If you liked Final Fantasy Tactics, you'll probably like this as well
User Rating: 8.5 | Stella Deus PS2
Stella Deus is a pretty good game in my opinion. I absolutely loved Final Fantasy Tactics for the Playstation One and I've been wanting to play a game like it ever since but there haven't been many. Stella Deus is pretty much the same as Final Fantasy Tactics in the way it is played except for a few things. It's more anime and less cartoon. The graphics are like a lot of Japanese anime shows like Ghost In the Shell or Full Metal Alchemist. That's not necessarily a bad thing, although in my opinion I liked a tactical RPG in the Final Fantasy Universe better. If you haven't played Final Fantasy Tactics before you will probably take a while to pick up how the game works. Thankfully there is a tutorial, I didn't need it because like I said the gameplay is nearly identical to FF Tactics. Basically it's an RPG with stats and level ups but you also gain skills differently than most RPGs. You get XP and SP (experience, for increasing stats, and Skill Points, for getting more skills and also increasing stats). You get both when you defeat enemies on the battlefield. The game is turn based, but not equality of turns usually. The faster your characters speed the more they get a turn. You move around on a grid and can attack enemies adjacent to you and can cast spells within a certain range usually. You have a party that consists of all of your characters, but you can only put a certain number of them into a single battle. You also have heroes in your party which are main characters and some of them have classes I didn't see in mercenaries, but many have the same classes.So with classes you can do different things with that character (healers, fighters, ect). Unlike FFT you can't change class, although you can learn skills that other classes get via scrolls. In that the gameplay is nearly the same as FF Tactics as I said, it is good. One thing I didn't like though is that there aren't automatic counter-attacks in the game like in FF Tactics. At least at first I didn't like it. Then I learned you can "learn" counter attacks in a percentage of frequency to occur. Pretty cool, maybe better. The main thing I didn't like is that you can't view a quest after you take it. You have no idea what quests you need to finish or the details after you take them. At least I couldn't find out how. They are usually pretty easy though so I recommend doing them as soon as you take them so you won't forget. Also about half of the quests are just a game of chance that you have no control over, pretty lame if you ask me. But many of them are worthwhile so it doesn't ruin the experience. I do however like how quests worked on FFT more. In some respects they did improve on some things from FFT, like the ability to rotate the battlefield view and the counter-attack method as mentioned. The voice acting is pretty good. The music is good, especially the boss music. But I suppose it could be better. It didn't feel urgent like many other RPG battle musics. Fusion is a neat feature added to the game. It allows you to create another item out of 2 other items. Sometimes the item is good sometimes it's not. It usually depends on the "rank" (the higher the better the item). In other words better items produce better results and low ranked items produce common items. Other than that it is just a different world and different perspective than Final Fantasy. Worth getting in my opinion.
