There's good news, and bad news.
The good news is, the second video in the Hard Campaign series is in "Review" status. So it should be up in the next 24 hours or so.
The bad news is, I'm playing Stargazers again. Yes, Stargazers, the WORST RPG ever. Worse than Hydlide and Final Fantasy 8. Worse than the games on the Action 52 cartridge (Yes, every last one of them.). You might wonder why I do this. Well, a shitty game can have a hilariously bad ending, right?
But let's start from the beginning. When you PRESS START, you'll find that there's no intro to tell you what the hell you're doing. The storyline is detailed in the MANUAL, but since you either can't read Japanese or don't have the manual, I'll explain: The game takes place in EL FUTURO where a supercomputer governs the world. Gee, that's a smart idea, right? This supercomputer can actually control people's thoughts, too. This is supposed to cleanse the world of evil thoughts, but oh no no no no, that'd be too easy, wouldn't it? So anyways, the only people that can resist the supercomputer are people with ESP. Like Minami, the main playable character. And since people with ESP can resist that means everyone is gonna want Minami dead. F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S
So, when the game starts, you have no real place to go except north, to where there's a town, where everybody is sick with some disease or whatever. They tell you you can cure them with a potion that they know how to make. Jesus Christ, can't they fix this themselves if they know how?!
Now, it's very hard to get a good start with this game because there is no difference between possible random encounters in different areas. In other words, you could run into a weak enemy or something that will kill you, no matter where you are. So, in order to survive, you need to grind. Since I refuse to waste time with that, I've enabled the "Level up whenever you win a battle" cheat. So after 30 battles I'm maxed out. But since there are no bosses in this game, you might wonder why I do this. Well, each character has out-of-battle moves that need to be learned. Imagine if Farfetch'd had to be level 30 before it could learn Fly.
Anyways, Minami's ability lets him pass over walls. You're gonna need that one alot, believe me. You might point out that I haven't even mentioned the first town. That's right, the town I mentioned is not the first town. The first town is invisible. YES, INVISIBLE. It's right there next to you at the start, but you'd easily miss it! And when you go in the town you learn that this place is a sanctum for Psychics because people are using ESP to hide it. Well gee, how is anyone to FIND it?!
It's here that we learn the OTHER horrors of this game: First, you might try buying the Ray Gun so you can fight with something besides your bare hands. Turns out the Ray Gun is WORSE than bare hands. Hmph. No, you want the Rag Launcher. A RAG LAUNCHER. How do rags hurt more than a fucking GUN?! So, to cure the diseased town you have to collect 3 ingredients to make the potion. One of which is in - DUN DA DA DUN - The Shifting Forest. This place is a real bitch because there's no way to tell whether a tile will warp you to the forest proper or do nothing. Oh, but we want to get into the forest for now. And when you exit you warp right back to where the game started, next to the invisible town. HOW THE HELL DOES THAT WORK?!
After curing the diseased town (Which basically earns nothing) Next we have to get past the Shifting Forest into a useless underpass. I say useless because Minami can pass over walls. But no, your second party member, Shiba, got his ass lost down there. You can also find a keycard and 300 gold, but since I have gold maxed out thanks to cheating, who cares? Oh, one more thing. If you flip on the power generator here you can go between the INVISIBLE TOWN and the next overworld map. And whoop de do, the battle music changed. I would have gone for changing the overworld music but whatever.
The next town is actually two towns in one, like this one area of FF3. This is where the game gets just fucking batshit insane. Certain doors require keycards that can only be used once. So guess what happens if you pass through a door and don't have 2 keycards? You're stuck, that's what. You need a card to go in AND get back out! So screw that! UNLIMITED KEYCARD CHEAT! That's no less than TEN codes so far, for all those keycards, max gold, and max EXP for our two party members. Speaking of which, Shiba's got a Jump ability that works like Farore's Wind: You mark a location and can warp back to it. About time something useful was around.
So where was I? Oh yeah, this town. It has our third party member, Aine, who can use Telepathy to talk to someone else's mind. There's also a sidequest or two involving party member £4 and some guy named Max but I don't care. I just want to finish this game. Exiting this town warps you to a completely unrelated area, just like that miserable Shifting Forest. Are you ready for the worst part of this game? Ladies and gentlemen, Mans and Mons, I present: THE OXYGEN PIPE. Good luck finding it without a guide. It's invisible, in a completely out-of-the-way tile, and there's no indication you got it other than a ding noise. But you need it to get to the final part of the game: Outer space.
Everyone in outer space wears a suit so you need Telepathy to talk to them. There's two parts to the Space Colony: The Cockpit and the LABORITORY!!! Both areas contain - get this - DOLPHINS. Yeah, REAL DOLPHINS. I thought "Dolphin" was a code name, but no, they're actual Dolphins! IN OUTER SPACE!!!!! I DON'T GET IT. So how does the game end? Apparently you have to use Telepathy on certain people/DOLPHINS in a certain order. I got no clue how, though, because the translation patch is stinking up at this point, just like the FE2 patch. But fear not, opening up a hex editor reveals the dialogue in ASCII! You are asked what to do about...I have no idea. Nothing at all really happens during the game. We got 2 party members, we went to outer space, and now we have to answer the final question, and the ending depends on your answer. Possible endings:
-Everyone moves to the space colony, and world peace is assured...somehow.
-The Dolphins go find a new home. I am honestly not getting this, guys.
-You kill the Dolphins, and this somehow dooms the world. No, really.
So that does it. Stargazers is overwith. That is, unless a sequel comes out, heaven forbid. This game had potential. It just wound up sucking ass, unfortunately.
Stargazers gets OVER NEGATIVE NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND! out of 10.
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