The Star Ocean series is back except this time on the PS2!
Let's start with the battle system. The battle system is live action so you don't have to take turns and wait to control your favorite character. Unlike most RPGs you are only allowed to have 3 party members, but the fact that you can control any one of those characters during the battle makes up for it. Each character can be given up to 6 skills, in which 2 skills are support skills. If the right buttons are pressed at the right time, then you can get a life saver called Cancel Bonus. A Cancel Bonus is when you activate a skill and then you quickly "cancel" into another skill, making the second skill stronger than usual. You can cancel moves all the way up to 300% stronger than usual as long as you have the fury/HP/MP. Fury determines how long you can keep up a combo. HP is obviously Health Points and yes most skills take up HP. MP is Magic Points and Symbology (Magic) skills take them up. There are a few ways that you can die in this game, but I'm only going to mention that you can die from all of your MP being taken away or all of your HP being taken away.
Star Ocean 3 definitely stands out when it comes to the limits of some stuff. In a regular RPG, the limit of HP is 9999 and the limit of MP is like 999. In Star Ocean 3, that is not the case. When given the right equipment, BOTH your HP and your MP can be raised to a whopping 99999. Now that beats 9999 any day. Even your damage reaches a limit of 99999 per hit. Usually your characters stop leveling up when you reach level 99 or 100. In Star Ocean 3, all of your characters can reach a level of 255! Even your stats can reach a limit of 9999.
Another outstanding and sometimes frustrating feature is the Battle Trophies. In the next gen console world, these can be viewed as achievements, for xbox 360 users, or trophies, for PS3 users. Battle Trophies are basically awards you get for doing something special, like beating a certain boss under a certain amount of time or doing a set amount of damage at anytime. Instead of getting Gamer Points, the more trophies you unlock, the more features you unlock. For example, getting 25% of the battle trophies gives you Universe Mode (or Hard Mode). There are 300 battle trophies, but luckily you only have to get 95% of them to get all the unlockable features through battle trophies.
There is ALOT of replay value in this game. I'm serious, this game has 4 difficulties and there are 4 optional characters. Out of those 4 characters, you have to pick two for which ones you want. That is at least 4 times that you have to play through this game to play with all the different character combinations.
There are alot of post-game features also. There are 4 post-game dungeons, but one of them you can only get when you beat one of the other bonus dungeons. These dungeons aren't ordinary either; they are huge. The most difficult bonus dungeon has 211 floors! That is 211 floors of pure madness. Don't even get me started with the bosses of those dungeons. One boss has 20 millions HP on the normal difficulty and 60 million HP on the hardest difficulty! You will definitely spend alot of time on these dungeons.
All that I'm going to say about Item Creation (IC) is that it is very helpful, but can be very frustrating. The only flaw of this game is the graphics. They aren't great, but if you are like me, then graphics don't matter and it's all about how fun the gameplay is. Believe me when I say that this game is fun! You will spend at least 30 hours or so on the main game and even more hours on post-game/replay games. This game is a classic and will always be in my favorite games list!