Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth

Characters

Gameplay

The player must raise a small army of mercenaries by fighting turn-based tactical battles. Game flow involves selecting places on the world map, watching story characters interact, and then a battle. While on the story map, the player can equip items and teach party members skills, as well as train the party.

Battles take place on a square grid, complete with various terrain. Quicker characters can move first, and when the characters' turn is over, they can spend RAP points to control when they will go next.

Combat features

Hoshigami features an extensive magic system that includes multiple classical elements including fire, wind, and ice. According to the mythology of the in-game universe, the power of the elements originally belonged to the many spirits of nature that lived in harmony with humans. Over time, however, the spirits' power was sealed into an ore called Manatite. As the ore is usually found in disk-like shards, people began to refer to them as "coins."

Throughout the plot, players can collect and use these coins in battle in the same way that magic is used in other games. Each coin has its own statistics, including how much power is stored in it and how much energy it takes to cast a spell. Coinfeigm can only be used if the coin has enough energy (CP) stored in it. The CP of a coin starts at the maximum at the start of each battle and replenishes itself as battle continues.

This allows each character to push either an ally or enemy two squares in any direction.

Each character is allowed to move, attack, use Coinfeigm or otherwise take action when their RAP Gauge reaches 0% and the turn begins; it fills with each action taken, and the character's turn ends when the gauge reaches 100%. When attacking with weapons, it is possible to "overfill" the bar, exceeding 100% and delaying the character's next turn; it is also possible to hasten the next turn by taking fewer actions than the gauge allows.

A queue appears at the top of the screen to let players know the flow of battle. Taking many actions will push a character to the end of the line, delaying the next turn. Once the player decides to end a character's turn, a separate RAP Gauge will come up in the middle of the screen. Players can choose to fill the gauge with extra RAP in order to affect when the character's next turn will fall. In this way, the player can plan ahead and form a strategy for defeating opponents.

Characters can be left in "Session Mode" at the end of their turns, which makes them able to participate in Hoshigami's special attack system. If the currently-controlled character (the "Host" character) Shoots an enemy into an Ally who is in Session mode, that ally will damage the enemy upon collision and then Shoot them in whatever direction they (the ally) are facing. All six members of the party can participate in the Session if they have been properly positioned and left in Session mode.

Spirit Worship

All playable characters worship one of six principal gods that are the embodiment of the elements that make up the world. Character statistics change depending on which god is being worshipped at a given time, and each element focuses on a different aspect of combat.

Skills

During battle, characters who take action earn Devotion Points in addition to the usual experience points, and learn a new skill for every 100 Devotion Points. Learned skills differ based on which god the character is worshipping, and have many useful effects. The skills tied to each element include status-changing and status-augmenting moves, and more. A character could theoretically learn all the skills in the game, as there is nothing to stop a player from changing a character's god constantly.

Reception

Hoshigami was not received well by critics, earning a combined score of 55/100 at the aggregate review site Metacritic. Criticism was leveled at its steep learning curve and nigh-impossible battles, and the resulting emphasis on level-grinding. Character fatalities compound this problem: soldiers killed in battle are lost forever unless revived before battle's end, and can only be replaced by a newly-recruited, Level-1 party member, who may require hours of training before they are of equal level to their new teammates. The RAP, Session Attack and Coinfeigm mechanics received praise, but these innovations were not perceived as overcoming the game's faults.