Star Ocean: First Departure – Finished

Not much to say about this one. Star Ocean was good all the way to the end, and didn’t outstay its welcome (22:10h) but I never regained that “ZOMG this is awesome!” feeling I had in the first few hours. Incredibly easy game. Really glad I never grinded, or I would have felt like a right ninny when I got to the final stage and went down a few steps to find a bonus dungeon where the enemies gave 100-300,000 EXP per battle (by comparison the last boss’s 2 forms gave less than 40,000 combined).

The Good stuff

  • Not too long, not too short.
  • The story made sense, more or less. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but it made sense.
  • You could change the controls. I’ve been playing a lot of Japanese games lately so I’m more comfortable with O being ‘yes’ and X being ‘no’.
  • I liked, or could at least stomach most of the characters.
  • Lots of skills to learn, quite a number of sidequests to pursue as well.
  • I liked the virtually automatic battles that let me kick back and AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS! AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS! DRAGON ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON TORTOISE SMASH ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON TORTOISE SMASH ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON ROAR TORTOISE SMASH AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND DRAGON ROAR THE CLOUDS! AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS!
  • Your party AI was pretty good. I could actually trust Millie to heal me as necessary.
  • Voice-acting was good, as far as English voices go.
  • Music was okay, didn’t notice anything one way or another.
  • While the dungeon encounter rate was just as bad as the world map rate, it makes up for that with a high EXP payout and frequent level ups. I don’t mind fighting a lot as long as I feel it’s worth it.

Must you even ask?

The Not-so-good stuff

  • A little too easy, even for me.
  • Private Actions were a boring pain in the ass. At least I wasn’t forced to do them so that’s good.
  • A lot of the skills and abilities were completely useless. But again, I wasn’t forced to use stuff like Publication and Compounding, so that’s good.
  • It’s called “Star Ocean” but we only visited 2 planets.
  • Forced backtracking. I hate forced backtracking.
  • World map encounter rate was pretty high, and skills like Scouting and Music did not do much to help.
  • The latter parts of the story felt rushed. Jie Revorse and the whole Fargett thing took less than an hour, but he’s supposed to be the “third party” around whom the whole story revolved? It’s just too hasty.
  • What was up with that planet blowing up in the beginning? I get the part about Revorse trying to take over the Earth, but why blow up a planet?
  • Apart from a cloaking shield, what did the Fargettians need to turn the Roakians to stone for? It’s not like they put the cloaking shields to any particular use anyway. Those poor 150k Roakians…
  • In fact the last 2 or 3 hours of the game were just … meh, whatever, it’s over.

Conclusion

I enjoyed myself. It’s a good game, and I’m looking forward to playing Star Ocean: Second Evolution down the line, since I hear it’s even better. My only other experience with Star Ocean was Till the End of Time, which I didn’t really give the time of the day. I’d like to work my way up through the series and give that another try someday.

Ragnarok ~ Hikari to Yami no Koujo (6) – This time I’m really done (spoilers)

Running my mouth off with various pieces of advice last time made me juusst a little curious to try out some of the strategies I enumerated therein, so I played Ragnarok ~ Hikari to Yami no Koujo (Ragnarok Tactics) again to finish Yuri’s route and get the True ending. I also made an attempt at getting the Dark route, but it’s not that easy to unlock and I still don’t know exactly how it’s done.

On breaking the game with Kaplas and Champions

Snipers are your best option for damage on a first playthrough, but if you really want to break the game after that, you need champions. Their hit-all skill (Tenchi Houkou in Japanese) at job level 36 is a flat out game-breaker, since it allows you to strike down enemies all over the map without moving a single step. I even Tenchi Houkoued the final boss of the true ending (level 60, HP 6000) to death without breaking a sweat.

The ideal situation is to have three or four (I had 4) champions so that you can end everything in a single turn. Skip everyone else’s turns, or heck, only take those guys and your MC into battle and finish everything off ASAP. You need to raise them carefully for maximum damage however. I found out that despite appearances, Tenchi Houkou is actually a magic-based attack (update: no longer sure about this, take stat-related advice with a pinch of salt), and INT is the one stat that champions don’t get any job-based bonuses in. This is the reason why those pesky shamen and high priests tend to survive it so well when they should be dying on the first hit.

If you want really effective champions then, you will forget boosting their strength and just pour everything you have into their INT. If you raise them as snipers until, say, level 20 (I said 25 last time, but it takes longer than I’d expected to raise characters to job level 36) their speed and attack should be decent enough. Raising INT should also give them the SP needed to use Tenchi Houkou more than a few times, though this isn’t really important if you have enough champions and enough SP-filling items.

But still, what if you don’t have that many champions? Maybe you don’t like champions. Maybe you didn’t find out about this strategy until much later. Or you enjoy the battle system and don’t particularly want to break it, but you want to have the option of breaking it if you ever choose to. Either way you will always have at least one champion in the form of Trenet, and there’s a way to spam you-know-what continuously without – or heck even with – more than one champion. The secret: Kaplas.

Kaplas have a skill, No Time to Rest, that works like Smile Toss in the FFTA games, bringing up the chosen character’s turn immediately. Tenchi Houkou is normally balanced (haha, balanced, that’s a good one) by a very long cool down period. By taking advantage of the Kapla’s naturally high speed as a DEX-based class, you can completely ignore this restriction and thus achieve the same amount of destructiveness with one champion as you could with two or three. You could make your MC the Kapla, go in with one champion and take everything down within 5 minutes, ze endo. The reason I go for overkill on the champion front is simply because there’s no point in having any of the other classes once you get Tenchi Houkou.

Of course I should also note that you don’t have to kill everything on the field if you don’t want to. The move is just as effective for weakening enemies so they fall quickly to single hits or Burst Strikes, thereby making it easy to level weaker classes up. It also works well as a magnet for drawing in enemies who wouldn’t normally approach your party that early. It can probably be combined with the Paladin’s Soul Provoke for some interesting results. But really, why not just kill everything at once?

On Unlocking the Dark Route

Unfortunately I have no idea exactly how this is done. There appears to be some sort of invisible karma meter that judges you by the answers you give and determines whether you get to go on the Dark Route. It sounds like you may have to finish the True End first and then replay to get the Dark one. However even if you do all that and then finally decide to be a jerk on your 4th playthrough, your combined

Thank.

niceness on the three previous runs may shut you out of the Dark end anyway. You may have to play 5 or 6 times, being a dick each time, to get that end. Or better yet just be an ass through and through from beginning to end?  Or maybe there’s something else you need to do. The Japanese FAQs I consulted were inconclusive. Plus the Dark side is really unsympathetic in this game, so I’m not that psyched to see what they have to say. It’s bound to show up on Youtube one day, I’ll just wait.

Btw, the True ending is not worth getting either, since it consists of all of two battles, one against random fodder. The “true” boss shows up almost Necron-style and is easily disposed of since you’ve played the game three times. That’s another one worth Youtubing when the time comes.

Conclusion

Well, finally finished-finished the game. 4 playthroughs, 6 blog posts, 79 hours, 96% completion. And I still don’t think it’s a very good game. You can look at this two different ways. Glass half-full: it’s the kind of game you can play for 79 hours, even if you don’t really like it. Glass half-empty: It’s the kind of game you can play for 79 hours and never really come to like. Despite the fact that the battles get better as you progress, the story never really changes from your first playthrough. A certain amount of inertia and the fact that it’s not quite bad enough to quit over kept me going, which I’m kind of regretting now I’ve seen the useless True ending.

Bonus – All Special Burst Strike Combinations

Champion + Dancer
Zonda + Kapla
Paladin + High Priest (Area Heal only)
Lord Knight + Assassin Cross (+poison effect)
White Smith + High Wizard (earth damage)
Lord Knight + High Wizard + Champion
Clown + Dancer + Shaman
Dark Knight + Champion + Sniper
Sniper + White Smith + Clown/Dancer
Paladin + Dark Knight + White Smith
Paladin + Shaman + Kapla
Lord Knight + High Priest + Zonda (damage + area heal)
Assassin + Kapla + High Priest (damage + area status recovery)

Ragnarok ~ Hikari to Yami no Koujo (5) – Final roundup 2

4. What style of play is best? Unless you grind a lot, storyline enemies will usually be higher-leveled, and they can hit pretty hard. Like, 1/3rd of your life in a single hit kind of hard. That, and if your MC or a story-related character dies it’s an automatic game over, and enemies like to gang on up on them when they can.

For those reasons, I like to play things safe by ganging up on them in return. 99% of enemies won’t move unless a) They sustain damage or b) You come into range. What I do, then is to keep my whole party together and carefully approach the enemies one or two at a time. Once they’re close enough, I either hit them with a Sniper or put a character in range to draw them down, then beat them normally or waste them with Burst Strikes.

But that’s just me. I’m a coward. And I hate having to restart easy battles because important characters got taken out by cheap hits. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with splitting up your party, especially if you love a challenge,  but I’d recommend sending a priest along with each group and still not taking on more than one or two enemies at a time.

5. Miscellaneous Tips and Hints

  • If I had to play this again, I’d start out with only snipers and one or two priests, then change a few snipers into Zondas when I start the second playthrough. I’d keep 4 skill points on hand and then switch 2 or 3 to Champion once they hit level 25-ish, allowing me to take advantage of the all-attack at job level 36 (update on my “clever” plan here). The rest of the classes can snuff it.
  • Most classes really come into their own at higher levels, so your first playthrough will probably be slow and boring. On one hand there’s no reason to force yourself to play this game. On the other hand, battles do get faster and more bearable on subsequent playthroughs.
  • Always get new recruits at Level 1 so you can use stat distribution to its fullest extent.
  • You can safely ignore all treasure chests. They either contain healing items or shoddy armor, nothing worth going out of your way for.
  • You can safely ignore sidequests as well. They are amusing and often have strong enemies and good cards, but you don’t have to do them.
  • You can skip Burst Strike animations with START. @__@ I only realized this recently.
  • The more battles a character takes part in, the longer their Burst Strike gauge gets. This is a good reason to fight free battles in the beginning.
  • Frozen and stunned enemies and characters take a lot more damage than usual. Cure anyone important who gets struck with them. Silence and poison can be ignored.
  • AFAIK there is no “correct” order to play the routes. Cynthia’s is the route that deals most with the titular “Imperial Princess of Darkness and Light” (wait, it’s not in the title any more now, is it) so it’s a good one to start with story-wise.
  • I don’t know what the best choices are, but worst ones are usually the 3rd on the list. Apparently you only want those on the Dark route.
  • Story-related characters you don’t raise yourself (i.e. all of them) will be invariably weaker than your self-created generics, so don’t spend too much time trying to level them up.
  • You get better cards by over-killing enemies with solo hits. Burst Strike finishes tend to yield lesser-quality cards.
  • Enemies in the Mirage bonus dungeon drop great cards, so don’t worry if you can’t get anything good in regular battles. In fact you can just ignore regular free battles once it opens up.
  • You can save Skill and Bonus points for later, but they may be lost for story characters who are forcibly leveled up when you switch routes (not 100% about this). E.g. if you’re on Trenet’s route and he’s level 25 with 2000 EXP stored and you switch to Yuri, Yuri too will be 25-ish (if that’s the base level of the enemies), even if he was level 10 the last time you saw him. Furthermore, you might come back to Trenet later to find him at level 30, but those 2000 EXP he had saved will be gone forever.
  • You maintain your character levels and old job levels when you switch jobs, and new jobs level up relatively quickly. In other words, don’t hesitate to change classes if something isn’t working out.

The Ragnarok Tactics press release from Aksys is… interesting. “Multiple factions” = 3 factions, plus 1 secret one after completing them. “Plethora of different endings” = 3 shoddy, insulting endings to the 3 faction routes, plus 1 True ending, plus 1 Dark ending. “Unique tactical mechanics” = this is mostly true. Unless you’ve played Blue Roses, the Burst Strike system will probably be new. Overdrives are just super-attacks, and you won’t be seeing too much of them unless you go out of your way. Resting in battles is really cute, and actually quite useful when you’re weak in the early stages. “Unique” doesn’t equal “fun” though, so don’t get carried away. “Customizable characters,” yeah sorta. You can’t do too much about their looks, but you can change classes, hair and voices, and you can make a real difference to their stats with your point distribution. You can’t actually modify what skills they get, but you can boost the ones you like.

That’s enough. You guys figure out the rest for yourselves. Final verdict on Ragnarok Hikari to Yami no Koujo: an average but playable SRPG. Story and characters are pitiful. Battles get much better on subsequent playthroughs when your party is stronger and you have access to more classes. I won’t actually say “Go get it,” but if you’re walking down the street and you trip over it and you’re very bored that day… yeah. It’s that kind of game.

Ragnarok ~ Hikari to Yami no Koujo~ (4) – Final roundup 1

Finished my second playthrough of Ragnarok Hikari to Yami no Koujo, doing Trenet’s route. Along the way I did about 90% of Yuri’s route as well, using the A.I.Z. function, but Yuri is a whiny twit so I decided not to finish his. I hate those “My country, right or wrong” characters, especially when it becomes clear very early on that “my country” is completely in the wrong.

Doing both routes at the same time was easy enough, but I can’t recommend it. First off, Your major characters will level up however they please and put points into all the wrong stats. It’s especially bad for Lord Knights like Yuri and Gaston, who will end up pathetically slow with only average defense if you leave them alone.

More importantly, it’s a waste of time because you’ll still have to go back and do the other route from scratch in order to get the clear data you need to unlock the True route. For example, I just got Trenet’s ending. I’ve saved my Trenet clear data. I have an old save with about 90% of Yuri’s path done at the same time, so I could go back and finish that. If I do so, however, I’ll only get Yuri clear data, but nothing for Trenet. In short, you still need 3 complete playthroughs to unlock the True route. tl;dr A.I.Z. is worthless.

Normally I’d add a few more lines and then cut this post off because I’m kind of tired of Ragnarok by now. Today, however, I found out that this game is being localized (talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel…) for Fall 2012, so allow me use this final post to share the few tips for success I’ve acquired over the 63+ hours I have spent playing what will soon be known as Ragnarok Tactics. Note that this is all based on how I played the game and what I would have done if I had to do it all over again, but you are under no obligation to do things my way.

1. Which stats should I raise? Speed and Strength. Specifically, put the majority of points into Agi and whatever counts as strength (Int, Str, Dex) for that class. Class that rely on Dex for strength (Snipers, Clowns, Dancers, etc.) can just stick to Dex. Put a few points into Vit here and there, especially for story characters.

You can safely ignore Int for non-magical classes (they usually have higher HP anyway and can take a few hits) and forget Luck entirely. If you feel your stats are lacking in some area but you don’t want to put points into it, you can make up the difference with handy stat-boosting cards. You can also save the bonus points for later if you need time to think.

2. Which attacks should I boost? You get 3 skill points to boost your special attacks every 3rd job level. Which attacks you want to pump depends entirely on your job and your style of play, but it’s usually safe to raise the first and second attacks on the list to their maximum level. I’ll mention what I think are the most useful attacks when I do the class rundown in the next point. Again, you can save the points for later if you don’t have anything you consider worth raising.

3. Which classes are best? I tried all of them except Dark Knight, Clown and Dancer. If I had to rank them from most- to least-useful, based entirely on my personal experience, it would look something like this.

Sniper – Great range, great speed, good attack power. Raising Dex improves both their Attack and their Speed at the same time, so you don’t have to waste points on lesser stats. Their defense is average, but you can either raise that with cards and equips or just keep them out of harm’s way. This is the class I started my MC out with. Useful skills: W Arrow and Charge Arrow, the first 2 on the list (I’m adding the list position because the English names will probably differ). Story character: Bercht on Cynthia/Yuri’s route.

Zonda – Gunman class. Only available on a second playthrough, and only for males. I gave my MC a sex-change and switched him to this. This class out-damages Snipers and seems to get frequent weapon updates in the stores – although this could be only because of my MC – but I rank it slightly below firstly because it’s not available from the start, secondly because it doesn’t have the Sniper’s highly-useful Charge Arrow (2nd on the list) attack and their attacks have lesser range on average, thirdly because their defense is worse than Snipers’. Useful skills: the first 2 on the list.

Kapla – Gunman class. Only available on a second playthrough, and only for females. Good class with high speed, but the fact that my Kapla used to be a Paladin may have affected her stats negatively, meaning she probably wasn’t as good as she could have been. Ranked below Zonda because of the lower attack power and fewer useful skills. They do have the funniest attacks in the game, though. Useful skills: 1st on the list. The skill that lets you hasten others’ turns (5th). If you use Overdrives a lot, Kaplas have a skill (6th) that lets them fill your Overdrive gauge.

High Priest – They keep you alive and allow you to keep attacking without wasting turns using items. Always take at least one with you, preferably two. High priests tend to have slow speed naturally, so raise their Agi along with their Int. Low HP and Vit shouldn’t bother you, since they shouldn’t be on the front lines anyway. They have a couple of attacking and buffing spells, but I don’t bother with those. Useful skills: Heal, Heal Mist (area heal) and Recovery. Story character: Fiona.

Champion – A monk by any other name… The only melee class worth getting, IMO. Great attack, good speed, so-so defense. They pack quite a punch and their turns come by quite frequently. However they’re not that good at taking hits so be careful not to advance them too far. At job level 36 they get a physical attack that hits every enemy on the map. If you have an army of champions, the battle could be over in the first turn. Barring super-grinding, however, you probably won’t reach job 36 until your second or third playthrough. Save 4 skill points for your champions for when that day comes. Useful skills: 2nd, 6th and 8th on the list. Story character: Trenet.

Wizard: Their spells can actually pack quite a punch, once they’ve been leveled up a bit. They’re useful against human enemies, but not so good against monsters who have all kinds of elemental defenses. They move a little faster than the other magical classes, but as usual they’re allergic to being attacked. They’re useful at earlier levels, not so useful later on when you’re using Burst Strikes that depend mainly on ATK.  Useful skills: Pretty much all of them. Earth Spike has great range. Story character: Cynthia.

Lord Knight: Good defense, great attack. Slow as hell unless you put a lot into AGI. They’re okay, but since 2 out of the 3 main routes come with a forced one, there’s no need to actually create one. Not without testing them out first, at least. Useful skills: Charge Attack (5th on the list) Story characters: Yuri and Gaston.

White Smith: Useless for my style of play, since their attacks tend to hit surrounding enemies, and a surrounded character is a dead character in my book. If you’re the type who likes to push ahead with a single super character, you might like one of these. They have very good defense, at any rate. The only good things about them are their Attack-boost and Critical-boost abilities. Good for aggressive players, not so special for people who play defensively, like me. Useful skills: Over-Trust (2nd on the list), Maximize Power (4th).

Paladin: I tried one for a while, and I got Darius after clearing Cynthia’s route. I’m not impressed. You’d expect a Paladin to have super high defense and HP so they can absorb a few hits, but these guys are pathetic on that score. They’re also rather slow and don’t hit particularly hard. On top of all their other sins, they also have bugger-all for useful skills. With some coaxing and stat cards I managed to get some use out of Darius, and paladins do have a Heal spell for emergencies, but I don’t recommend them. Useful skills: Shield Charge (3rd on the list). Story character: Darius.

Assassin Cross: Good speed, great range, pathetic attack, pathetic defense. Which means they can get to the enemy quickly… but they can’t actually do anything once they get there. Sound good to you? I thought not. Useful skills: Envenom (2nd on the list) Story character: Isara.

Shaman: Only available on a second playthrough. A fail cross between a Wizard and a High Priest. Their attack spells only hit in a straight line, and if you want healing you’re better off with a High Priest. Cool outfit, though. Useful skills: Nothing a Wizard or High Priest can’t top. Story character: Weda.

This post is getting huge. I’ll split it off here and continue tomorrow. I’ll be happy if other people can benefit from all the time I wasted on this affair.

Star Ocean: First Departure – This is great!

Some say the universe is a star ocean…

Star Ocean is so good 😀 I’m only 9 hours in but… THIS GAME IS SO MUCH FUN! I’m a little reluctant to write this post, in fact, in case I jinx it. Ah well, a good game can take a bit of jinxing.

What makes me like it so much? The pace! The fast pace! I’m sick and tired of slow-paced games! We started out in this sleepy village, then oh, this disease. Then aliens! Then we warped into space! Then we warped back! Then my friend turned into stone! Then more aliens! Then we warped to this time gate! 300 years back in time! And all of this just within the first hour of the game. My head was spinning in wonder and delight. This is how a game prologue should go.

I’m a little bit on the fence about the battle system though. So far the battles are okay, not that hard at all. I always had the impression that Star Ocean was tough, but it seems I was wrong, at least so far. Turn-based RPGs are often accused of having “Mash X to win” systems, but in my experience the same goes for many Action RPGs as well.

It helps that I created some Berserk Rings early on, though I’ve been trying to avoid internet spoilers for the most part. There’s no Auto-Battle option, but I solve that by just hanging back and letting my party members (Cyuss, Ilia and Ioshua) do all the work. What I’m really not happy about is the encounter rate. It started out okay, but in the past hour or two it’s really ramped up, and the various skills I’ve got to deal with it don’t seem to work too well.

Back to the things I like, I’m enjoying what they did with the Skill system. There’s nothing new about getting skill points to assign upon leveling up, but it was probably new when it first came out in 1996. I like the stat boosts you get from certain skill, but what is really thrilling me is all the field abilities like Cooking and Art and Crafting. I’m not getting too much use out of them so far because the game is easy enough (and dang, but the failure rate is high even with maxed out skills) but it’s nice to have all these “extra” things to play around with. Alchemy, Music, Customization, Scouting, Writing. And funny ones like Pickpocketing and Contraband, all the things I’m too morally upright to try in real life.

The characters are okay so far. The character designs remind me of Suikoden Tierkries. I should look into that. At the start of the game my MC Roddick seemed like he was going to be the mopey, whiny type, but he’s been a good sport about everything. Of course, there’s still plenty of time for any and all of them to do something stupid but so far so good.

Story… there’s no real story right now. At first we were traveling the world to find our companions who’d been separated from us, but I just found them a few minutes ago so that’s that. We’re also looking for a cure for our friend’s petrification in order to foil an attempt by a mysterious “third party” to take over the universe (? they haven’t said that’s their goal but come on, it’s an RPG) but we haven’t been trying all that hard on that front. It’s like “we’ll get to it when we get to it, the universe isn’t going anywhere.” So basically I’m just going from town to town all over one planet right now. They needn’t have bothered with the whole “outer space” gimmick, come to think of it.

For anyone who’s played the game, I just got Millie back in Eckdart and I’m looking for Ioshua’s master, wherever he is. After that I expect to meet up with Ron in the next town so the story can finally get under way. Here’s hoping for more high-speed developments, because it’s starting to drag on juuuust a liiiiiitttle bit.