I had never heard of this game before. Tecmo Secret of the Stars is a unique RPG for the SNES, and I like it a lot! When I was a kid, I don’t remember anyone talking about this game, and I think it is as good as the best RPGs on the console.

I find it odd that Tecmo decided to put its name in the titles of so many games. I can’t think of any other company that did this. You might say the Civilization games and other Sid Meier Games did this, but that is more of a developer saying, “I made this game,” instead of the company needlessly doing it.

Finding games like this can be awesome! It reminds me of stumbling across a game in the 1990s when I was looking for ROMs or retro games. I should say that this is awesome when the game is good. Anyway, let’s check out the game.

TLDR: It is a Decent RPG with a Bad Translation and a Unique Party System.

Narrative

The story is okay. It takes some interesting turns, but it also has many of the tropes common in RPGs from the 1990s. I found the two-party system to be a nice twist, but it doesn’t impact the story as much as I hoped.

The main character is Ray, or whatever you want to name him, and he leads a party of Aqutallions. I’ll be calling them Team A for the rest of this. Ray goes on a quest to find the other four members of Team A and defeat the big bad guy, Homncruse.

Homncruse is going to destroy the world, and he has a bunch of henchmen who have spread out across the world—these range from comical to downright evil. It is like the developers were trying to keep this a lighthearted adventure.

Over the course of the game, your characters learn about their powers. Once the group is together, they can “move up in rank” from a Pennon to a Banalette (This gets shortened in the game to Banalet. I have no idea why companies do crap like this). Eventually, the party becomes Aqutallions. I’m assuming these two things are explained in the manual because I do not know what this translation should be.

Note: It is in the Manual, but it isn’t explained. I did find the correct spelling for them, which helped. Did this help me to find out what they mean? No, it didn’t.

Ray is also joined on his quest by a group of people called the Kustera, which I’ll call Team B for the rest of this. These are twelve characters who help you along the way. It is a cool idea.

Ray and his friends are trying to avenge the death of their fathers. Homncruse and his minions killed them. That is basically the story.

The story is fine. It is what you should expect from an RPG from the early to mid-1990s. I like it. While it is a generic group of heroes who have to defeat a big bad guy, I think the developers did a good job with it. The story doesn’t stand out much, but the gameplay offers a few unique twists.

Gameplay

This is a fairly standard turn-based RPG. It brings something unique to the formula by having an A and B teams you can swap between. You have a main party of “heroes” and then a secondary party like a “helper group” that can be used to get at other items.

This only comes into play when you run into the yellow and green gates. The hero party can unlock the yellow gates, and the helper party can unlock the green gates. The yellow gates lead to the main story and advance the game’s plot, while the green gates lead to items and equipment.

I like this idea. It is similar to parts of Final Fantasy IV, but if those parts were a major part of the game. The only downside is that you need to grind for levels with two parties instead of one.

You have a party of five characters. Team A doesn’t change, as the game has only five main characters. With Team B, you can swap the characters to best fit your playing style, as there are 12 possible characters for that team.

There are a few instances where having two parties becomes annoying. You will need to travel with the two groups separately. This leads to some backtracking where you advance the plot with Team A and then need to follow the same path with Team B so you can get some items from a dungeon.

One cool thing about the gameplay is that you recruit people to build a town. This reminds me of Soulblazer and other games where you can build a town or a base. It is fun to do this, and I keep trying to remember that it exists.

In the tradition of the main characters in RPGs being inconsiderate jerks, you can sleep in anyone’s bed to recover your party’s health. So, not only can you steal anything not nailed down in these towns, but you can also walk in and sleep in the beds. I should also add that you don’t have to pay anyone for this privilege. This feels way more invasive than other odd things in RPGs.

The magic system in this game is a little strange. I’m unsure how I feel about parts of it because they confuse me. When you rest, you don’t regain magic points. You need to find some places to replenish it, and I don’t understand the thinking behind it. I haven’t found an item that gives you more, but I’m sure it is in the game somewhere.

The game has what I call pain sections on the world map. These are squares of land that hurt your party. You’ll find these areas in several retro RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. I’m sure they can be found in other games, but I can’t think of them now.

In Secret of the Stars, these areas are snow-covered. This feels a little strange as I’m used to them being swamps or lava. It isn’t unusual, but I don’t like them being in the game.

You have to do a lot of grinding in this game. Not only do you have your main party, but you also have to level up the B team characters. This gets more annoying as you find the characters of each party, and you need to get them leveled up to the other party members.

There are these star shrines that play a larger role in the game than I initially thought. Both parties have a reason to go to these shrines. Team A visits the shrines for a class change/promotion, and Team B visits them to go on a treasure hunt. It is pretty cool.

I like the gameplay in Secret of the Stars. Having two parties is a cool idea; I wish the developers had done more with it. Going on a long quest to find your party members in RPGs is something I enjoy, and this is no exception.

I might have overpowered my characters by grinding too much. The game was fairly easy, and I find the simple act of grinding for levels to be relaxing most of the time. This made the boss fights feel easier than they were probably supposed to be.

Visuals

Secret of the Stars looks great! The world screen, battle screen, and character models look great for the time. The graphics remind me of Final Fantasy V.

The world screen, villages, and dungeons look great. The monsters look different from those in other games I’ve played on the SNES. It is a good-looking RPG, and the battle screens stand out.

The battle screens look like something from Dragon Quest but have the animations you might see in Phantasy Star. They aren’t amazing, but they are good enough to be mentioned here. The background screens look awesome!

The spells look good. I like that we get to see them, which is what should be expected of an SNES RPG. There isn’t too much else to say about the battles.

 This is a good-looking SNES RPG. It reminds me of Final Fantasy IV. Some things look a little better, and some look worse, but overall, the game looks pretty good.

Translation Issues

Secret of the Stars has a rough translation. It isn’t hilariously bad or overly confusing like some games from the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is more of a case where the person doing the translation didn’t know what they were doing, got rushed, or figured no one would notice.

Let me give you a little context. In the 1990s, developers didn’t care about translations. What would normally happen is someone at the development studio who knew English would do their best, which would be the final translation.

This obviously changed as the 1990s went on, but it wasn’t that big of a deal early on. I don’t remember caring about it when I was little. It makes me wonder if it has impacted how people learn to read.

If this game were released today, it would be torn apart because the translation was this bad. Back in the mid-1990s, it would’ve been noted, but not a big problem. Almost all of the game’s translation issues come from misspellings.

This game’s translation isn’t as bad as some of the games on the NES. You won’t get lost in the game because of what the townsfolk say. It will raise some eyebrows due to the strange spelling of the items and the odd names of things.

Harsh Reviews

This game has been reviewed several times over the years. The 1990s reviews are more favorable than those of the 2000s when reviewers thought being as harsh as possible was the only way to review something. The highest I’ve seen was 50/100, which isn’t too far off.

I found the review from RPGFan a little funny. They correctly criticized the rough translation, but I found the complaints about having to level up characters to be odd. It’s a basic feature of most RPGs, so I don’t understand it. It was like the reviewer had never played an RPG before.

At the end of this review for RPGan, the reviewer says there is “no recognizable plot,” which is odd since the plot is described in the article. There are other baffling complaints here. I’m not sure when this review was done, but it sounds like something from the 2000s when it was “cool” to crap on retro games.

Some of the reviewers categorized this as a started RPG. I disagree with this, as there is more going on in the game than one of the Pokemon games or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Like many of the RPGs from the early 1990s, it is easier if you take the time to level up your party.

The review from Nintendo Power is closer to reality than those from the 2000s and 2010s. They gave the game a 3/5 and said it was a “step backward from the standards set by Final Fantasy III(sic) and Chrono Trigger.” They also criticized the graphics as being NES quality, which I don’t agree with.

Comparing this game to Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI isn’t fair. Secret of the Stars is an average game that should be compared to games like Paladin’s Quest, Robotrek, Phantasy Star III, and the other middle-of-the-road RPGs of the time.

I liked this game more than the other reviewers. My complaints are similar to theirs, but I don’t think it is any worse than some of the other RPGs I’ve played. I liked this game more than Paladin’s Quest.

7/10. I liked the gameplay and the graphics. The translation is sometimes terrible, which isn’t unusual for the time this game was released. The two-party system is unique and something I enjoyed. This is on par with Robotrek and Paladin’s Quest.

Pros

• Multi-party System
• Decent Graphics
• Fun Story

Cons

• Tedious
• Lots of Grinding
• A little confusing at times

Conclusion

Sometimes you play a game and like it more than other people. Secret of the Stars is one of those games for me. It isn’t going to find itself on a list of the best games on the SNES or best RPGs from the 1990s, but it is a fun alternative to those RPGs.

This is an above-average RPG. It is an easy game, or maybe I think it is easy because I played The 7^th Saga before this game. Secret of the Stars was much easier to get through than that game.

I thought the dual-party system was very interesting and wish the developers had done more with it. There are many cool things in this game that I wish had been done better, and a better translation would be nice. This is a decent RPG on a system with a lot of excellent RPGs.

If you liked this post, check out my other posts, like My Favorite RPGs so far and The 7^th Saga review.