Initially interesting, the excitement wears off when you dig deep and discover that it's another "overlevel = win&q
Still, Hoshigami is a decent game. The first impression I got reminded me of FFT crossed with Vandal Hearts 2 (for looks). After reading the important guides (thoroughly, I might add), and delving into the optional dungeon for over 50 hours to get a solid feel for the game, I consider a review justified.
First, attacking. Physically, you only have one kind of attack. Ever. Since there are no classes / job types, you just attack according to what weapon you wield (i.e. melee range, 1 tile distance for mace-types and spear-types, and ranged for boomerang and bow). There are no fancy "wave fist" or "earth slash" or "throw sword" or what-have-you, in FFT's style. You hit the enemy, that's it. The level difference is noticeable; anything 3 or more levels below you, you can laugh off. Anything 3 or more levels above you is going to hurt real bad, and you better arrange your party well because dying is permanent. Arrange both in location as well as who moves next as indicated by the portrait bar on top - often you'll want to delay taking action for whatever reason, and it's good that you're allowed to do this.
Then magic ("Coinfeigms", or CFs). Two varieties, damage and status. Damage is pretty straightforward, the diety-strength/weaknesses do have an effect, albeit a minuscule one, small enough to not matter compared to level differences (e.g. even if that enemy is strong to fire, if you're 5 levels above him, your magic will still pretty much toast him regardless). Statuses are a nice attempt, but there are very few. Blind isn't as nearly helpful as it could be, since the penalty seems small (and again, is affected by level differences). The others aren't so bad, but they aren't that hot either. Given that each character may only carry a limited number of Coins (governed by which deity is currently being worshipped), you'd not really want to waste a slot on a status CF when you could bring a strong, area-of-effect (AoE) damage CF instead.
In FFT, a lot of the status effects were useful since you got them early on, they had a reasonable chance of being cast, and they do a nice job of slowing the enemy considerably (e.g. Silence on a black mage), so they were viable for use compared to just piling on the damage - damage is okay but since random battle enemies tend to follow your levels, it would take several regular physical attacks to kill someone, so in the meantime it would really be helpful to disable that unit.
In Hoshigami, status effects are just a diversion. Even the god-granted skills that caused them had a measly chance of activating (10%, 20%... wtf). It was if the game itself was telling you, "don't bother, just kill them". And by killing, either through the boring, unvarying regular physical attacks, or through overpowered CFs.
Early on, strategy is pretty much reduced to how far to move and what to do (attack, use a CF, or just wait) in order not to screw up the next action order (e.g. in case a strong enemy moves before you can block it from reaching your low-hp characters). When you're overleveled (which is often, if you bother with the Tower of Trials like a good level-grinder should, to get good stuff early), most story battles are laughably easy. My archer was killing 3 people a turn - each attack = kill. No doubt if attacks used less RAP ("Ready for Action Points"), she would get more attacks = more dead enemies per turn.
Having only reached the start of chapter 2 yet having clocked over 50+ hours in the Tower of Trials, and having read through the skill lists to make sure there are no later surprises, I can pretty much tell you that this is how the game goes. Just beef your party up at the Tower of Trials as you go along, and the story battles will be piss-easy. Even my mage-type ring users were 1-hit punching enemies to death. Wtf. That's not even considering if I decide to use CFs when the enemies bunch up for me like they do at the start of most fights (overleveled character + AoE CF = enemies don't stand a chance).
The engraving aspect of CFs to improve them was a nice idea, but it's kind of superfluous to have so many, and isn't very well explained in the game. Thankfully someone uploaded a CF FAQ - excruciatingly detailed though, and may scare newbies away with the sheer amount of information in it ("wtf do I really need to know all this?!"). Imagine trying to figure out that information by yourself. Not laughing now, are we? It's not all logical either, seal X does not always cause effect Y. That's why you need that guide. Someone who just dives into games will likely not see the potential of the latter seal combinations and just coast through the game with basic CFs - not a problem either, really, since by simply being overleveled you will crush all opposition anyway. So much for balance.
There's very little actual strategy in it when you take out the minor tricks like Attack Sessions - which is just a fancy way of saying "combo", while simultaneously being a lousy way to implement a "stealing" mechanism (wtf couldn't they just make stealing a regular action, at least THAT would give a reason not to nuke enemies so fast). If you got special, map-based bonuses for doing ASes it wouldn't be so bad, but basically what you get for doing an AS is a random item from the guy you sessioned. That's it, no mystery. Considering the pain you go through to position your party to pull off a 6xAS (doing small chains will not likely result in an item gain), you'd think the rewards would be better. Exp for everyone in the chain, for example (small consolation, but still).
Hoshigami looks decent, the story is somewhat interesting (but be warned I've got a fairly high tolerance for bullsht considering that I also enjoy reading fanfiction), but the actual gameplay itself just doesn't cut it. The engraving system is underexplained (not to mention how tedious it is to get good seals), the deity system was an interesting spin, but the slow pace of getting dev points (good luck maxing 16 devotion levels on more than 1 god without spending an inordinate amount of time in the Towers of Trials) as well as the relatively crap skills you get (e.g. Sonova level 10 skill = physical damage -20%, big whoop, just level 2,3 times above the enemy and they'll do crap damage anyway) makes it all feel like a chore rather than achieving something.
Summary? Decent ideas, poorly-thought out follow-through. I have little comment on the actual story since I basically only played to chapter 2 (out of 5?), despite clocking over 50 hours (not including the hours spent examining the seal and engraving FAQs). It's not a TERRIBLE game per se, but as an attempt at a strategy RPG it falls flat on its face.