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Game Title: Star Ocean Till the end of Time
Platform: PlayStation 2
Developer: Tri-Ace
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: Action Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 1st October 2004 (Europe)
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Summery:
Dispute the issues, limitations and drawbacks that you will have with the game Star Ocean Till the end of Time is still a rather entertaining and lengthy adventure.
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Nostalgia can either be a good thing or maybe a bad thing, you are basically just taking a memory of something you always cherished and the more you revisit it you enjoy this memory more and more. Soon after one day you revisit that memory after so many years it then starts to build up to a point it to something that really wasn't in the first place. This kind of seems up my experience with a Japanese Role Playing Game called Star Ocean Till the end of Time released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 and is also the third game in the Star Ocean. I always had a lot of memories enjoying the game in my teen years because it was my first console J-RPG I bought for myself after my failed interest in the Final Fantasy and Pokemon franchises. I also remember people saying much it compares itself with Namco's Tales of Symphonia and people also saying that it is equal to that game as well. Now look as much as I do have good things that I want to say about but it is one of those games that hasn't aged all that gracefully and suffers from some fundamental gameplay issues which really lets the game down.
The game starts as the main character Fayt Leingod (quite a very try hard to be edgy name don't you think?) and his childhood friend and family spend a vacation on the planet of Hyda when a group of soldiers called the Vandeeni attack the planet in search of him. He becomes separated from them and embarks on a quest to try and reunite with them while also finding out why he was being targeted in the first place. Along the way he meets other characters who become involved in his personal matter and there are also some sub-plot elements where Fayt ends up trapped on Vanguard III and Elicor II where the game's pacing goes all over the place. You can also top that off with a plot twist later on which without spoiling is just honestly ridiculous not to mention the sub-par writing. However the characters in the game are surprisingly likeable especially Fayt himself, they can often times be humorous without being annoying and the voice acting for the time is actually pretty good. What tries to save the storyline is the setting itself, unlike other RPGs that focused on a strictly fantasy medieval setting Star Ocean relies in a science fictional setting where planetary technology is more advanced. Still in a setting like that some characters can still chose to wield swords and magic. Fayt would end up in a world where it resembles 16th century Earth and another world where it feels more straight up medieval. It shows the developing cycle of the worlds while also showing how much human technology advances in their own way.
With the story out of the way let's talk the good things in Star Ocean and that would be the gameplay. Exploring areas in the game is different compared to other RPGs at the time, instead of exploring areas on the overworld map every environment you explore is interconnected with each other which makes travelling around different areas actually unique in a way. Each of the areas has plenty of rooms to explore with loads of treasure to find, monsters to fight, you'll get a puzzle to solve which doesn't take much effort to solve and lastly you have a boss fight at the end of each dungeon before you head off to your next destination. Puzzles work well in a way that forces you to look around carefully and use your head to solve them, they are not hard once you figure out the solution. Some start very simple till later moments you have to use the disintegration device to remove a piece of the area to progress.
You have towns to enter as well which serve as resting points as well as visiting shops for new items and gear. Pretty much Star Ocean works like a standard J-RPG game but however some of the replay value comes from the multiple endings you can get, what's that I hear you ask well let me break it down. The game has a relationship system called private actions where you find one of the game's party members around a part of the town area and then given them the correct response which rises it. If you rise up the character's relationship with Fayt to the max then you'll get the character's ending otherwise you'll get the normal ending.
What needs to be said about the game is the presentation in which for a 13 year old game still looks impressive even by today's standards. Many of the environments are reasonably laid out and the overall detail on both the character models and areas is impressive. I really the various effects on some of the fire and ice themed areas as well as the very detailed attack and magic spell animations from both main characters and enemies. The town's themselves are really great to revisit with plenty of good detail put into in terms of layout and design. My favourite of those is Gemity which is a theme park town you enter later in the game, it's town full of cogworks, various computer screens and particle details that really make it the best looking area in the entire game. The lip syncing on the other hand is very inconstant, on many of the main characters it's okay but however on other characters and especially during the cutscenes the lip syncing from them is awful. Speaking of the cutscenes many of them are played with in game graphics but sometimes some of the cutscenes play out in the CGI format which is rather decent. Many of the cutscenes are good but they tend to drag on quite a bit and the story itself takes a long time to develop but thankfully you can skip them with the Event Skip option. Lastly what needs to said is the soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba who also did music for the Tales games and in Star Ocean 3 it's the best soundtrack he's composed. From orchestral and technical beats many of the game's tracks are both catchy and tense which really fit well to the events in the game. My favourite of the tracks is the battle music played against one of the game's hardest bosses which I won't say here, other tracks I like in the game are one where you are exploring the mountain path and another when you are in the theme park town Gemity.
Like Tales of Symphonia you start battles by touching an enemy on the field and it takes place in a fixed battle arena. Battles themselves take place in real time and unlike Tales of Symphonia where you are restricted to a single axis Star Ocean Till the end of Time allows you run freely around the battle arena. That alone makes the battles very enjoyable cause you can run from incoming enemy attacks unless some enemies have unavoidable attacks. You can also do a side step which can be useful for avoiding some attacks which is something you want to do against some of the harder bosses. Now the combat system works on a range system where you use either the X or Circle buttons to do different attacks depending on the range the character is from the enemy. The games also uses a Fury system which limits the amount of attacks a character can use before you have to let it recharge before attacking again. It's a nice way of making the battles challenging whilst still making them fast paced. Defeating all the enemies in battle earns the party experience and money (in which is called Fol) in which gaining enough experience levels the character up and increases his/her power. When levelling up a character can also gain skill points which can be spent on increasing Max HP, MP, Attack power and Defense power up to the highest cap level of 10. Levelling up also gives characters new abilities in which each of the game's 10 playable characters has their own range of offensive abilities in which are used by holding down either the Circle or X buttons by default. Abilities range from different special attacks, magic based attacks and skills that give you increased chances of critical hits or increased chances of healing percentage of HP and many others. Many of the skills work well but however the game limits you to what abilities you can equip. Levelling up also earns CP which is required to equip skills but the CP amount goes to 15 and each skill requires a certain to equip them which makes it rather limited compared to the freedom you have in equipping skills in Tales of Symphonia. The battle system for the most part works well but it does have it's drawbacks.
In all RPG games when you use your character's abilities it uses up their MP meter, simple right? Well in Star Ocean 3 there is a HP/MP meter but however while using magic spells uses up MP using physical special attacks drain your characters HP. If that is not bad enough then how about the fact that while it is reasonable that a character dies when his/her HP reaches 0 a character can also die if his/her MP reaches 0 as well. This really breaks RPG rules in a few ways because not only does dying when MP reaches 0 makes no sense at all but also it tries it's hardest to prevent the player from spamming special attacks too much. You can use items to restore HP/MP as well as using healing spells to heal a characters HP but you'll have to relay on using healing items, staying at an Inn or equipping the Regeneration Symbol accessory to restore a characters MP. While you have characters that can deal MP damage to the enemies which does makes battles easier later on in the game you'll get enemies that can deal MP damage to you which kind of begs the question. Why make the player die when his/her MP reach 0? On the subject of enemies while I admit that some of the enemies have a reasonable attack pattern but on the other hand the enemies have such a pattern that thanks to the stiff controls it can be often times be difficult to hit them regularly unless you relay on using special attacks. This is one of those RPGs where you have to spend time grinding in order to have a chance against some of the enemies especially boss battles because while of the bosses start out easily but however later on some bosses have high damage output and can move around in a way that makes them harder to hit.
There is one thing you can do to make the battles easier. You can join the crafter's guild so that you can invent items that you won't find in the main story and can recruit potential crafters that can help you make items under various categories. You can also upgrade various items you have with materials or upgrade your character's equipment by giving a weapon elemental damage, increase damage output and so on so you have plenty to play around with in customizing different weapons you want each one to have. The catch is that you have to put in the right members to work on the inventing and you have to place in the right amount of Fol which doing so is random so you have no idea how you are going to get the item unless you get a strategy guide or an online walkthrough page. You might put in the right amount in for the item you want to make only for it to turn out as an item you don't want. This will mean that if you want the best effect out of items and equipment you'll have to spend plenty of gametime building up on Fol and materials so that you can complete upgrading and craft new equipment.
Grinding in the game is difficult mainly because the EXP and Fol gained from enemies does not accumulate for the EXP required for levelling up especially during the beginning portions meaning that you will spend hours fighting the same repetitive enemies over and over. There is a system that helps try and resolve the issue, in battle you can increase a meter on the right of the screen called the Bonus Battle gauge by hitting the enemy while the percentage bar is high. The lower the number the less chances of the bar filling up. Once the bar reaches full the battle goes into Bonus Battle and winning the battle while the meter is full will give you Triple EXP, Double Fol, Increased Recovery upon victory and Increased Chances for an Item. These help out a lot when are grinding but however the catch is that if you take a critical hit, run away or your controlling character dies the Bonus Battle Gauge will brake and you have to rebuild the gauge again. Be careful though if your character is high levelled then the percentage will lower down making it difficult to get the Bonus Battle Gauge up.
The optional boss encounters are complete jerks who deal extreme damage to the player and has special attacks which wipe out the party instantly. These force you to do plenty of upgrading and crafting and that really takes far too long for it's own good. It's understandable in RPGs where you have to build up your party members levels to have a chance but in Star Ocean like I said the amount you gain many of the battles is quite a bit low especially at the beginning and doesn't improve all too much when you get further in the game. I also noticed some laziness in the optional dungeons, one such optional dungeon has 211 floors which reuses similar looking corridors over and over and even reuses boss battles that you fought in the main story. It's one of the most boring areas in the entire game and navigating through that area just becomes a maze crawl when everything looks rather copy and pasted and it just isn't any fun at all.
Now these issues do not ruin the game in any way but they are just annoying to put up with especially when you reach segments near towards the end of the game. If you can look past those then you are going to have a decent time with the gameplay in Star Ocean 3. You can unlock a versus mode in one of the optional dungeons and it is pretty cool, shame the game has no two player co-operative for the main game which is a shame. You can earn Battle Trophies which acts as the game's achievement system, by doing certain requirements you can earn by either winning a boss battle within 60 seconds or without damage to doing a number of hits on an enemy. This is a system that must have given the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 the idea of earning achievements in video games, it's an interesting system and it's another feature that gives you a bit of replay value cause it gives you additional outfits for your characters, harder difficulty settings and a soundtrack option that you can listen to.
Dispute the issues, limitations and drawbacks that you will have with the game Star Ocean Till the end of Time is still a rather entertaining and lengthy adventure which will give you plenty of hours off. Whatever it's going through the main story plus the optional content and Battle Trophies as well as the different character endings. I can remember years ago defending this game from some haters will said that Tales of Symphonia was in many ways vastly superior to this game, after playing this and Tales of Symphonia I can now actually agree with what people say about this game. It may not be anywhere near as good as Tales of Symphonia but for a PS2 game it is at the very least a somewhat decent competitor to it. It's got it's issues like the poor writing, some of the combat rules are ridiculous and lastly the game requires repetitive grinding especially on harder difficulties if you want to progress. However the excellent presentation and soundtrack, plenty of replay value and the decent depth the combat at least has on a few levels try to make up for it. To me this is Final Fantasy X 2.0 and by that meaning that it hasn't aged all that well and it is held back by a lot of issues that try to ruin the fun. So if you are thinking that whatever this game is worth picking up? Well if you try and look past it's flaws then I will say it's worth playing for the gameplay and thankfully second hand stores and online websites will sell this game quite cheaply. I would like to play the other Star Ocean games to see if any of them are better or worse in a few way so if you liked this review be sure to subscribe and comment.
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The Good Points:
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1. Excellent presentation
2. Plenty of different Battle Trophies and Multiple Endings to get
3. Battle System has plenty of depth for what it is
4. Motoi Sakuraba's best soundtrack composed
The Bad Points:
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1. Limited combat skill options and bad combat rules and stiff controls
2. Poor writing and storyline execution
3. Poor levelling accumulation
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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