Epica Stella (エピカステラ), released 7/30/1998, developed and published by Human Entertainment

There aren’t many SRPGs from this era with official English translations, but here is one. More surprisingly I actually played the English version (I’ll say why in a minute). The translation was done by Working Designs, who brought their usual “creative” translation efforts (including some unfortunate casual homophobia).

I started out playing the Japanese version.

Each character has a mech, and three equipment slots (weapon, jewel, and accessory). The jewel item can grant magic-type powers, while the weapon (and mech) grant general attack abilities. All of the power are based on the character’s stats — the attacks and spells work off the base stats with equipment bonuses, whereas the various “innate” abilities only work off base stats. When a character levels up, they get 3 points to spend on any abilities (with no automatic raises in any stat).

The big problem with the game is that neither the manual nor the game give you any information whatsoever on what the stat requirements for moves are, and this is a game where the difficulty ranges from cakewalk to impossible depending on how you spend your stat points. A further problem is that if you search the Internet for advice on how to distribute the points, you can find advice that is not well suited for people playing the game for the first time — they will say things like “DEF is a trash stat that you don’t need to put points into” or which may be true from the standpoint of a very experienced player who knows exactly which skills to get and how to cheapshot the enemies, but can get a beginner into hot water.

In any case, I followed bad advice (plus some of my own mistakes) and reached a point at about stage 7 where I simply could not beat the stage no matter what I did, because my units were too weak and didn’t have the right skills. Typically in this case I will just move on to the next game, but I decided to restart using the English version. I switched to the English version primarily because it adds animation skip, which the Japanese version doesn’t have.

Another curious thing about the English version is the “assist” bonus:

The English version shows a bonus you get to your attack based on how many other characters you have adjacent to the enemy. This bonus is not shown in the Japanese version nor is it mentioned in the instruction manual, and I’m really not sure what is going on here. Did WD think the Japanese version was too hard and actually add this system in? Or was it a hidden thing in the JP version that they simply hacked the game to display?

On this playthrough, I followed a fairly simple procedure for stat growths — I kept everyone’s stats pretty even, except for POW which I had 2-3 points above the rest. I think that if you do this, you’ll get a pretty decent team for the whole game. If you also look at a list of abilities, particularly the character-specific and elemental abilities, you can go for those and make your team even more powerful.

One playthrough of the game is 20 stages long, but there are 56 stages in the game. There are three separate routes, and one branching path on the “main” route. There’s a place from the main menu where you can see the total number of stages you’ve played, and a record of how many mech animations you’ve seen. Another curious thing is that in the Japanese version, these stats update automatically as you play, but in the English version you have to use this “load stats” command in the menu (which is not in the JP version). Many places recommend that after each stage you play, you quit to the main menu and use that load stats to make sure everything gets recorded. I wonder why that developed in the transition between the JP and EN version.

I only played the main “Kingdom” route, which is the basic expected storyline — you are fighting for the small kingdom against the big empire, and the main villain is someone in the Empire who is trying to use the power for his own greed. I don’t know much about the other two storylines (which people refer to as “Empire” and “Ruin”), but I would be interested to hear from people who have played them.

The turns are done on a speed basis. There seems to be some uncertainty over whether having a high AGL makes you take more turns — a lot of places say that it does, but I’ve also seen that people have used cheat codes to show that it doesn’t. In any case, on your turn you get 100 AP. You can move and then use one attack or power. The moves take AP based on the terrain, and the attacks/powers have a cost in both AP and TP (which I think may stand for “tiredness points” although the manual doesn’t say — in the English version they changed it to “FP”). When you end your turn, any AP you have left over reduce your TP. If your TP ever hits 100, you become frozen and all attacks have a 100% chance to hit (and there is no option to counter).

Managing TP is one of the key aspects of the battle system. You gain TP not only for using your moves, but also if you defend against an enemy attack or counterattack, you will gain TP there as well. So the goal is not to let your own characters’ TP get too high, but you want to try to freeze the opponents (particularly the bosses). There are certain attacks (like Turbulence) that make this much easier.

The other key is making use of back attacks and ranged attacks. A back attack cannot be defended against or countered. Range attacks often cannot be countered either — the enemy will usually defend, but that raises their TP/FP.

This game has the very annoying “Main character 0 hp = game over” element that I always dislike in games, but if anyone else dies they just lose morale and exit the battle. Every character has a morale value relative to every other character, but I’m not clear on whether this has any effect other than on the main route, you need a certain amount of total morale to avoid the bad ending. There’s another feature that I wasn’t really sure about either, the “emotion system”.

The diamond below the stats there is supposed to indicate the emotion of the character, and that can affect attack, evade, and other things. But I have no idea what causes it to change or how much of an effect it has — I just ignored that aspect for the game.

Overall this was an enjoyable enough game. I didn’t like it enough to do the other two routes. The story is a little thin, although the multiple paths do add some replayability. I think what most bothered me was just the opaqueness of the system (particularly in the Japanese version). Of course if I had been in Japan when this came out I would have just paid the $15 or so for the strategy guide to find out what everything actually did.