Star Hearts: Hoshi to Daichi no Shisha

Star Hearts: Hoshi to Daichi no Shisha was one of Bandai's attempts to build a full-fledged original Japanese RPG on the WonderSwan Color, one that wouldn't stand in the shadow of Square's remakes. It offers a classic fantasy journey with a party of heroes, world travel, towns, dungeons, and turn-based battles — exactly what a Japanese player at the turn of the millennium pictured under the genre. The story revolves around the fate of the world and a stellar power that intervenes in it, told in traditional fashion through dialogue scenes between the stages of the journey.

Gameplay sticks to a proven structure: the party grows, characters gain levels and new abilities, equipment is bought in towns, and the main activity between story beats is exploring dungeons full of random encounters. It's precisely the rhythm of short battles, easily dispatched in a few turns, that makes the game well suited to a handheld console, since it's easy to return to in small chunks. Technically it was among the better-looking RPGs on the platform, with colorful environments, legible sprites, and decently crafted battle screens that managed to keep track of the whole party even on a limited display.

At the time, the title's main job was to prove that the WonderSwan Color's library could offer a big RPG outside licensed brands and outside Square. It never made it overseas, so it remained known mainly to Japanese players and the later community of collectors who systematically comb through the console's library. Today it can't be recommended as a first stop on the platform, since without knowledge of Japanese all that's left is the combat layer, but as proof that Bandai wanted its own RPG contenders rather than relying solely on outside licenses, it has its place. For anyone mapping out everything that appeared on the WonderSwan Color beyond the best-known titles, it's one of the games that make the library richer than it might seem at first glance.