Star Ocean was a tedious and linear RPG.
This is my first Star Ocean game, not exactly a good start with the series I guess. This game was a very tedious and linear experience. A few things that bugged me was the poor controls. While Star Ocean is similar to a modern Tales of.. game, it just isn't as user friendly as one. You can switch between the characters on the fly in battle, but you have to make sure the character you are changing from is turned on "Auto" or else he will just stand there. Targeting is very difficult too, for example in Tales of Symphonia, when you are targeting a new enemy, the game will pause and let you figure out which character you want to attack. In this game you have to pick your enemy in real time by hitting the Square button and then switching with the D-pad or Analog stick, which doesn't respond to well. A few other things that bugged me was the story was slightly long winded with little to say, kinda like a Xenosaga game but not quite as bad. Most of the music was terrible. The graphics was dated and boring. On the positive side, I liked dungeon crawling because of the Map Completion Percentage, even though the dungeons were kinda generic. Uh... that's it.
----------Battle System----------
Star Ocean: Til the End of Time is a real-time Action RPG. You control one character while the computer will control 2 others within battle. The enemies are shown on screen before each battle, so there's no random battles. However, if you enter and then exit an area, they will regenerate to their original spot. The enemies are easy to get away from, but sometimes they stick them inside a small hallway so you end up fighting them anyways. When you get attacked you'll be sent into a special fighting block, similar to Radiata Stories, where you will battle it out until there's a winner.
After a battle everyone that fought will gain experience but your reserve characters won't gain a fraction of that experience, so they quickly become useless. When you gain a level, your stats will boost like normal and you might gain a new ability or spell, but you will also gain Skill Points. You can use these skill points to distribute between 4 bonus stats, like to boost your HP, MP, Attack and Defence skills. Each skill can gain levels but they cap them off at 10.
During battle you'll have 3 meters to watch out for. The obvious 2 are HP and MP, and when either one runs out your character will die. I'm not kidding about this either, if your MP runs out you DIE. This doesn't make the game harder, just more annoying. The other meter is the Fury meter, each time you attack your Fury will decrease. To gain Fury again all you have to do is stand idle for a few seconds. This does nothing more than slow the battles down. All dungeons are basically the same throughout the game but with makeovers. There will be a couple different puzzles, but nothing that will rack your brain.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Fayt (pronounced Fate), a teenager that's just hanging at a space hotel with his girlfriend. As his hotel is attacked by an invading army, he escapes by using a pod and gets separated from everyone. Fayt eventually lands on an unknown planet, searching for a way off. By this point the game starts to kick in and Fayt gets deeper and deeper in trouble by numerous forces.
I can't say I loved the story or characters, the dialog didn't exactly grab me either. I did like a few of the twists towards the end, which I won't spoil.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics seem pretty dated. The character models look underdeveloped. The dungeons seem randomly generated, and the towns are boring to walk through. There's a few pre-rendered cutscenes but they barely look better than the real time scenes. Since the game is a Sci-Fi Fantasy like Xenosaga, there isn't much room for style, so everything looks like a bland mix of gray and blues that are boring to look at.
----------Sound----------
Each main character are voiced out, most dialog is voiced too, so there's alot of voice work in the game. On the other hand, the voice work isn't to great (and the rather lame dialog doesn't help it much). The music is extremely cheesy guitar wank 80's metal, or generic synth J-RPG stuff. Each character will have a catch phrase after battle, and scream battle yells within battle, the monsters will also say crap too. I like that they put a ton of effort into the voice work, but overall the sound is nothing special.
----------World Map----------
The world map is similar to a modern Zelda, where it's just a bunch of areas that connect to each other, but you don't see an actual map. The only time you can see any kind of map is when you are placing "Inventors" you find, but it's only one of various worlds you'll visit within the game. The game flow is rather linear for the most part with little chance to turn back. Within towns, dungeons and fields you'll get to view a mini-map just showing that area. Under that map is a Map Competition Percentage. This was a pretty clever idea I thought, because it shows you how much of the map you've cleared and it makes it easier to find secrets and treasures. If you advance into the story it might shut you out of the previous area, the most annoying thing about this game is when you enter a new area you just GO to it, rather than it asking you to go to it. If you are trying to complete your Map Completion % then you're probably not paying attention where the exit is, and you'll often walk into the next area advancing the story.. very annoying.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
45:44:22
