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.
I’m glad you like it! I began some time ago (I received the PS2 Star Ocean as present, but I wanted to play the others first), I played more or less 9 hours like you and I enjoyed it, but battles were like… Automatic? Weird? Something strange that made me leave the game aside. But I thought I had to continue someday… I’m on holidays now so I might give it a try.
The battles are not quite automatic, but you can just stand in a corner and let the other three party members duke it out, so it might as well be.
It’s really good so far. Since I haven’t gone further than you I can’t push you too strongly to continue, but I think it’s worth playing some more.
Glad you’re enjoying, I always prefered First Departure to Second Evo/Story, but everyone seems to disagree, I find FD’s characters more … unique.
If FD stays good all the way to the end, I’ll definitely play SE as well, then I’ll let you know what I think.
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