I just realized that among all the standard blog things I could write about, I’ve never talked about my interests.
Let’s remedy that.
So, among all games I’ve ever played, Stella Glow sticks out the most in my memory for just… so many reasons. This may be a long one, but I’ll try to make it as concise as I can. However, I will say it’s gonna be like 90% spoilers, so if you have ANY interest in playing a Japanese tactical RPG on the 3DS, go play it first.
So, starting with the story. At the beginning, pretty basic. Average anime protagonist with amnesia named Alto, adopted by a mother-and-daughter family in the middle of sticksville, his only clue to his memories is a little jewel he had with him when he was found.
Bad guys invade, the Witch of Destruction crystalizes the entire town, but the protagonist’s adopted sister Lisette fuses with his special gemstone, and turns into a witch too. At this point, the two are saved by the kingdom’s knights, and brought to the city. There, along with a ragtag band of “elites”, the protag and his sister from another mister go questing to gather the other witches and put a stop to the Witch of Destruction’s schemes with a magical quartet called the Anthem.
Pretty standard, right? You go on quests to the far reaches of the map, meet the other witches and recruit them, along with a fun cast of characters that come in all shades of anime. Alto (the protagonist) finds out that he’s a Conductor, the only person capable of “tuning” witches, stabilizing their mental state and bringing out their full powers.
What are their powers you ask?
Well, aside from the classic four elements, witches are the only beings in the world capable of song. Old legends say that the gods took the gift of music from humanity centuries ago, and those still capable of song (thanks to the gemstones known as Qualia), were branded as witches. This means that the soundtrack is a huge part of the game, as the witches all have song-based spells, and ultimates that turn the battlefield into a concert, as they deliver party-wide effects accompanied by their magic song.
Really neat stuff, but worldbuilding aside, the story’s still pretty standard.
Anyway, time ticks on, and with each chapter that you complete, a little interlude menu pops up, informs you of the title of the next chapter, and a little gem fizzles out from the menu design. Doesn’t seem too important, but it gives you a good indication of how many chapters are left in the game. Anyway, you reach the final chapter, assemble the witches, and play the Anthem, a song capable of reversing the crystallization of the Witch of Destruction. Yay, we won!
…not.
Remember that little menu counter? The last gem fizzles out… and the whole thing goes haywire. The last seal is broken.
And all hell breaks loose.
You thought you saved the world? You sweet summer child, the joke’s on you. You ruined everything! The sky splits open and a tree grows out of the moon and anchors to earth, while eldritch horror monsters called Angels wreak havoc on the world below. That nice shopkeeper who sold you equipment? The doting father with the cute little daughter? He’s dead, and she’s traumatized. And he’s not the only one dying. Your team leader, the handsome and charismatic knight elite Klaus? He reveals himself as the one who planned everything, kills the princess, and turns on you.
At this point, I was flabbergasted. I didn’t expect a game to sucker-punch me this hard after 30+ hours of play time. It’s easy now to see the ways they telegraphed it, (Klaus’s friendship meter not allowing you to raise it all the way, the menu-gem thingy, the party of “villains” that seem to know so much more than you, etc), but at the time, it came right out of left field. Anyway, the villain party shows up in the nick of time to stop Klaus, and one of their number sacrifices his life so everyone can escape.
So that just happened.
While literally every character is drowning in an existential crisis, the Angels keep invading, and citizens keep dying. At this point, the Witch of Destruction Hilda starts dropping exposition bombshells. The legendary hero that saved humanity 1000 years ago with his best friend and a team of witches? Alto is the reincarnation of him (kinda, he was hibernating). Also, Klaus was the best friend, now fallen to despair and corrupted by evil. Further, Hilda herself was one of the witches with him. As the witch of time, she was able to stop her aging, and carry on his work.
Song was taken from humanity because it evokes emotion. And the Mother Qualia on the moon tracks the emotions on earth to find out when humans are ripe for harvest, through the Qualias imbedded in the witches. Hilda, the witch of time, was crystalizing people to prevent the emotion levels from reaching the point of harvest, but that’s over now.
At this point, the party assembles a new music piece capable of destroying Mother Qualia, climb the world-tree to the moon, and the final battle begins. I’m skipping a lot of character building, of course. This post-apocalypse half of the game was easily another 30ish hours.
Now that the story gist is over, it’s time to get into the other aspects I love about Stella Glow.
Firstly, two endings, the “good” ending, and the “true” ending! The good ending is still satisfying, but it involves a lot of sacrifice. It’s a pyrrhic victory that leaves you happy but melancholy. The true ending, however, gives you just enough time and the right options to wrap everything up nice and neatly, if you have the time to go back and replay things, doing it right. Also, starting a new game+ gives you THREE TIMES the free time each day!
What’s free time, you ask?
Well, between missions, you can do a whole bunch of fun stuff, all of which has important game implications!
You can work part-time for the various stores in town, earning money, growing closer to the shopkeeps and finding out what makes them tick.
You can talk to your party members, listening to their past, chilling with them, and really getting to know them as people, unlocking new abilities, skills, and stat-ups (and something far more important, later). In addition, if you level up the five witches enough, they gain a cool new class-change outfit, and a second song they can sing in battle!
You can tune the witches, entering deep into their psyche and literally fight their psychological trauma, helping them become stronger.
Or, you can wander the outskirts and get a random item. I personally never did this one.
Anyway, in a regular playthrough, it’s impossible to get every character to max affection. But, in the new game+, the tripled free time makes everything possible!
And why is max friendship so important?
Well, not only does it buff out the characters, but every single character has an unlockable ending.
Yup. Everyone. All 14 other characters (Klaus and Alto aren’t selectable, of course).
As long as they’re at max friendship, the night before the final battle you can choose to spend the evening with them, talking and discussing the future. This means that once you beat the game, the epilogue changes to a short chapter of Alto’s life afterwards, and what he got up to with that character. Did he finally become blood-brothers with the rogue? Did he become king of the country, with the mecha-angel at his side? Did he marry one of the five heroines and settle down? You literally decide! Not to mention, each ending leaves you with a little wallpaper-worthy image of your life with that character. It’s one more nice touch.
I can’t explain how happy that made me. The characters of Stella Glow are its main draw, and I have never seen a game that put so much effort into making every character feel important enough to get their own ending.
And as for characters, there are a lot of them. Among playable characters alone, we have:
Alto, the protagonist. Unfortunately, that’s about all there is to him.
Lisette, the water witch and not-blood-related sister that, much to my chagrin, is a marriable heroine (more on that later).
Rusty, your big-bro roguish character with a lotta trauma.
Archibald, the squarest of squares, a knight’s knight, and such a dork he wears his armour on dates.
Klaus, the frickin’ bastard traitor that killed the pri… I mean, the charismatic, loveable leader of the knights with a mysterious past.
Ewan, the young entrepreneur-turned-millionaire who fights with the powers of being rich. It’s amazing.
Popo, the kiddish, ditzy, and friendly wind witch who spent her childhood enslaved and ostracized.
Nonoka, the absolute best ninja in the world, who is so shy she wears a cardboard box over her head.
Sakuya, the prickly princess/priestess/fire witch, who’s just light enough on the tsundere trope so as not to be annoying.
Keith, the magnanimous bounty hunter with a heart of gold and a severe god complex.
Modimort, the lazy, low-energy, introverted earth witch who’s an absolute mood all game.
Dorothy, the most loveable little pyscho girl, who fights with a katana, a chainsaw, and a lot of repressed trauma.
Dante, the absolute gadfly who curses the very air you breath, but will also have your back in a moment’s notice.
Hilda, the witch of time and first antagonist of the story, the very model of a tragic character doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Also, the best heroine.
Veronica, a Londoner from thousands of years ago, in our time period. A delightfully psychotic scientist grandma who kept her youth by eating the eldritch invader Angels. Dipping them in sauce like chicken wings.
And Giselle, a special type of sentient Angel created by Mother Qualia. She comes to doubt Mother’s goals, and joins the party (if you’re on the path to the True End).
So many great characters, all fun to play as, and all worth getting to know through their routes and events.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of the things I love, every time a character uses a skill, a little cutscene plays of them using it. What’s REALLY cool is that their weapon models change to whatever weapon they’re actually equipped with. That means every time you buy someone their next weapon from the shop, they actually use it in combat, not just their standard 3D model’s one. It’s small, but for a tactical RPG on a portable system, that was pretty cool.
The voices are excellent, too. Cup of Tea Productions have always aced whatever they’ve done (they’re the ones behind Valkyria Chronicles 4 too), and this is no exception. Plus, all characters have three sets of voice lines for combat. You know, the things they say when they move, attack, or use skills or stuff. The first is for the early game, pre-apocalypse, and the third is for the late game, post-apocalypse. This lends a nice feeling of growth to the characters, and cuts down on the pain of hearing the same attack line over and over again. Where’s the second voice line set you ask? It’s for the brief chapter after everything goes to hell, where you can just feel the sheer existential dread in every character’s voice as they struggle to go through the motions of fighting. The game designers really didn’t have to go this hard, but they did, and it’s incredible.
The art is stunning, characters have tons of sprites, outfits, expressions, and more. Even side characters tend to have at least a couple expressions, not just one flat model.
The music is perfect, their menu song alone has so much emotion in it, it’ll almost make me cry. The witches’ songs (10 in total, 2 each) are good enough that I listen to them outside the game, and with 80+ tracks in their soundtrack, it’s clear they didn’t skimp.
Also, it bears mentioning that ImageEpoch, the company behind it, actually went bankrupt making Stella Glow. It was supposed to be their 10th anniversary game, something of a love-letter to all their games prior, but as the money went dry, they just funnelled everything they had in to this last title, and went off with a bang, as their CEO vanished and the company dissolved. A sad way to go, but at the same time, they went out like champs, and it shows how much love they had for it. The company literally went under to bring us Stella Glow.
Of course, it has its failings, like anything else. At times, it goes a little too hard on the “anime” feel of it. Like guys, did we really need the hot springs chapter? Did we need two of them? Some characters can feel a bit over the top, and the first half of the game might turn some players away, if they weren’t already anime-inclined, or really sold on the gameplay. Also, it’s just a personal peeve, but I genuinely hated the fact that Lisette, the “adopted sister” character was romanceable. Like, I know she wasn’t technically related, and she was a nice enough character, but it still rubbed me the wrong way and kinda set me against her. Sorry Lisette, it’s nothing personal.
But other than that, there’s not too much I can bring against Stella Glow. It’s probably the second-most memorable game I’ve played, beside Person 4 Golden, and by golly, the story twist is the best I’ve seen in ANY game. Sorry I spoiled everything, but I still say it’s worth a play, if you have a 3DS. I went very light on a 60+ hours plot, so there’s lots left for you to discover.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got to say, I think I’m gonna go dust off my copy now. Peace!
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