It's very hard to like Stella Deus ...
The graphics of the intro movie and the very start of the game have an anime look and are definitely not bad. The music is also promising so, before pressing start, things look real nice.
The problems begin to pop up when the game takes you to the first combat for a quick tutorial. Everything in the game is derivative and it stinks of old game play. The characters move in square grids, act and you get to select the direction they'll face, just like your typical strategy RPG. You get a menu for party and item management and a map where you can move to your next main objective or simply wander in search of random battles.
It could be yet another Final Fantasy Tactics or Ogre Battle clone but Stella Deus interface slow downs combat and make item management a boring chore. Too many steps and clicks for simple and routine actions.
Also, even though the art style is not half bad, the combat effects are just plain ugly. The spells seem to come straight from the SNES or the GameBoy and team attacks not only take a long time but also look dull.
The characters are bland, uninteresting and the voice acting is just horrible. You're forced to listen to simplistic dialogues between shallow and silly characters, whose figure is zoomed on the screen as they speak, just like in a GameBoy game.
I have played little more than an hour of Stella Deus so this might seem like a hasty review but I found hard to play it again after turning off the PS2.