ItвЂ™s usually over fairly quickly, but itвЂ™s an odd feeling when вЂњFree TimeвЂќ can be a moment when the game feels more like a chore.ДЄnd even outside of вЂњFree TimeвЂќ, youвЂ™ll have to hear everyone talk a fair amount, since there are plenty of dialogue scenes.

ItвЂ™s nice to have these as a break between fighting, but they donвЂ™t offer much as the characters you can spend time with arenвЂ™t brilliant. There also seems to be a rather old fashioned attitude to women here, where many of them where next to nothing and are all intensely infatuated with the main character like a dull, and partly sleazy harem anime.ДЄnd youвЂ™ll spend a lot of time with those characters, in between missions you will be given вЂњFree TimeвЂќ, which (much like Persona 3 and 4) you can use to do a part time job, or build relationships in order to strengthen party members. Character are also rooted heavily in ordinary anime archetypes so that none really stick in the mind, except for the ninja that wears a cardboard box on her head to sneak better, thatвЂ™s just fun. A few twists and turns are attempted along the way but they donвЂ™t bring too much of a shock and stick rather closely to established ideas. It comes with a rather standard story for a Japanese RPG, where you have to find the various things in order to prevent some sort of tragedy. These kinds of stages make most of the others look like fillers by comparison, so it would have been nice to see more in this style. The more fascinating stages take on an almost puzzle-like quality, for example there is a map which splits into sets of one-way paths which can only carry a certain amount of party members across, meaning that you will have to consider building teams to suit being separated. This is annoying as it slows the pace of these missions down to a crawl. On the lower end there are maps that will force the party into bottlenecks, meaning that you would have to deal with enemy roadblocks very slowly by taking them out one at a time. Even with that in mind itвЂ™s fairly straight-forward most of the time, but a fair few battles do end up feeling a little stretched out either by extra enemies spawning or poor map layout.ДЄnd the map design does range from thoughtless to genuinely interesting. Though they do feel fairly significant, theyвЂ™re almost more like an exploit considering the first one you get access to prevents enemies from taking any actions. One unique element this game has is the ability to use вЂњSongsвЂќ, abilities which cast effects over the whole field. Similarly to Final Fantasy Tactics, the accuracy and potency of an attack can depend on what angle you are hitting an enemy from, meaning that striking them in the back will do more damage.

People would normally be attracted to a tactical RPG for its battles, though they are rather easy here. It does tick most of the right boxes, but struggles to really do much special and in some places manages to be a little frustrating. WhatвЂ™s been created is a rather inoffensive tactical RPG, which offers very little in the way of challenge.

So this being their final game, did they go out with a bang? I wouldnвЂ™t say so. They became defunct in May last year, a month before the release of this game in Japan. The developer of Stella Glow, Imageepoch, no longer exists.

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