Not for nostalgic purposes
It'd be hard to say that Start Ocean: First Departure grabs what the original did oh so long ago and updates it for a modern audience. Instead, it seems to take the game’s storyline and runs it on a more reliable engine. If you’re looking to play this game simply for nostalgia, then you might want to step away.
Star Ocean: First Departure is a remake of the very first game in the Star Ocean series, dating back to the SNES. It never reached North American shores, so this is the very first time that it has appeared here. Having said all that, this game takes on the full meaning of the word remake. Aside from the character sprites and story, everything is completely revamped. From the battle system, to the addition of a world map, everything about this game screams new. This isn't entirely a good thing.
The story has you in control of a young Roakian called Roddick, from the planet of Roak. He and his two friends Milley and Dorne are your average youthful kids with Elf like ears and furry like tails. They are the guardsmen of their town and are restless with nothing to do. One day, they receive a letter stating that a nearby town has been infected with a virus that turns people into stone. Upon hearing about this, they make their way through the town to discover it for themselves, while trying to get herbs from a high cliff that are said to be the antidote. Along their journey, Dorne gets infected with the virus, but not until they meet humans who are now in the space age, telling them that they want to help with getting rid of the virus.
So off they go to the spaceship Calnus, where the doctor says that the only way they can get the cure is if they find the original host, who’s been dead for three hundred years. So the crew, along with Roddick and Milley, venture into a time sphere where they go back three hundred years in Roak’s past to find the original host.
Fortunately, this all happens in the first thirty minutes of the game and the story begins to slow down into a classic “defeat the mysterious last boss” kind of story. It's nothing special, but the story is good enough to keep the game at a solid pace with some minor twists here and there.
When it comes to story for Star Ocean, what makes this game so different is the ability to choose your party members. While venturing on your quest, you will meet certain characters that are recruitable for your party. There are four mandatory characters, which leaves four other characters for you to add to your party. If you decide to get certain characters, then others will be blocked off from being recruited.
Another neat feature that has been a staple of the Star Ocean series are the Private Actions. Whenever you’re about to enter a town, an option will appear indicating that you can commence a Private Action. Essentially, these are moments in the game when the party will separate and you can interact with each of them around the town. Depending on the circumstances, you may get a special event that will lead you through a conversation with a party member and be given choices. Depending on the choices you make, it'll either make the character like you more or less. If they start to like you more, then you may notice that if they are in the party during a fight, they may get knocked out which will leave your character enraged, making your character deal more damage to enemies. It's neat features like those that make the Private Action system something you want to do frequently other than for getting to know your characters a little better.
But what's most important about the Private Action system is the ability to have special endings. Depending on your affinity levels with your characters, certain party members may star pairing off with each other and at the end of the game, you get to see what they would do together after the story is all said and done with. Again, it's a neat feature that really does add a lot of re-playability as you try and pair off certain characters together.
Of course, you can still create items by using the Skill Points (SP) you acquire when you level up and placing them in certain skills. Some skills even help you out during combat which is a really neat feature.
So what exactly is wrong with this game? Nothing really, if you never played the original one so long ago. But one of the reasons to remake a game is to capture the essence of the old one and bring it to a new audience, while trying to keep the nostalgic feel. But Star Ocean: First Departure really doesn't handle that part well at all. Sure, it's the same story and same dialogue more or less, but everything seems so revamped that it just doesn't feel like the old game I once played. Not once while I played this game did I say “Wow, now that takes me back,” aside from some dialogue scenes.
The game is run on the old Star Ocean 2 engine with some updates, which means that the battle system is played out in real time. Or rather, once a fight is engaged there is no menu drop telling you what you are going to attack and such. Instead, you move freely throughout the specified area, and press X to attack. L and R buttons are used for skill moves and use can press the Triangle button to pause the game and use some healing items. You only control one character and the others are AI driven. They’re not too smart but you can adjust their fighting orders to make them more effective. If you have ever played the old Star Ocean game back on the Playstation, then you’ll be right at home. You could even compare the battle system to what the Tales franchise is now if you want. The problem with this is that it runs on the Star Ocean 2 engine without any real changes. And with the second game also out for the PSP, you can barely notice a difference. This makes it harder for newcomers to see where Star Ocean has come from and how much it has progressed.
One of the biggest changes to this game was the addition of the world map. In the previous game, you would travel screen by screen to finally reach your destination. It was one of the very first games that I have played to feature it and was something I thoroughly enjoyed. Here however, they replace that with a world map that doesn't even seem well-designed. There are also some weird transitions in the world map that take you to a dungeon area. At some points there is no indication that you will enter a dungeon other than a cave or a town. It doesn't really seem to fit all that much, and ruins a great feature in the original one.
Some additions they made to the game are Anime cut scenes and a full on voice cast. Or at least, more voices than they originally had. The voice talent is nothing special but you shouldn't expect much for a PSP game. Music is still generally the same as the old one and the sound effects still sound as nostalgic as ever.
I'm probably very very VERY biased here but there really wasn't much to this game. If you look at it as just a game and not a remake of an old game perspective, I think it's fair to say that it’s a rather solid. But what takes it down a notch is not bringing a nostalgic feel for this game. Opting to run it on the SO2 engine was a big mistake, especially when you consider that they also released a remade version to Star Ocean 2 months after this game’srelease.
