Few games emphasize the "G" in RPG.
NOTE: This review was written by me years ago, but it's never been posted on GB, so enjoy!
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Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (SO3 hereafter) is the third game in tri-Ace’s flagship series. tri-Ace (yes, the t” is lowercase) is a relatively unknown developer, but with four games under their belt (Star Ocean: the Second Story, Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, and now SO3), they are making quite a name for themselves. The RPGs they have introduced to the genre thus far have really stood out from the rest, yet they really didn’t stand much of a chance against renowned RPG juggernauts. SO3 may be just what tri-Ace had hoped it would be: the game that puts them on the mainstream map. With the Square Enix name on the slick package, casual RPG gamers may actually try something very different from what they are used to. After playing tri-Ace RPGs for a while, you won’t look at other RPGs the same way again.
While real-time RPG combat is nothing new, the rules that are introduced in SO3 are completely original, and the result is a battle system that makes you wish RPG combat was always this deep and exciting all at once. How good is the battle system? One preview claimed that it was good enough to be a standalone game. It’s THAT good. However, do not expect to understand how SO3 does things right away. Take the time to go through the in-game tutorial and mess around with the features. Chances are good that if a player ends up being disappointed with the combat system, it’s likely because he/she doesn’t understand or appreciate all of its nuances. When was the last time you died in an RPG because your MP went down to 0? That’s right, never. Since when did using skills consume HP rather than MP? That’s right, never. But SO3 has both of these features, and while it’s easy for one to be skeptical of such rules, in practice, it works. Enemies are subject to these rules, as well; a monster with 10,000 HP may have only 50 MP by comparison. Enemies and heroes have a Fury gauge, which is basically a stamina meter. Almost all actions consume Fury, some more than others. Moving keeps it in place, while standing still for a second restores it completely. When Fury is completely full, you will have access to an Aura, which is basically a shield. Auras can block weak (quick) attacks, but they break against strong (slow) attacks. You won’t get very far by repeatedly using weak attacks (i.e. button mashing), because enemies use auras with intelligence. Auras can be enhanced with debilitating or beneficial effects, so you’ll have to be even more careful not to mash. Your heroes also have the ability to sidestep, which adds even more defensive options.
The AI in SO3 is misunderstood; most gamers will think that it’s dumb, but that’s only because they don’t understand how it works. As stated in the tutorial, increasing the ATK skill will make the AI fight better, while increasing the DEF skill causes the AI to use more evasion and Auras. How you spend your points in either of these skills is important; you do not want a Cliff who avoids the enemy all the time when he should be on the front lines, dishing out the pain. It also helps if you know what the combat tactics do, which the game does not explain in detail. Using Cliff as an example, he fights best with the default tactic. Why in the world would you want him to “fight in a balanced manner” when he’s strictly a melee fighter? The “balanced manner” tactic is for those characters that can use both battle skills and symbology (magic). These are the kinds of things that lead people to believe that the AI is stupid. It’s possible to train the AI so that it fights the way you want it to; all you have to do is fight many battles with a single character, and the AI will mimic your actions (NOTE: this is actually just a theory, and not 100% fact). The only excuse one has is that the game does a poor job explaining the AI commands. The AI is very capable of killing enemies, but it’s something you won’t read about in any review from a publication, because they don’t spend nearly enough time with an RPG.
The famous item creation system from SO2 is back, but now it’s been refined so that you must make your items in a workshop, rather than just make items on the spot. The end result is a more fulfilling system, and one that makes more sense than it did in SO2. Now, you can check the cost of the item before you attempt to make it. This is good, because you can avoid cluttering up your inventory with useless junk. Eventually you’ll know exactly what you’re making just by checking the cost. Unfortunately, you have to repeatedly press X to get the right cost, since it’s random. It would’ve been great if the game allowed you to choose from a list of items you created, so that all you would have to do is choose what you want and make it with a 100% success rate. I mean, once you know how to make something, you don’t forget it, right? If you don’t feel like creating items at the moment, you can use inventors to do the work for you. Each inventor has a single specialty (compounding, writing, etc.), and they can be assigned to make items for you while you’re out bashing monsters. Items that you create can be patented and made available for purchase in stores (as long as stores do not already sell the product). You cannot sell your inventions to consumers, but you do get a huge discount. Rival inventors will create items and sell them for much more, so you must either invent expensive items before they do, or acquire their services so they can do it for you. The latter is preferable, because your party members can only make so many items by themselves, and their talent levels never change.
Visually, SO3 looks great. Everything moves at a high frame rate, and load times are non-existent--well, most of the time. Sometimes, the game will take longer than normal to load data, but it’s a small price to pay for something that is otherwise technically sound (just watch all the special effects during combat—no noticeable slowdown whatsoever). Dungeons look beautiful, and are massive and labyrinthine by design; if battles were random, SO3 would be a chore to play through. Fortunately, this is not the case, yet for some reason people equate non-random battles with no incentive to fight, then they turn around and complain that they’re being “forced” to level up. As opposed to random combat, where you have no choice but to engage in combat, or otherwise risk getting killed by trying to flee—that isn’t “forced”?
The voice acting in SO3 is decent. Most voices suit the characters, some don’t, and one is absolutely terrible. If you happen to dislike the VA, merely turn it off and your problem is rectified. The music, composed by Motoi Sakuraba, is very well done. A real orchestra was used for many of the tracks; while that doesn’t make the compositions automatically better, the quality of them are very high.
The only real flaw in SO3 is the initial pacing. It’s as slow as it was in SO2, but once things get going, the game is hard to put down. Also, there are some weird pauses between conversations. In many scenes, the characters will just wait a few seconds before they say something (the most blatant case is at the beginning scene). It’s annoying, but it’s a minor thing. Only nitpickers will have a real problem with the delays.
The one thing SO3 has over every other RPG released this year so far is massive replay value. tri-Ace fans know and expect tons of it, and SO3 doesn’t disappoint. Look at what you get: not one, but three extra dungeons; four secret bosses; multiple difficulty settings (now a tri-Ace trademark); ten different relationship endings; a very cool versus mode; and to top it all off, Battle Trophies. Battle Trophies rewards those gamers who like to do those crazy challenges in other RPGs (e.g. low-level game, the “no sphere grid” game in FFX). By acquiring these trophies, you can unlock new features such as new costumes for each character, new difficulty settings, and more. It’s too bad that there’s no new game+, otherwise no RPG could touch SO3 in replay value. As it stands, SO3 will last a very long time.
SO3 is one of the best RPGs you’ll play all year. We had to suffer many delays and unknown release dates, but in the end, it was worth the wait. I’m very grateful that Square Enix decided to release the Director’s Cut version of the game, and not the original (maybe I should thank the bugs for that?). Maybe now tri-Ace will get the respect it deserved since Valkyrie Profile.
