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SECRET OF THE STARS Company: Enix Released: July 1995 Genre: Turn-based RPG Graphics: 4.0 Control: 4.5 Sound/Music: 4.0 Storyline: 3.5 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 SUPER-NES.COM

With so many companies during the Super Nintendo's lifespan releasing rpg after rpg, I can only assume Tecmo decided to get in on the action a bit. The only problem is that they released what is one of the worst rpgs I've ever played. With graphics that most 8-bit games could best, minimal storyline, and about as uninpsiring a soundtrack as you'll ever likely hear, Tecmo's Secret of the Stars just seems to miss the target completely and becomes tedious and boring about as quickly as any rpg I've ever played. You may think that giving this game a score of 2.5 was a little harsh. I promise you after 5 minutes of playing this game you're going to realize just how generous I was being. Most 8-bit NES games look better than this game, and that's not exaggerating. Horrible use of the Super Nintendo's large color palette not to mention that there's just no real detail on almost anything in the entire game. It looks a lot like some of the older Apple II role-playing games from the 80's and is about as plain looking as a game can be. The bad part is that there's just no excuse for it looking this way. Not only did the developers have the full power of the SNES's 16-bit CPU at their disposal, but this game was also released in mid-1995 which by then most developers were doing some impressive visuals on the Super NES. This game sets back Super NES graphics 10 years easily. Tecmo should've never let something that looks like this be released at all. The music in Secret of the Stars sounds a lot like it was played on a touch-tone telephone. Okay maybe it's not that bad, but even at points when you do hear a halfway decent tune, you can't enjoy it because you know it won't be long until one of the next boring and bland tunes begins playing again. It reminded me a little bit of the soundtrack in Dragon Warrior on the NES in its' sound, just not nearly as well composed. Like the rest of the game, it's just uninspiring and never seems to reach any significant level of quality. And when you're releasing an rpg into a market that's heard some of the finest game music ever created with the Square and Enix titles, you had better bring your "A" game and Tecmo didn't even manage to bring their "D" game. Not what I would call horrible like the graphics, but still nothing new or original to add to the mix. By the time of Secret of the Stars' release, rpg combat systems had truly increased a lot in terms of playability. This game takes 5 steps back for every one it takes forward when it comes to gameplay. It's honestly not that bad of a turn-based battle system, but it's just like everything else released in the 10 years before it. Secret of the Stars sticks to the same old turn-based system used a hundred times before it with the "Fight", "Item", and "Run" menu commands. It does offer the easy-to-use "Auto" command which allows the computer to control your character's battle selections and takes the fight over for you, but even this command takes what little fun the combat sytem has to offer away from the player. As much as I didn't care for Earthbound's over-simplistic combat system, at least that game had other things going for it. This one definately doesn't. Unfortunately the gameplay in this game is as boring as the rest of the game. Back when this was released, I was on a tight budget as I was going to college at the time. After three months I finally had enough money to blow to get a Super NES game and I had it narrowed to two choices. It was gonna be either Secret of Mana or Secret of the Stars. Never before have I made such a huge video game buying mistake as I made that day when I chose this game over Mana. If this were an NES game, it would still be mediocre but at least it would be more understandable than the fact that this is supposedly a 16-bit game. It looks bad, plays bad, and doesn't sound much better. My advice is only grab this game if you are an insanely die-hard rpg fan or someone trying to collect every single Super NES game ever released. Everyone else needs to leave this stinker alone.