Secret of the Stars (SNES) Playthrough [1 of 2]
204A playthrough of Tecmo's 1995 role-playing game for the Super Nintendo, Secret of the Stars.
This is the first part of a two-part playthrough. You can find the second part at https://youtu.be/1AP6Qm7Tew0
On a console that was celebrated for its library of high quality JRPGs, Secret of the Stars is regarded as something of an outlier. Despite receiving decent reviews, it went all-but-ignored when it was released in 1995, and it doesn't appear to have gained many fans in the years since.
It's not difficult to see why, either. If you were looking for a 16-bit JRPG to play in 1995, you had plenty of amazing options: Secret of the Stars sat on store shelves next to Phantasy Star IV, Final Fantasy III, Earthbound, and Chrono Trigger, and it stood out for all the wrong reasons. The ugly box art was high fantasy at its most generic, the screenshots made it look like an antique from the 8-bit age, and it was made by a company known for arcade-style action and football games.
But a game doesn't have to be a cornerstone genre classic to be worthwhile, and Secret of the Stars is a good example of that. It feels like an earnest work that was built on good intentions, and though it never stood a chance against its competition, it's a decent a game in its own right.
You play as Ray, a young boy who swears revenge after losing his parents and his home to an evil force that's bent on world domination. Coincidentally enough, his father was one of five "warriors of the stars," an Aqutalion, and Ray has inherited this mysterious power. He now takes up his father's mantle and seeks to unite his power with that of the other Aqutalions in order to restore peace.
It's an unabashed Dragon Quest clone, but Secret of the Stars does differentiate itself in a few neat ways.
The game features a novel two-party system. Your primary party is made up of Aqutalion children, but there is a group of adult warriors known as the Kustera that support the Aqutalion's efforts who can visit places (like bars) that the Aqutalion kids are barred from, and they can help in navigating a few of the dungeons.
There is a "unity magic" system in place that allows two characters to combine abilities in battle, adding a nice bit of extra depth to late-game battles.
There is a lot of grinding involved, especially once the Kustera come in to play, but Secret of the Stars features a few welcome options to minimize the tedium. The auto-battle system is usually smart enough to heal your characters before they're wiped out, and if you crank the text speed up to max and disable the attack animations, battles fly by in the blink of an eye. It's a surprisingly forward-looking feature for a game that otherwise feels so firmly planted in the past.
The graphics would've barely been up to snuff had this been a 1988 PC Engine release, but the squat character sprites have their charms and the weird cast of enemies will draw a few chuckles. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is excellent. The tunes are memorable and suit the tone of the game perfectly.
The paint-by-number plot doesn't do the game any favors, though, and the quality of the translation is shockingly poor. Much of the dialog makes no sense whatsoever, the "jokes" will leave you scratching your head, and it's needlessly difficult to figure out what the game wants you to do at times. If you thought Breath of Fire II's English script got botched, just wait until you get a load of this.
The gameplay is generally fine, but I did find myself wishing that it would pick up the pace at times. Random encounters are constant and the game is nearly over by the time the time you get access to the more interesting battle mechanics, but I enjoyed my time with it. It's short enough to avoid overstaying its welcome, it puts up a reasonable challenge, and its bizarre sense of humor kept me entertained throughout. I'm not chomping at the bit to replay it anytime soon, but it was fun while it lasted.
A lot of people seem to think of Secret of the Stars as the worst SNES JRPG, and I think that's being a bit harsh. It's unexceptional but it's far being from terrible. Its biggest fault is that it had the misfortune of being released in the shadow of some of the biggest RPGs of all time.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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