Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrowing our laser focus to one game per week (at least). Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!

Extra Note: We've entered Shelftember! In this much-vaunted month, we will be processing one of the second round entries every day. I'll be spending one hour apiece with each game - inspired by DanielKempster's backlog-clearing series "An Hour With..." - and determining its fate from there.

The final week of Shelftember is going to involve a lot of larger games that I dropped years ago for one reason or another. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the third core Star Ocean game and the only one to be released on PlayStation 2, is a particular sore spot. While tri-Ace is hardly the most consistent JRPG developer out there I've enjoyed the level of ingenuity all their games have exhibited, even if it often comes with the caveat of some janky rough edges. Star Ocean is the closest tri-Ace has to a flagship series - while I wish Valkyrie Profile was their largest contribution, three games isn't a spot on Star Ocean's six plus remakes - and yet I've been unable to break into any of them. Star Ocean 1 was a Japan-exclusive Super Famicom RPG (though there's no excuse for skipping out on its PSP remake), I couldn't get far into Star Ocean 2 because the PS1 disc I owned was an ex-rental I should've been smarter about purchasing, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope (the fourth core game in the series, released on Xbox 360) sits unplayed on my shelf, ostensibly because I'd always meant to return and complete Till the End of Time first.

The thing is, Star Ocean 3 begins promisingly enough. During a protracted prologue, we're introduced to student Fayt Leingod of the Pangalactic Federation: an enormous organization of sapient space-faring races that have banded together to protect themselves from aggressors like the Aldian Empire. After a surprise attack from an advanced alien race who had until now been neutral in galactic politics, Fayt is separated from his parents and his friend Sophia while vacationing and crash-lands on an underdeveloped alien planet. Naturally, the Star Trek-like Pangalactic Federation has an equivalent Prime Directive, so Fayt tries to keep a low-profile. That inevitably proves difficult as soon as the aforementioned hostile aliens come searching for him. The majority of the hour was spent with this prologue, but I extended the timer a little so it could include a few features I remember vividly about the game: the excellent real-time combat engine, which evolved alongside Wolf Team/Namco's Tales but has a few subtle differences especially with regards to the application of light and heavy attacks and a regenerating "fury" gauge, and the map completion feature. The latter was a big component of why I burned out on the game: there are valuable items up for grabs for getting 100% exploration on various maps of the game (specifically, dungeons and overworlds, rather than villages and other settlements). Unfortunately, this percentage includes patches of the map that can be only be accessed by a pixel or two of the traversable territory. That means a lot of running along the outer contours of maps for scraps of a percentile. The items you earn are valuable enough to vindicate this boundary-poking, but it sure drags down the pace of the game. Fortunately, there are no random encounters, as enemies appear on the overworld and can be evaded easily enough if so desired.

It's the eccentric additions like the map completion bonuses that left the biggest lasting impression of this game. There are others like it, like a planet-wide invention system where NPCs rush to be the first to patent new items which can then be sold in stores, or the battle trophies which were an early attempt at an in-game achievement system that rewards players for difficult accomplishments like beating a boss within a certain amount of time or with the starting weapon, but they all ended up being frustrating and distracting in practice. The game also hits a difficulty spike about halfway through the first disc, which is around the time when the aliens finally find you and the enemy difficulty suddenly ramps up in every region, and I remember feeling so fatigued from the many irritations that this impromptu hindrance was enough to disincentivize me to continue.

I still like tri-Ace, largely because I think the JRPG genre could use their imagination, but there are certain games of theirs that are hard to like. When they're more conventional, like with Infinite Undiscovery, I find them a little more palatable if perhaps a mite more dull. With something more bizarre like Resonance of Fate, I find myself bouncing off in spite of the praise it receives due to just how challenging it can be to get my head around its mechanics, and I then have to judge whether or not I'm enjoying the game and its story/characters enough for this precipitous learning curve to be worth the effort. I'm generally loath to drop games I only have a few problems with, but with JRPGs I simply have to draw a line somewhere because of the time commitment each one demands. From the reports I've heard every Star Ocean after 2 has been progressively worse, so I don't feel a huge compulsion to try to bash my way through Till the End of Time on this occasion to reach its sequels. Still, it was worth revisiting it for this feature to get my feelings in order.

Well, that's one of my two PS2 white whales resolved. The next will appear on the 30th, making it the final game of Shelftember and of the second round of eliminations.

Result: Eliminated.

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