There is some animation for bodies of water in and out of town, but all out-of-battle character movements are restricted to about 2-3 frames of animation. Platform: Super Nintendo. Aside from this, though, the controls are fine. I’ll talk about the grinding in this game first, because I praised the Auto Battle feature quite a bit earlier. In 1993, Tecmo decided to try their hand at the whole RPG thing. Sadly, the potential of the system wasn’t brought to fruition and the party swapping system feels like a half assed gimmick as a result. Released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo by Tecmo, Secret of the Stars (known simply as "Aqutallion" in its native Japan) follows the story of 5 young kids who must live up to their destiny as legendary Aqutallion warriors and defeat the evil Homncruse, who threatens the world. There aren't many tracks and they aren't that interesting, but over all I wasn't annoyed by them. This causes the Kustera to be downplayed more than they should be.CONTROL: 7/10I swear that if I play one more SNES RPG that only uses 2 buttons for all commands then I am going to give it an automatic 3 for control. The mistakes are acceptable for a group not known for RPGs but that is still not enough to fully redeem this title.STORY: 3/10It isn't that the story itself is bad. If you want to dig a little deeper into the Super Nintendo’s RPG library, without scraping the bottom of the barrel, however, then Tecmo’s Secret of the Stars might be right for you. To make matters worse, players can change the lineup of Kustera and there are quite a few characters to choose from, but many of them join late in the game when you have probably invested quite a bit of time into training the heroes you already have. Secret of the Stars’ battle engine is somewhat ahead of its time, thanks to the “Auto” feature, which allows the computer to take control over the player’s party for the duration of the battle. A young man is transported into the past, altering t... Mario returns in this incredible new role-playing adventure! Speaking of the party system, this was one of the more innovative aspects of Secret of the Stars. SNES . Players will often spend their fair share of time wandering around in search of the proper town or dungeon. Comment document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a36860302fd33e19c46a7bd5cbab81c3" );document.getElementById("d9c2a51a95").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); © With that said, they were nicely drawn and had a fair amount of detail. My only point of contention with this aspect is the fact that monster attacks aren't animated. At least it was put together in an amusing way that managed to surprise me here and there. Over twenty years later I picked it up, expecting a train wreck, and found that it was actually fairly decent. Tecmo actually did a lot of things right with this title in terms of visuals, especially considering the zeitgeist of early 90’s JRPGs, which were still very much influenced by Dragon Quest and often made the fatal error of trying to copy the already venerable franchise’s success by attempting to reproduce its gameplay and art style, consequently relegating themselves to the status of “Dragon Warrior Clone”. I quickly found that the puzzles (if they can be called that) the parties had to solve usually required little to no teamwork and tended to be incredibly simple. Weapon attacks are animated well and spell casting is in fact a visual treat. Released in 1993, "Secret of the Stars" is a fun early/mid generation title with some unique features later found in "Chrono Trigger". Over twenty years later I picked it up, expecting a train wreck, and found that it was actually fairly decent. Tecmo Secret of the Stars SNES Super Nintendo Game Cartridge Cleaned Tested and Guaranteed to Work! Sadly, the game must have relied on humor greatly to flesh out its narrative and many of the jokes either didn’t translate well into English or were ignored by the translator. While having to wait to use Unity Magic made getting it feel like more of an accomplishment, we also see a recurring problem with this game surface again: by the time you get it, the game is two thirds complete (if not more) and you’ll barely get to experiment with many of the spells before it’s time to challenge the final dungeon. Condition: Used. Also, the only way to see who can use a piece of armor or a new weapon is to try to equip it to everyone in your party.Aside from this description deficiency, there is one feature of this game that really interested me. Secret of the Stars is mediocre in its execution and yet, ahead of its time by a good three or four years. At any rate, a bit of atmosphere and more imagination would have worked wonders for this title’s graphics and made it seem more original. One such example is  the “CHAINMALE” armor, a curious misspelling that a friend of mine looked up and discovered was the name of a musician from the 1980’s. The Kustera can and must be controlled to finish the game, and players can switch back and forth between them and the main party at any time. Review. The towns, dungeons, forests, and just about any terrain you can think of are generic to the point of being absurd. The only downside here is that there is no in-game description for what each spell does.In between battles there is plenty of world-map to explore, and a veritable smattering of vehicles with which to accomplish this. However, the lack of any coherent plot in the American version coupled with the fact that there is no map to guide players around the rather … My primary complaint is that the unity system is unlocked late in the game. Over twenty years later I picked it up, expecting a train wreck, and found that it was actually fairly decent. And, all of this is exacerbated by the fact that the sub-par translation often makes dialogue confusing or misleading.The basic story is that you are the son of a famous warrior and you must form together with a group of people to form Aqutallion. As it stands, however, I wouldn’t waste my time playing this game (unless you have played almost everything else out there.) However, the lack of any coherent plot in the American version coupled with the fact that there is no map to guide players around the rather expansive world makes for a less than perfect score. The result was Secret of the Stars, a Dragon Quest clone with a by-the-numbers plotline. Luckily, there are no irritating beeping sounds or anything that may annoy players in this game. In fact, Tecmo Secret of the Stars is. reaction these twists elicit more of an "ooooookkaaaaaaaaay" response. The tunes can get a little repetitive if you spend some time leveling up in an area but it isn't anything to turn the sound off over. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The problem is that it isn't told in such a way as to be interesting or even coherent. Instead, there are a few mildly interesting songs mixed into a rather dull soundtrack that you would expect from a more modern game (I guess Secret of the Stars was ahead of its time in more ways than one). Propose move to Tecmo Secret of the Stars Tecmo is clearly part of the title as evidenced by the box shot. The gameplay is great as long as you don't expect it to be something fancy. An average rating is the best I can give here.Recap:This really isn’t a bad game. 4.9 out of 5 stars Best Sellers Rank #80,069 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games) #322 in Super Nintendo Games: Pricing The strikethrough price is the List Price. Interesting ideas like Unity spells, party swapping, town building, and the Auto Battle system could have made this game legendary, but Tecmo didn’t seem to know how to make them work in the game’s favor. The environments and animations, however, left much to be desired. One thing we should keep in mind is that Secret of the Stars was actually released in 1993 in Japan and RPG graphics had begun to evolve by the time the game was localized in North America almost two years later. From the standpoint of graphics, Secret of the Stars avoided this mistake by employing a battle system that is a hybrid of both the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series. Product information ASIN B000035Y66 Customer Reviews : 4.9 out of 5 stars 8 ratings. You wake up in bed, and a random woman in your house who has no apparent relation to you tells you this. It’s also possible that text space was an issue, since the font Tecmo used was rather large and Japanese characters tend to be compact, making space for English dialogue scarce. Instead of an "oh, wow!" The player sees the action of each battle from a pseudo first person perspective, much like in the Dragon Quest games, but will also see the heroes attack and use spells as if he or she is a spectator, resulting in a battle system that captures the drama of both styles. Even as a kid I was skeptical of what the popular gaming publications had to say, but in the case of Secret of the Stars, I took their word and avoided the game; mostly because the screenshots of the gameplay failed to interest me. I particularly enjoyed the way that when a member of your party was equipped with a different weapon it was shown that way in battle. The sound effects are also flavorless and unimpressive for the most part. Either way, there’s more to this game’s story than meets the eye, but much of it was lost when it hit western shores. To use this feature, you need to be logged in to GameFAQs. Tecmo Secret of the Stars. Overview. You can also challenge some bosses and dungeons in a nonlinear fashion and even choose which party to fight certain bosses with, which can make the game a bit more entertaining. Secret of the Stars draws a lot of heat for its rather bland graphics. I will also add that I did like some of the effects used for spells, because they at least got the point across that the character was about to do something cool. For the most part, Secret of the Stars’ UI is standard, except for its battle engine which hosts some improvements that make grinding far less painful. Puzzles that require the player to change parties are common and NPCs tend to react to both groups differently, which makes the system interesting. Tecmo Secret of the Stars hit the shelves in North America back in 1995 and received a lukewarm reception from critics. It isn’t a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but there was enough innovation to keep it interesting for most of its duration. For more information, please visit our legal page: https://retromaggedon.com/index.php/privacy-advertising-and-legal-disclosure/, Tecmo Secret of the Stars hit the shelves in North America back in 1995 and received a lukewarm reception from critics. Secret of the Stars is full of tongue and cheek humor, some of which was almost certainly lost when the game was translated from Japanese to English. Super Nintendo Tecmo Secret of the Stars. We have here another wonderful example of a game which only utilizes 2 out of the 8 possible buttons on an SNES controller. Next, there is Unity Magic, which is a precursor to some of the cooperative magic/attack systems that appear in RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Valkyrie Profile. This game would have been a bit more enjoyable with less draconian level up requirements, especially coupled with the user friendly battle engine. This also goes for all NPC met in towns and other places throughout the game. Region: NTSC (N. America) ESRB: Everyone. There are two separate parties, or clans, known as Aqutallion and Kustera that the player can switch between at will. When all of these features are put into play, battles end very quickly with only minimal input from the player. The cancel button and menu button are always the same. The text is badly translated, and reeks of that ''awkward translation'' stink." Most of the characters in both parties barely have lines, let alone personalities. It does bear mentioning that Secret of the Stars can be beaten at a relatively low level and will be more interesting to some players if challenged at lower levels. A bland BGM may also be a factor in why this title tends to strike people as being generic. It's everything you'd expect from a classic RPG, and more. While not in battle your characters appear pudgy and pixilated and are nearly indistinguishable as a specific gender. However, this is literally the first thing that you are told in the game. Tecmo also incorporated some rather advanced mechanics into this title, such as an auto battle command and Unity Spells which combine the powers of party members to unleash destructive magic. Welcome to the shrine for Tecmo Secret of the Stars! Click the links below for reviews, guides and saves. There is a lot of possible ground to cover and no map to do it with. The main villain is also one of those rather basic bad guys who just hates everything for no reason, but at least he doesn’t make the mistake of revealing his plans to the heroes halfway through the journey. This can be very useful when random encounters become tedious, because the game will make intelligent choices such as healing wounded characters. With that said, an interesting element of strategy was introduced with the unity system, since players can choose from a variety of attacks and will probably need some of them to succeed. You’ll also notice that the party ambles about at a snail’s pace, which takes a fair bit of patience on the player’s part to endure. 90. The game feels like the summary of a story instead of the story itself.GAMEPLAY: 6/10Secret of the Stars offers many interesting game play elements. Tornado Tonion May 31, 2004. This is a group of people who are also on a mission to defeat Homncruse. tecmo-secret-of-the-stars-usa Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t76v0h444 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_autonomous true Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Cyrillic Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9938 0.0062 Ocr_module_version 0.0.9 Ocr_parameters-l kir+eng+kaz+srp+lat+Cyrillic+Latin Page_number_confidence 96.77 Pdf_module_version 0.0.5 Ppi 600 … Unfortunately, much of the game is very basic aside from its more unusual gameplay elements and the actual progression of the gameplay is highly linear with very few secrets to uncover. You will spend a fair amount of time cycling through menus and shuffling items around, though most of the menus are easy enough to navigate. But, this style has been used before and I'm sure it will be used again.SOUND: 5/10There really isn't a whole lot to say about the sound in this game. Cyril Lachel tries to find something good to say about the Tecmo Secret of the Stars: A Fantasy (Tecmo) print ad. They scored the game a 7.25 out of 10. Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2007. You can save first, but this is very inconvenient. Then you must go and defeat the evil Homncruse for some reason or another. These reminded me of the double and triple techs from Chrono Trigger(even though Tecmo’s game came out first.) While it’s great that you can set the party to fight on its own, this feature only marginally reduces the tedium of building levels up, mainly because of the high experience requirements needed to gain a level. On the bright side, there are spells and items that allow players to travel instantly to places they’ve already visited or flee dungeons, which helps cut down on time spent backtracking. Players also have the option of turning off the battle animations and speeding up in-battle messages. Save Files. See what you think of this classic game advertisement when you read this episode of Commercial Break! All of the dialouge text in the game is in caps. Secret of the Stars is a traditional turn-based JRPG released by Tecmo in 1993. This is infamous as one of the worst RPGs ever made, come and join me to find out why! And speaking of world maps, Secret of the Stars doesn’t have one built into the game, which may be a turnoff to some players. User Reviews. Secret of the Stars received moderately positive reviews. As a result, grinding in Secret of the Stars is far easier and random battles are less tedious in general. tecmo secret of the stars. Tecmo Secret of the Stars: A Fantasy review Review date unknown sgreenwell says: "It also just FEELS like this game was thrown together at the last minute, or had a bad translation. Gallery Tecmo Secret of the Stars: A Fantasy (SNES) review "The Aqutallion party was a group of five kids blended together into some personality-free amalgam of suck. 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