Not especially creative but well-made tactical RPG that does almost everything at least solidly.
+ clean anime art style both in and outside combat
+ reasonably balanced collection of units who each fill different roles
+ pleasant adventure vibes in the early game
+ decently written story with a strong (if clichéd) thematic core and some surprising twists
+ nice J-Pop soundtrack that is central to the experience
+ competent equipment and crafting systems
+ good difficulty curve (aside from the final battles)
+ emotive voice acting for important dialogue
+ neat bonding system with an alright payoff
- standard gameplay except for the one singing mechanic
- comedy rooted in immature tropes
- very slow and formulaic beginning

Played until about midway into chapter 10, and I'm just not a fan. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing (probably my favorite 3DS soundtrack), and the background art, along with the character designs look great. However, I found the story and characters to be pretty generic and it's also quite tropey. The battles are extremely slow, but pretty fun once you get the hang of it. The game does get a lot harder starting in chapter 8 though. It's relatively easy up until that point and then all of a sudden there's a huge difficulty spike, so you'll probably have to start grinding. Overall, it isn't a bad game by any means, but it's just not something that I personally can justify putting several hours into (I already had about 40 hours in, I really should've dropped it sooner). I'd probably recommend anybody who wants to play it try out the first few chapters, and if you don't like it, just drop it before you put a lot of hours into it like me. I'll say this again though, the soundtrack is absolutely BANGIN

it sucks that this game got absolutely zero marketing whatsoever because if i wasn't idly scrolling through the eshop at 2 am in the morning in 2015 and randomly stumbled across stella glow i probably never would have played it, let alone heard of it.

this game definitely has some anime cliches and some of the combat/maps can be irritating, but the music and witches' songs in this game are sooo good

this was one of my favorite games on the console which sounds insane but it's just that memorable to me.

When I first played Stella Glow it was the highlight of my gaming 2018. Having zero expectations I was pleasantly surprised by a well-written and engrossing tactical RPG with memorable scenarios, plot, and characters. Sadly, it held up poorly to my 2021 replay.
The writing is still exemplary, with a well-developed empathy for the characters. Unfortunately it is also mired in problematic sexual situations which I had a lot more difficulty ignoring on my replay. The overall plot is still extremely well executed, but I had a much harder time engaging with the dialogue this time around. The combat is still challenging and tightly designed, but it suffers from a lot of quality-of-life issues which can render certain elements (e.g. the witch's songs) a bit tedious.
I really can't evaluate this game properly as both of my playthroughs were heavily colored by a dramatic mismatch of expectations vs experience. Still, I would recommend that any fan of story-driven RPGs or Persona style games give this one a try. Just be prepared for excessive anime-isms.

Stella Glow has several RPG clichés wrapped up in quite a neat package. The tropes of anime-style characters, having amnesia but destined to save the world are apparent but they are with memorable characters in a distinct setting.
Although nothing special, I found the graphics to be fine although have different art styles within the game.
With some RPG's they seemed to fall a victim to traditional roots which can be annoying with modern gaming demands. These being:
- The game took about 45 hours. in that time there were cut scenes that were too long to get their point across. Spending 30mins reading text instead of playing a game I find tiresome
- There is grinding in this game to get to the right level or unlocks. Being quite a full game of content, the grinding aspect feels like unnecessary padding
- Difficulty spikes do occur and can cause several attempts in key areas
- Being a SRPG, the game starts slow in each battle, taking around 3 turns to engage in combat feeling like a wasted opportunity when playing.
- At end game it was really annoying how bosses self heal making the fight harder/longer for no reason
I liked the game but the flaws can't be overlooked. I know this game is pricy and cannot justify it's current price.

Everyone has that handful of games, books, or shows that they love with all of their heart even though they have some problems, and this is one of mine. This game is what it looks like on the tin to some degree, but I also feel like it's more than that. Outside of the harem nonsense, the characters in this game are fairly fleshed out, fun, and interesting. I get the sense that they all genuinely care about each other for legitimate reasons, rather than just because they're plot-mandated best friends or romantic interests. There are a lot of conversations that can play out between the characters to progress your relationship with them. They're much more in the vein of persona social links than fire emblem supports, and I personally (heh) really love that. The strategy portion of this game is pretty fun too. There are some abilities that break the game in half, but I don't think this compromises the game very much. There's a pretty sizable difficulty spike about halfway into the game that helps to compensate for the strong abilities and the last few bosses are really tough. Each character has their own unique gimmicks that are fun to learn how to use, and you have a light degree of customization that you can do with them through their equipment.

If harem anime BS really bothers you, then this probably isn't for you. But if you can tolerate and look past it, I think this is a gem worth trying out. This game is a pretty good example of "don't judge a book by it's cover".

It's not just any game that would make me cry, but Stella Glow did it! even though Imageepoch studio went bankrupt after releasing this game, they faced problems before, and it was the game they worked the hardest and put their efforts into they became famous for Luminous ARC and 7th Dragon excellent JRPG, but Stella Glow is amazing the details to quality that the game put on an excellent tactical JRPG, it even managed to pass Fire Emblem Awakening from the 3DS that I love so much, the plot twists were mouth-opening! the details, the loss of your group's morale in one part of the story, made the game so natural that you realize the total care that was put into this game and the ending is amazing! there are two endings and story changes you can also make if you haven't met certain objectives and requirements and just to be clear HILDA IS BETTER GIRL!