Sega and Atlus did a great job on this portable SRPG that can easily entertain you for 50hours+ if you don’t skip all the great 3D animations. It’s great at conveying this very Japanese styled strategic gameplay you’d expect! You’ll want to replay battles with another set of characters and loadout to see who’s the best combination. It’s one of the better SRPG’s to release this year and on the 3DS I’d say it’s probably the best newcomer in the genre for the portable system! So pick up your 3DS and gather the witches in this timeless adventure of good vs evil!
