Shadow Tower Abyss
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Love Stella Deus’ graphics – they’re very similar to Persona 2’s, but bigger and smoother thanks to the power of the Emotion Engine or something.
Adara lost her arm, so she got this cool alchemy cannon grafted on that she unloads in enemies’ face.
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Good character sprites on 3D backgrounds is a great style and this game’s visuals were like a dream after playing stuff like Xenogears and Persona. *or the lot of psone SRPGs, for that matter.
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I downloaded the iso to this once even though I don’t know anything about it just cause I saw some screenshots and want every sprite+3d ps1 and ps2 game
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aside from the visuals and decent OST, i’m also enjoying the game itself. it’s pretty simple to grasp and isn’t attempting to shove too many systems or anything convoluted down my throat. also i love the villains raging about apathy. looking through google, it seems like nobody liked this game. 
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I liked it.
I did wish the maps were bigger/more ambitious for positioning. But otherwise, it all worked for me!
i recommend playing it for like, an hour or two at least. aesthetically, it’s great, and it’s always nice when the sprites look like the character art. the plot is kind of goofy, but has enough flair that i’m interested in seeing where it goes.
also it doesn’t force a stupid fucking tutorial on you! not that it needs a tutorial to begin with.
I was always curious about Stella Deus since it got lost in the flood of later PS2 rpgs, especially Atlus fare. My only idea’s been some art in the Soejima '04-'10 works. Looks like it has some extra crisp quality even before the emulation, nice.
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Some fun trivia: the title Stella Deus (‘star god’) is a veiled reference to a strategy RPG Atlus had published in 2001 for the PSX called HOSHIGAMI ~Ruining Blue Earth~ (i think it was also ported to the DS). As far as I remember, nobody had much good to say about Hoshigami, either, and it didn’t look particularly interesting which is probably why I never touched it when it first came out or when it was ported for the DS or whatever. I don’t think they share any other similarities aside from their titles and people’s reception of them.
Wait what, I remember Hoshigami reviewing pretty well (PSM) and always wanting to play it. I still kinda do. Bit I also don’t wanna accept anything less than Valkyria Chronicles or something like Silent Storm.
i just remember people thinking it was “meh”, but “people” might have just been “people on my AIM buddylist” or the GIA or something, and 2001 would have been around the time I got a PS2 and also when I was heavy into like, Persona 2, Monster Rancher 2, and Dark Cloud, so it didn’t stand a chance.
i’d probably still check it out at some point to see if there are any similarities. mobygames has no credits, so i don’t know if MaxFive (Hoshigami) became Pinegrow (Stella Deus) or what.
Hoshigami looked especially Tactics-like but I can remember nothing else of it.
Same with Kartia, aside from that very standout Amano art (in the same strokes as Terra).
Atlus USA originally released Kartia as a Blockbuster Video rental exclusive
huh. aight. Come to think of it I rented very few disc based games.
kartia’s music was done by a few people who worked on revelations: persona’s soundtrack, so some of it has a similar feel, it’s pretty rad.
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I also remember Hoshigami getting poor reviews when it came out because I otherwise would’ve been very interested at the time. It certainly looked pretty.
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