Lots of potential, but feels unfinished
User Rating: 7.5 | Star Ocean: Till the End of Time PS2
Wow, with so many hours spent on this title, it's hard to narrow this down into one review. I was initially impressed with the graphics and the combat system, but as soon as you get dumped off the spaceship onto a backwards planet, the game seems to get hit or miss in the quality department. While some of the characters have great visual models, about 60% of the remaining characters in the game look like their graphic makeover just never happened, leaving a huge difference that disappointed me. It took a while to get the combat system down, and while the new skills really add some flavor to each of the characters, to say this game is a grind is understating it. I've logged over one hundred hours and I almost made it to the end, but I have too many better games to get to, and I got tired of the crushing difficulty. It's simply not balanced. Just when your characters get to the point where enemies are finished off with comparative ease, you get shoved into a new section with enemies that kill you every other battle. The storyline itself is entertaining and novel, but it also gets moving very slowly, which pretty much describes the game itself, slow paced. I can't recommend this title unless you just have no other RPGs to play, there are too many better balanced and polished experiences to invest time on this buggy adventure.
