The endgame battles ramp up the difficulty nicely, but the turning point of the game does have an extended sequence where there’s upwards of an hour and a half of separate battles with a split team and no save options.
Despite some moments of temporary insanity by the AI, the system works and you shouldn’t need to restart more than once if you make an error or get wrecked by the random number deity. You’ll still be using the skills you started with at the end, which is a sign of good character balance.
ARCHIBALD STELLA GLOW FULL
You get a good variety of skills to play with, and taking full advantage of their range and added effects is key in the late game. At that point, I had just wrapped chapter 4, so there was only one more chapter of it, then future missions of that kind were with people quite capable of taking care of themselves. In the preview, I mentioned that I was concerned about the number of escort missions I had played to that point.
That’s fine, but it really wasn’t necessary to bring the party back there a few chapters later for a hot spring scene (which goes exactly how you might expect). There are some elements that are clearly in the game for checking boxes, however – there’s a land based on Japan, and you have a character based on a shrine maiden who hails from there. You’ll see brief vignettes with the characters, but occasionally you’ll have to clear a dungeon to enhance the character – which provides extra chances to raise your other party members as well.
ARCHIBALD STELLA GLOW FREE
The in-between free time allows you to build rapport with your teammates to enhance their combat abilities, but it’s not a “pick the right text option” as was the case in Atlus’s Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker earlier this year. It’s an effective story, and you’ll begin to see some of its twists coming pretty quickly if you’ve played these games before, but there are a couple of legitimately shocking moments near the end of the game. The story is simple – a young man and woman attempt to save their friends and family from being crystallized by a Witch of Destruction, and gather other elemental witches to sing an Anthem that frees them. What I got was a game that absolutely flew by even at 35 hours on the clock, and it’s a shame that the developer Imageepoch met its end before they could reap the rewards of what they’ve made. I knew the basics of Stella Glow going in: a strategy role-playing game that focused on witches and music. There’s some games that come out of nowhere and surprise you.
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