Stars Arisen Reviews

I'll get directly to the point, if you enjoy these kind of games this one is a must, its length is perfect, its story is very good, actually rather impressive, someone can actually make a movie of this. You get a very good epilogue based on your choices that doesnt feel rushed at all. I bought it at full price and i do not regret it. This is one of my favorites of its kind and i will definitly buy future games if they'll resemble this one. I will not get into more detalis, i will let you discover them :)

Takes a while to warm up, but it's a good balance of intrigue across different factions, with the ability for the protagonist to be suitably good or monstrous; a loner or a leader. The romances were under-cooked and didn't blend well with the main decisions of the story; but the redemptive/revenge family arc was especially good.

They say that the key to a good story is to focus on characters: "Interesting characters can carry a weak plot, but the reverse can never be true." Stars Arisen, however, manages both. The very lore of the world glides with its' characters, making for an immersive, impeccable experience that captures your full attention, even to minute details. It's a full coming of age story laced with magic, betrayals, and a carousel cast of unreliable narrators, which will have your Starchild measuring their own judgement against their trust in other people. Stars Arisen is very unique in its' player-led experience, and even choices that shape the MCs' personality will have grand consequences to how the narrative is displayed. Will you play the lost heir, vying for their stolen birthright? Or the timid child of a hermit fumbling through a destiny bestowed upon them? It's an amount of nuance and choice that's frankly remarkable, and speaks to a level of back-end writing that goes unsung. Abigail C. Trevor clearly puts a ton of effort to their choicescript writing, and it brings us one of the best titles from Choice of Game's publishing. If you're sitting on the fence about whether this one is for you, this is my endorsement to give it a shot! If you love magic, intrigue, and memorable NPCs, this is the videonovel for you!

Incredible story with intricate characters. Choices are very impactful and branching.

To be honest, I was slow to warm up to the MC in this game, as it felt I was being railroaded onto a certain path with preconceived opinions. However as you get into the story the options to develop your character, what they believe, and how they think become more varied and the decisions you make do carry consequences and influence how the game pans out and what sort of ending you get. You are sent on a mission and as you investigate the circumstances you find yourself in you are allowed to change your mind if you want. Without revealing any spoilers, your character grows and matures because of their experiences, but this is no child growing up, its an intelligent 25 year old adult who has grown up apart from society and is faced with social and political views they did not know even existed until confronted with them. How they cope with the contradictions to everything they have been taught, and carry out their mission is up to you. There were several developments I did not see coming that could be described as throwing a spanner in the works. You will need to play the game to find out. Most of the options and choices presented to you are reasonable, and only a couple of times did I feel that my MC was being forced to act differently from how I thought they should behave, and i was relieved that the option to change my mind was present up until the finale. The writing itself is solid, intelligent, and the author keeps up the air of expectancy and tension right until the end. There appears to be far more to read than in the usual IF games, I've done one run-through and while it did not take 6 hours (I had to leave the game at one point without shutting down) you will certainly not be able to race through it like you can with the young adult IF games. If there is a category for adult fantasy and magic, this is where this game would fit. Yes, you can romance some of the characters, and I think there may be an option for the obligatory sex scene or two, which you can simply ignore if you are already juggling too many schemes to further complicate your life. There are plenty of opportunities for a rematch to further expose the parts of the story you have not yet discovered and explore the other pathways you ignored. One nice touch is that at the end of every chapter you are given the chance to replay it, or go on to the next one so you can rescue the bad click that took you somewhere you didn't want to go. I think this is something most fans of this genre appreciate. Despite the slow start, I have enjoyed this game and am off for my second run-through, and if you try the demo and like it, then you can expect to enjoy a game that does not seem rushed at the end, and has an epilogue to tie up the loose ends. Another nice touch.

I really enjoyed my time with this one. Definitely in the upper tiers of the genre, with great writing, plenty of meaningful choices and relationships, several rounded characters with sympathetic ideals... 10/10

This was a joy to read both for the story and characters. There are a lot of varied endings which is awesome and I had fun exploring those. There's quite a lot of detail below the surface which took me multiple runs to fully uncover which I like. There are a couple of small issues but they don't impact my enjoyment much. This one lets you restart a chapter which is a lot better than what I think is the default for this engine but still pales in comparison to a proper save system.

Hmm, this one is OK. It is a bit more removed from being in the story, so to speak, in that you are focusing more on other people, groups, and situations. Unlike Heroes of Myth, where the focus was more on your character and how they were handling a past situation that had already occurred before the story started. In this one, there is still a large backstory / before the story element, but your character was not actually involved in the events per se, just living the repercussions of those events. TBH the story just didnt pull me in the way I like. It felt more like a game, than a novel with choices. Still there is plenty of staging and dressing, it just feels more like well crafted displays and props rather than anything else. All in all the writing is extremely well done, and every character is interesting plot wise. Relationship wise, well it misses the mark for me, but maybe you will find something/someone you like. For the asking price this story is a fair deal.

I loved reading through “Stars Arisen.” I felt like each of my choices added something to the story or allowed me to influence the narrative meaningfully, both of which helped keep me invested in the marvelous universe described in the game. What’s more, even though I disliked many of the characters at first, they all grew on me over time, and although I sometimes disagreed with their methods, I almost always understood where they came from. The romances, however, fell a bit short of the mark. At first, none of them really appealed to me, and although that changed once I got to know some of them better, I never felt like my chosen love interest and I got a satisfying conclusion, but that could’ve been because of the choices I made with the overarching story, and if so, good. It would imply my decisions did indeed impact the outcome. Overall, this game offers hours of fun with very few downsides to hold it back. (8/10)

First off, same author as Heroes of Myth, so going in you know it's going to be good. And it is! I will note that I did not like any of the ROs, at first. I came around after a bit on a couple of them, though I did end up not pursuing anything with any of them, mainly because none really were the sorts of ROs I tend to like but also because [spoiler]I wasn't gonna sleep with any traitorous scum! Burn, traitors! Mommy sorceress demands vengeance!!![/spoiler] The city and the people are all well developed, and I came to sincerely care about how things would end up for all of the different people. Ultimately, I am really happy with the way everything wrapped up, and the journey towards the climactic ending was a lot of fun! I was very pleased overall and I am glad things turned out for the best. [spoiler] The best ... FOR ME AND MAMA! Don't call it a comeback! 🎶 I'm gonna knock you out 🎶 Mama said knock you out 🎶 I'm gonna rock this land 🎶 I'm gonna take this itty-bitty world by storm 🎶 I'm gonna knock you out 🎶 Mama said knock you out 🎶[/spoiler]