Hoshigari Empusa! (An Avaricious Empusa!)

Koutenrin School is famous as being an elite institute, and only elite and gifted students are allowed entrance. Therefore, having an effective leader of the student body who demonstrates the school's ideals of "friendship," "wisdom," and "supremacy" is a must.

The election for the position of the student body president is not an easy one; gaining status among the students and their praise is necessary, and a task that is not easy to do alone. A candidate is encouraged to find a "partner" with which to develop a deepening friendship, who is diligent in their studies and will stay by their candidate's side for support.

Every year when election time rolls around, those students that believe themselves to be the elite of the study body try to make their mark, and the competition for student body president is a heated one. Gaining popularity among the students, attending school events, and finding a supporting partner are all vital to gain success...

Ookouchi Maria - Maria is a sophomore, and it is surprising she was able to enter Koutenrin since she is not from a rich or famous family, and pushed away from her parents to enter the school. She is a very energetic and loud person, and also a bit of a trouble-maker, as her forceful attitude leads to fights. Her weak point is she is sensitive about her physical features, and her special ability is being mischievous. Seiyuu: Kawakami Tomoko.

Kagawa Reika - Reika is a junior, and is a very gentle and lady-like person. She is an intelligent person and a mothering type who is popular all over the school -- even with the same gender -- and has a large fanbase devoted to her. Although she is the daughter of a large financial group, she is still kind to anyone. Her weak point is never doubting someone, and her special ability is always going at her own pace. Seiyuu: Orikasa Fumiko.

Kirishima Sana - Sana is a junior and is in charge of discipline at the school. She is fastidious in making sure the rules of the school are strictly followed. She is harsh about maintaining order and will not let injustice be allowed. Because of her position as the rule-enforcer of the school, she does not have many friends. Her weak point is complimenting, and her special ability is inspection. Seiyuu: Umebayashi Kayo.

Hanma Mizuki - Mizuki is a sophomore, and an extremely shy person. Though she often falls in love blindly, she is too cowardly to do much about it. She is so shy around others that she has trouble looking them in the eyes, and tends to always look down. Her weak point is talking with others, and her special ability is unrequited love. Seiyuu: Koike Kyouko.

Komine Shouta - Shouta is a sophomore with incredible intelligence but a very shy and weak demeanor. Because of his intelligence, he is nicknamed "sensei" by the other students. He has terrible eyesite, but behind his glasses hides a bishounen. His weak point in athletics, and his special ability is inference. Seiyuu: Fukuyama Jun.

Kojou Yukito - Yukito is a junior, and a trouble-maker who always gets into fights. He is the captain of the boxing club, and has amazing athletic ability. But he isn't the brightest person, and his one-track mind leads to violence, which leads to trouble. His weak point is artifice and his special ability is quarreling. Seiyuu: Takahashi Tohru.

Yamazaki Alfred - Alfred is a junior, and a cheerful Christian. He has grown up in a pious Christian family and has been influenced greatly by his parents. He is a very warmhearted and comforting person. He listens well to others, and his kind attitude makes him easy for people to talk to. His weak point is unbelieving and his special ability is confession. Seiyuu: Toriumi Kosuke

Yomogida Shinji - Shinji is a senior who is very intellectual and technological. He is very handsome and cool, and because of this, is very popular with girls. He always has the top grades and is the top-ranked student in the school. Being a bit obstinate, he often forms rivals with those that don't please him. His weak point is not using his specialities and his special ability is scheming. Seiyuu: Junichi Suwabe.

Hoshigari Empusa! is a different style than most girls' games or boys' love games you'll see: this game plays out in a boardgame fashion, which lasts fifty turns, with some visual novel added in for scenes between characters.

At the start of the game, you chose if you want the election to be between two, three, or four people. If you chose two, then you will be against one computer player, if you chose three, you will be against two computer players, and if you chose four, you will contend with three computer-controlled players. For anyone beginning with the game, I recommend starting with only one rival: it will likely take you a few loses to get the hang of things anyway.

Next you get to select your player character and your computer-controlled campaign rival. When you hover over a character, it will display their physical and intelligence stats (physical being the number on the left and intelligence being the number on the right). You may want to use these stats to your advantage when chosing your player character and your rival. To select a character you click on them, and then you will chose your campaign rival by clicking on them. You will /not/ be able to make your computer rival a partner, so keep that in mind as well when selecting.

After an opening introduction sequence for yourself and your campaign rival, you are brought to the gameboard, which is set up as the school. At the beginning of your turn, in the upper lefthand corner of the screen it will display the stats for you and your rival. You will be the left most pink box, the rival will be the blue box. This stat box shows three important stats: Fame, Money, and Total Fame. That last number, the Total Fame, is what you have to have higher than your opponent to win the game.

At the beginning of your turn you can do the following: Move, Trick, Status, and Save/Load. I suggest using a Save/Load at your very first turn at the beginning of the game, so that if things start out terribly wrong, you can go right back to the beginning without having to chose your character and opponent and watch the opening sequences all over again. I also recommend saving every 10 turns or so: you only get five save slots, so this spaces them out rather nice so that if things start going bad you have different points in the game you can load back to. The Status option lets you see your progress and your opponent's progress in more detail, such as how many squares in each area are claimed by you, and you can also view the map or check on upcoming events. The Trick option lets you use "items" or "manuevers" against your opponent or to aid yourself: the tricky part here is that without knowing Japanese, you will have no idea what all those little items do, and there are /lots/ of them. After a couple times through you may start to recognize a few and what they do, but it is completely possible to win without the use of Tricks: I rarely use them since I don't know what most of them do exactly. The most obvious of the options is Move, which will roll your dice and then you will move across the board in the direction you are facing in accordance to your roll. You have to Move on each turn.

The object is pretty simple: you need more total fame than your opponent. Fame is gained by claiming squares that you land on; you can trade your fame stat to claim a square which will then add to your total fame. If you land on a square you have already claimed, you can use your money to upgrade the value of it to give you more total fame as well. If you get enough squares in each area of the school (the gym, schoolyard, commons, and club area) then all of your squares will gain a bonus and upgrade in value. There are also random events around the school that will award fame if you complete them.

If you land on a opponents square (or vice versa) there is the option to battle over the square fame/money/items to avoid fighting. The battle system seems to be about as confusing as the items, and I still haven't quite figured it out. There are two types of battles, one based on either your physical or intelligence stat (which seem to always be in your opponents favor), and one based on "fate" where you try to get a bar on a meter closer to the goal mark than your opponent. You can also use items during physical or intelligence battles to try to boost your stats.

Along the way you can recruit a "partner." As you travel around the school claiming squares, you will get events that go into the typical "visual novel" style where you will meet other members of the cast. By giving correct options and trying to hang around the areas that a certain character inhabits, then you can get them to join you. Here is the really interesting part: you can recruit /any/ character except your rival or your rival's partner. This is regardless of gender: therefore, you can have boy/girl, girl/boy, boy/boy, or girl/girl partnering. However, all the "couples" in the game are more on a friendly basis than a romantic one.

If you win the election and have gotten all the events for your partner, then you will get a partner ending, where you will see an ending CG of your partner accompanied with a monologue that follows up what happens to them after the election. The disappointing part is that the partner ending will be the same no matter which character is your playing character, so you really only need to win the game eight times at a minimum to collect all the CGs and see all the endings.

At first, the whole boardgame will be very confusing: if you get frusterated, you won't be alone, I was incredibly frusterated my first plays through until I got the hang of it. But once you get the hang of it, it is incredibly addictive; since it is a boardgame and not just a visual novel adventure, that means play each time is going to be different, as you never know what is going to happen.

I did run into a few problems getting this game to work: either it would lock up on the main screen right after the opening movie, or I'd be able to get into the game, but the character voices sounded too low and scratchy and I could not change any of the sound options (like make the background music lower, the character voices higher, mute the background music, ect.). Playing around in the game options fixed this problem for me: I'm not sure exactly what the options are that I changed (since they are all in Japanese) but enough trial and error got things working perfectly. This seems to be system specific: in other words, you may not have this issue at all. I believe it has to do with the video and sound components of the computer, and setting the sound/video settings appropriately in the game. None of my other friends that played had this problem; therefore, if you have this issue, it is /not/ a problem with the game, and changing the system settings (which may take a lot of trial and error to find which of those Japanese settings work for you) will likely solve the issue.

For those curious, the following screencap shows what I set the game options to in order to get it running smoothly on my system. Again, if you do encounter problems, these settings aren't guaranteed to be the solution for you, you may have to tinker with them otherwise. It is a computer-specific issue.

AGTH Compatibility - Hoshigari Empusa! is NOT compatible with Anime Games Text Hooker.

Hoshigari Empusa! Play Guide - A play guide in English made by myself that gives pointers for the boardgame, as well as the correct options to get all the partner endings/CGs in the game.

Hoshigari Empusa! Full CG Capture Save File - A save file that unlocks all the CGs in the game.

I had taken a long break from gaming before playing this game: the reason why I decided I just had to try it out as soon as I got it was because that it boasted all pairings: boy/girl, girl/boy, boy/boy, girl/girl... something I'd been dying to see for ages. I will admit I was a little disappointed to find these pairings were more of a friendly nature than a romantic one, but it was still an incredibly fun game, due to its refreshing boardgame layout, and does let you partner any characters together, something else which is quite original.

The boardgame style of the game makes this one of the best in the replayability department, since it will never play the same twice. It also takes a little strategizing to win, and for me, that puzzle element is a definite plus in keeping my attention. However, the character story events play out in a visual novel format, and therefore are repetitious: but you always have the good ol' Ctrl key to fast-forward through them if you wish. Also, the game is rather quick: those fifty turns go fast. This makes for an easy replay as well as also adds to the strategy element of the game: getting the highest fame and all of your partner's events before the 50 turns are up.

The way pairings are handled in the game are both a great thing and a disappointing thing. It is completely refreshing to see a game that lets you pair any character with any of the remaining characters. In every boys' love or girls' game I have played so far, you always played as one specific main character who could get endings with the rest of the cast, with perhaps scenes with two of the NPCs together thrown in occassionally. But here you can chose any of the eight characters as your character, pick any of the remaining seven to be your rival, and then pair your playing character with any of the remaining cast. This makes for 28 possible combinations!

The disappointing part about this is the events are always the same despite your playing character. Your player character will have different reactions with the rest of the characters, but most of this is shown through thoughts, as your playing character will never be voiced (only the other cast members are, in their closely-fixed dialogue events). Also, the partner endings are very generic. It doesn't seem to matter who your playing character is, the ending will just be a set monologue accompanied by a CG of your partner. Therefore, you /really/ only need to play through eight times to see all the endings (even though there are 28 possible character combinations).

The cast is fun, and even though it is more of an "unknown" group of seiyuu doing the voices (the most famous probably being Maria and Shinji's seiyuu), they do an excellent job and fit the characters nicely. The CG art is also beautiful, but it feels too scarce: there are only six CGs to collect per character, a total of 48 CGs.

Some other weak points is the low amount of save slots: only five total, which can be a little bit of a pain; spacing out your saves to have good spots to reload to win the election and get your character events is just as strategic as the rest of the play, just because you have hardly any save slots available. I suppose Takuyo found this necessary to keep the boardgame from being too easy, though for non-Japanese-readers who can't use Tricks and the like, reloading is kind of a necessity. It is also a little frusterating for me not knowing what the Tricks are or exactly how the battle system works, as the computer will always have the advantage in those aspects.

Overall though, the fact this game is simply /different/ than the other stuff out there makes it definitely worth playing. The boardgame format is still fun, despite the obvious language-barrier frusterations (such as using the items). The fact you can pick and chose your character, rival, and partner with no boundaries is also a very strong point, as there just isn't much, if any, games out there that let you have that much control over pairings. It's only a shame they didn't expand to a few more CDs to add in specific story scenerios for all 28 possible pairings and more CGs. That is probably the only improvement that this game would really need. But this is definitely one of those games you can pull out sometime you are bored and just have an entertainly play through; cause it is going to be different everytime, guaranteed.

Takuyo's Official Hoshigari Empusa! Site (Japanese) - The company's site with information on the game.

Half Adder's Hoshigari Empusa! Play Guide (Japanese) - Absolutely wonderful guide. Has some of the item descriptions, all the options for the partner endings, and a guide on all the events.

Charlie is Dozing's Hoshigari Empusa! Capture Guide (Japanese) - A capture guide of all the options for the character endings in Hoshigari Empusa.

Disclaimer: All written text and capture guides © Boys' Love Games Headquarters. All pictures and downloads are copyright of their respective companies and artists and are for promotional use only. I am in no way claiming the art as my own, nor am I trying to infringe upon the company's rights. I am trying to promote these games by allowing a foreign audience to see some artwork from the game.