Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity (PlayStation 2)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.5 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Bethany Massimilla
• Reviewed on: 05/09/2005
• Released on: 04/26/2005
• Originally published on GameSpot: Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity (PlayStation 2) Review

Japanese turn-based strategy games have enjoyed their own niche on the PlayStation 2, the more notable representatives being Nippon Ichi's colorful and entertaining games. Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity is not so brightly wrapped, but the game brings with it some unique gameplay elements and a great, ethereal visual style. This is a game that aims to appeal directly to the existing console strategy audience, and there's enough that sets Stella Deus apart to make it worth a look to those fans.

All those strategic battles need a conflict to revolve around, and the major source of stress in Stella Deus is that the world is dying. The lands of Solum are surrounded by a deadly fog known as the miasma, which is steadily advancing into the remaining populated areas, threatening humanity with extinction within a matter of years. The prevailing religious sect known as the Aeque preaches that God intends this slow destruction, and so his disciples should peacefully await their inevitable end. This doctrine of apathy makes Solum a pretty depressing place, but they've got more problems--a man named Overlord Dignus has decided to make the final years a bit more exciting by dominating the world with his military might. A young man named Spero and his friends end up straddling a conflict between the empire to which they belong and an underground rebellion that seeks to dispel the miasma with a structure called the Gate of Eternity. The race is on to see where salvation truly lies: through the Aeque's passive teachings, through the technological advances of alchemy, or through communion with the mysterious spirits that inhabit Solum and are tied to the Gate. The premise and the storytelling both do a good job of keeping matters interesting as you go along, even if saving the world might be a bit blasé nowadays.

Joining Spero and his companions in battle presents what is a familiar sight to fans of the genre, an isometric view with a grid-based map that lets your forces jostle for position and lay waste to your foes. All your options are governed by something called action points, or AP, which determine when the units on the field can act. Everything you do will cost AP, from moving, to attacking, to using special abilities and spells, to using items. This means that battles in Stella Deus aren't a matter of looking at a map, running to the very edge of your movement area, and unleashing your most powerful spell; you'll have to check your AP costs and be mindful of when you need to conserve them. It takes a bit of time to get used to this system (particularly for spells and special abilities, which require both AP to use and magic points to cast). Your AP refreshes to 100 each turn, and those with the most AP have the most initiative, which lets you do interesting things, like juggle your initiative with conservative moves to have a healer always ready to heal, or lure your enemies into long trips to expend their AP, letting you nail them. And so long as your party is of the appropriate level, nailing foes is generally easy enough with the wide array of skills you'll have at your disposal.

Your characters gain experience as well as skill points from defeating enemies, and the skill points can be used to purchase abilities. You can learn new special attacks, passive abilities (like a 10 percent boost to attack power or immunity to poison), and effect zone (EZ) powers that let you affect units in your immediate vicinity. EZ powers can be helpful to your allies (like giving a boost to evade or accuracy, or regenerating some health every turn), or they can be offensive (giving baddies bad status effects). EZ skills are nice, though everyone has a differently arranged effect zone, so sometimes you'll find yourself unable to take advantage of them efficiently. Skills vary by character class, and there are a number of these in the game--from fighters and swordsmen and samurai, to archers and clerics and alchemists, and more. You can "rank up" people with a special item to upgrade their class, and this gives them more skill slots to work with and new skills to learn. This is different from character class promotions in other games like Fire Emblem or Shining Force; your level doesn't reset, and the individual isn't altered in any way beyond getting additional abilities, so you can go ahead and rank them up as soon as they're ready.

There's some room for customization with skills, as you can get them from some items as well and have whomever you like spend the skill points to learn them, but for the large part you'll be using a character's innately learned set of abilities. Beyond some obvious tactical advantages (strong melee versus ranged magic and archers), the character abilities are fairly homogeneous, with all melee classes and ranged classes having equivalently strong skills. These are still fun to play around with, though, as are the team combo attacks you can trigger under the right conditions for massive damage. And you'll need those for the game's mighty boss characters, which almost invariably provide a nice stiff challenge. Possibly too stiff, if your characters are a little low in level--Stella Deus continues the long tradition of console strategies by being all about your party's level status. If you're too low, you'll need to catch up, but the game provides a relatively easy way to do this with the Catacomb of Trials.

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