Enter Stella Deus, a tactical RPG published by Atlus and developed by Pinegrow. The game, while highly traditional in some respects, shows some innovation in other areas that could potentially be used by other games that will release in the future.

First of all, the game's story isn't anything unique. You'll play as Spero and will be tasked with hunting spirits to save your Kingdom. You'll eventually realize, however, that hunting these spirits will harm the world and the direction of your quest will shift. While the story isn't horrible, it is somewhat overused. The characters are your standard RPG fare, too: not horrible, but they didn't do much to stand out. You are able to take up to a total of six of them into your party, though.

Now, good voice acting could have helped saved the story where unique characters couldn't, at least to a degree. Sadly, this isn't the case here. While the voice acting didn't make me want to jab Q-tips in my ears (trust me, never do that), it definitely was just average, if not a bit below. That said, the rest of the game's sounds were better than the voice acting. While not cream-of-the-crop, they were better than average. Music, however, was a standout - I've found it harder and harder to appreciate music in a game recently, but Stella Deus was a game where I can truly say the music was enjoyable and catchy.

Thankfully, the game's graphical style does come through. While the quality of the graphics may make you wonder if you accidentally bought a late-generation PS1 game, the style is what makes the graphics fun. I've always been a fan of the drawn anime style, and this game pulls it off well without being overly excessive. The animations are fun, too. As already mentioned, though, the style can only go so far when the graphics don't even attempt to impress on a technical front - this is the PS2, so much more could be done with the graphics while keeping the unique style.

Of course, a big reason for picking up a Tactical RPG is the battle system and it is here that Stella Deus shines. The game includes a unique system for combat that uses a point system. You'll have a set amount of points at the start of a turn and performing any action uses this points. If you have points left after moving or performing an action, you can perform more actions until you run out of points - you aren't limited to a single movement or attack order. This allows you to make decisions as to whether or not you want to take multiple hacks at a monster or perform a hit and run type of attack. The system could use a little revision, though, but I still found it to be enjoyable.

Another fun element involving combat is item fusion. While nothing really new, the system does work for what it is intended. Combining useless items and finding something really nice is always a fun surprise. Some of the better items will come from item combination too, leading to what I like to call "pack rat syndrome". That said, the amount of items you can create via fusion is just insane. You can make items that are total pieces of crap that you wouldn't give to an utterly horrible character all the way up to items that are too good for even your main character.

Overall, I can say that I enjoyed this game. The graphical style, the awesome music and the unique gameplay made for a fun game to play through. I did find myself, however, zoning out quite often when it involved the game's story - the bad voice acting coupled with a story that has been rehashed many times made me just zone out. If you can get past the game's shortcomings, though, and take it as a ton of fun battles to fight through, you'll find yourself enjoying Stella Deus. Sure, the game won't bring new players to the genre, but it will keep current Tactical RPGers happy.

The best bet is to give this game a rental if you can - see if you can manage to put up with the bad voice acting and see if you enjoy the combat system. Even if you don't decide to purchase the game, though, you'll still enjoy the fights and get a preview of what will hopefully become a more widely used battle system in future games (after some revisions are made to it, of course.)