Hoshigami Remix DS

[mDuo13]

Official Site

Discovered this game today. It's a remake of an old Playstation SRPG (called, obviously, "Hoshigami") for the DS, and it's being ported by Aksys Games, which is a new company comprised mostly of ex-Atlus guys. It sounds like the remake probably fixes some of the problems with the original game. It also has pretty nice-looking anime art.

Has anyone here played the original? Should I be this excited? (Should I wish I had the cash to actually BUY this game?)

[LastElixir]

it looks pretty fun and the characters are drawn pretty nicely. I never heard of the original but it could have great potential. It feels like tactics and arc the lad though, especially the world map.

j

[Tsubasa]

I heard the original game was cool.  Only, it was really hard cause when a character dies, they die for good.  I don't have much else on it.  Don't know too many people who played it.

[Sunara Ishi]

Only two girls. D: Tinn seems cool though... -.-;

[Jelly Donut]

SRPGs are RPGs like Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics, no?

[mDuo13]

SRPGs are RPGs like Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics, no?

Yeah. This one is closer to the Tactics Ogre type than the Ogre Battle type, if you know the difference.

I'm kind of a fan of SRPGs - I really like the Ogre series, I loved Disgaea... though I never got far in FFTA, because the story didn't really appeal to me.

[Tsubasa]

No one reps Shining Force?  The real series, not this recent action RPG garbage.  Best SRPG series ever, IMO.

[Spiritsnare]

No one reps Shining Force?

I think we all do.

NOW BEAR MY ARCTIC BLAST

[LastElixir]

No one reps Shining Force?

I think we all do.

NOW BEAR MY ARCTIC BLAST

YOU SCUM

j

[PyronIkari]

Atlus didn't make hoshigami...  Max Five did.

Atlus USA published it in the states though. Ugh... I remember when they picked up this title and I was told to beat it in 3 days in JP, It's a pretty frustrating game... most people hated how hard it was and how often you'd lose characters.

Why is this in the anime section?

[mDuo13]

Atlus didn't make hoshigami...  Max Five did.

No one said Atlus made it. In fact, I said that the DS remake was being ported (as in, translated) by Aksys Games, which is made up of ex-Atlus guys. That's all.

Yeah, I heard the original was quite hard, but there are three difficulty settings in the new one, thus one of the problems I said I think had probably been fixed for the remake.

And it's in the anime section because we don't have a games forum, and one of the key features contributing to my interest in the game is the anime style art. Isn't that fine?

[PyronIkari]

Atlus didn't make hoshigami...  Max Five did.

No one said Atlus made it. In fact, I said that the DS remake was being ported (as in, translated) by Aksys Games, which is made up of ex-Atlus guys. That's all.

Yeah, I heard the original was quite hard, but there are three difficulty settings in the new one, thus one of the problems I said I think had probably been fixed for the remake.

And it's in the anime section because we don't have a games forum, and one of the key features contributing to my interest in the game is the anime style art. Isn't that fine?

1 ex-atlus guy, and to be honest, it's not something you should bring up in that fashion when Atlus employees(and ex-Atlus employees alike) read this forum.

Hoshigami isn't a good game. It has an interesting plot twist/ending, but other than that... it's a piece of crap. There's no way to "make the game easy" unless they do something like make your characters incredibly strong, or the such, because the challenge in the game is understanding the system and being able to organize characters. The whole beat chain system was essential to the game because you had to utilize it to position enemies and do damage since most of your guys died in 2-3 attacks. If you make it so that they can take more hits, there's no point in using the beat-chain, meaning it doesn't matter at all and just can just rush enemies and keep attacking.

It was difficult, because it took real strategy. You can't put a difficulty meter on that.

The main plot was retarded, and the entire flow of the game was terrible. Do one mission or maybe two. Then go rebuild army and spend 2 hours leveling in EXP tower to get coin pieces and crap. Two more levels... repeat. And chances are you're going to play most stages twice. First time to learn the enemy positions and where you should move characters, second time to beat it without losing all your guys.

[otakuapprentice]

yea.......................anywho,

this game looks interesting from checking out the site, so i'll give it a chance. i love me some RPGs,  hehe.

[mDuo13]

So I got this game at Fanime's swap meet for a bargain price, and just recently finally finished it.

A lot of the things Pyron said about the game (e.g. the main plot is dumb, the game flow is bad) are true. I'll say simply that the problem with the game is that it forces you to perform tedious tasks to remain competitive with the enemy levels.

I played it on Normal difficulty, so I can't speak for Easy mode, but the game was hard unless you want to spend a lot of time grinding. Of course, grinding goes really fast when you attack your allies rather than concentrating on the enemies, but even then, you have to be quite a few levels ahead of your enemies to not get decimated (and they'll level up very quickly, and always outnumber you).

The "Sessioning" system (what Pyron called Beat Chaining) is pretty much the only way to get good equipment, which means you're either going to have to spend a lot of time laying out very tenuous positions to get a big session chain, or just be that much farther ahead of the enemies in levels.

The different "classes" (there aren't really classes, but different allegiances work well with certain weapons) aren't nicely-balanced, either. After a while into the game, you have enough available in the store to basically spend an hour painstakingly maxing out your spells (saving periodically in case of a random failure that resets them), at which point a character with such a spell and a high magic attack can easily end some battles or at least wipe out 4-8 enemies on the first turn. (Of course, there are usually in the area of 15 enemies per battle, and you'll run out of MP-equivalent before you can get them all... unless your team is all casters or something, which I didn't try.)

I did, however, really like the art throughout the game.