I can’t tell you how many RPG’s I have played where the game tried to tell me that certain characters had more battle experience in their pasts, yet all of the characters were about equal strength for the sake of game balance. This may sound like a trivial detail, but when you first begin the main quest to find all of the Witches, the main protagonist Alto and his long time friend Lisette, who are the first two characters you meet in the game, are fairly far behind most of the other characters you will play as in terms of level (they start at Level 1 while the others are between 6-8), given that their backstory is that they are simple small town folk. It also helped that the amount of coin I earned was enough to buy all of the latest weapons for every character, so I was never missing anything. Most of the time, all it really took was fighting 2-3 battles between story missions and I was powerful enough to defeat every enemy without having anyone fall. It was immensely satisfying to feel like I could get ahead of what the game was asking of me in a short time frame. There are great grinding opportunities early in the game and they never feel like “too much work”. This is because there is a good chance that at least one of your characters is going to level up and the level recommendations that the game sets down for the story missions never feel too far out of reach. Statistical progression, cash flow and leveling up have a very consistent flow throughout the game and just about every battle you get into whether it’s a part of the story or simple grinding feels worthwhile. The rule of thumb here is that if you’re gonna go weird, at least start off grounded and familiar to get your audience’s feet wet, and Stella Glow does that very well. It helps that the game eases you in with a very basic introduction to the characters and the world, and although some of the details are typical tropes (like the small town protagonist with no memory), it doesn’t really prove itself to be a negative.

As long as you aren’t looking to be challenged and can accept certain development simplicities, I can easily recommend Stella Glow as a quality title for the Nintendo 3DS.ĭespite the oddities that Stella Glow’s narrative revels in, the story ends up working very well.

Stella glow tvtropes