Star Ocean - One of the Greats!

Star Ocean is one of those games that starts off awesome and pretty quickly turns into an absolutely epic game. In many ways it's way ahead of it's time being released in 1996. The success of this game, despite it not being released outside of Japan, is apparent as it has spawned a highly successful series of Star Ocean games. This game itself was remade for the PSP and released 11 years later, renamed as Star Ocean: The First Departure.

What makes this game so special? Well it was one of the first games to introduce an Affection System, which seriously affected the game play. In certain Cities/Villages and Towns you have the option to undergo 'Private Actions'. During these Private Actions a number of interactions happen with other characters and during some conversations it gives you a number of options to reply with. Depending on what you reply with has an affect on a number of things. Firstly the way those characters act in battle, the higher the affection the better they will battle alongside your character. Secondly, a few of these actions will open up Side Stories that wouldn't be accessible otherwise. Thirdly, some of these actions determine whether or not you will recruit another character, which ultimately changes certain part of the story and dialogue. On top of that there are a number of slightly different endings and dialogues at the end of the game. These are dependent on the relationships between the other characters and you character and obviously dependent on what characters you did recruit. This Affection system was pretty revolutionary at the time and has lead to many other games using it, with the sequel to Star Ocean, Star Ocean: The Second Story having an extremely impressive 86 different Endings!

The Battle system is also pretty different, much like many other RPG's the battles are random when exploring the map, however they play out in real time as opposed to turn based. A option is then selected for the character you are controlling, which include attacking, using a skill or item and running. Up to four characters can participate in a battle and you do have the option to change between characters during the battle, with the other characters being controlled the Artificial Intelligence. Like many other RPG's you gain experience from battling which lead to leveling up and getting stronger, as well as there being a lot of different items and character unique items to help boost stats.

When the characters level up they also receive Special Points (SP) which can be used to increase the characters skills. There are a lot of different Skills all of which can be very useful. They range from non-combat skills such as Smithing and Cooking to useful combat skills such as Counter Attack and raising HP and MP. The skills can be very useful for creating powerful weapons, Cooking food to heal the characters to identifying different items. It's entirely in your hands and there is so much to improve, you are really spoiled for choice. Improving specific skills to a certain level will unlock more skills and more opportunities!

So onto my ratings for this game.

Graphics

I ranked Star Ocean a 9/10 for graphics, in today's world the graphics are very outdated but this game was made 18 years ago and out of the SNES games it is definitely one of the better ones. The graphics don't hamper the game play in anyway and you quickly get used to them and in all honesty don't pay much attention to them. Considering when it was made the graphics are pretty decent and I really found myself thinking 'I can't believe this game was made 18 years ago!' 

Sound

The music for this game is absolutely Fantastic, I have ranked it 10/10 and justifiably so. There is not a single bad track in this game, not one! There is a great variation of tracks throughout the game in different regions and the battle music, which is the most repetitive due to so many battles, but it's catchy and fits the action ridiculously well! If the music isn't enough reason to rank it 10, the use of spoken dialogue should be. Again, by today's standards having characters talk during battle and action scenes is nothing special, but 18 years ago this was pretty new. It really adds to the battles and also gives you an indication on how strong the opponent is depending on what the characters say. In terms of games for the SNES, Star Ocean's sound is right up there among the best and again showing that it was really ahead of it's time.

Addictiveness

Star Ocean is ridiculously addictive. I've ranked it 10/10 there's so much to do, you can't help but run around everywhere trying to complete everything. With the Private actions, you find yourself trying to repeat them as much as possible to see all the possible outcomes. The only downside to this is you are limited to saves so have to move on. To see every possible outcome you'd have to restart the whole game, which would be quite easy to do. It is ridiculously easily to loose track of time while playing this game, you can waste hours just running around talking to characters on this game, without progressing in the story at all! You don't have to talk to the characters, you just find yourself wanting to know what they say. There are little bits of humour darted all over the place which really added to the game, but equally made you want to talk to everyone. Just to give you an example of this, there is an arena in the game with about 100 spectators in and you can talk to the majority of them. It really is massively addictive.

Story

The story is brilliant. Just thinking about it fuels me with adrenalin and makes me want to tell you everything that happens. 10/10, hands down the easiest rating to give. Star Ocean is a combination of Fantasy and Sci-Fi with the majority of the game being more fantasy based with certain Sci-Fi elements thrown in at random times, but completely relevant to the story. Your initial task is simply to save one of the characters, however there is not a cure available on the planet at that time. The story then expands with so much happening in quite a short period of time and it turns into much more of a save the world type plot. It is literally a case of you start playing and think this game is brilliant and then before you know, it becomes epic. One of the things that made this game so great was the fact it took no time at all to get going and each part of the story is exciting in the sense you really want to find out what happens next. It just keeps adding to itself to make it even more exciting and even more interesting. On top of that, each of the individual characters play their part in the story, while each having their own stories explained through the game. Some of the characters stories can only be explained under certain circumstances, but it really is brilliant. 

Depth

Based on everything I've said so far, it shouldn't come as a surprise that this is ranked 10/10. There is so much to do, plenty of side quests that aren't needed to complete the game, plenty of discovering and little gems that just add to awesomeness of this game. There are plenty of times during this game when you are left with the opportunity to continue the story, or venture of a side quest. Every time you sit there contemplating, on one hand you have this brilliant story which you can't wait to continue and find out what happens next. On the other hand you have a lot of likable characters that you want to find out more about and want to discover about their past or extra elements in their story. I would say this game has too much to do, but that's not a bad thing!

Difficulty

The most difficult thing about this game is mastering the combat system, which can be a little hard to understand at first. Once you have a good grasp of that the game itself isn't too difficult. There are plenty of opportunities to train up and make all of your characters strong enough to proceed in the game, so you shouldn't really have that much of an issue. There are quite a few times during the game that a new area really steps up the difficulty, so if you try to speed through the game you will find it very difficult. There are also a few areas that you can access before you are meant to, which will result in coming across enemies far stronger than your characters. If you prepare correctly though it shouldn't be too hard. I've ranked it 7/10 because It could be very difficult at times, especially with some specific bosses, but with plenty of chances to save the game, lots of available healing items and plenty of chances to train up it shouldn't be too difficult.

Negative Points

I have pretty much given this game nothing but praise so far, which in all honesty it completely deserves. It's not perfect though and does have a few negative points. The first of these is, it can be very easy to get lost. I found myself trying to complete side quests and explore as much as possible. However by doing this it was very easy to loose track of what you had to do to continue the story. Without proper guidance you could find yourself running around talking to everyone trying to find out your mission. There were also quite a few times you had to back track which was very time consuming and by that time you were so much stronger than the enemies in those areas you could one shot them and get barely any experience, which could be a little irritating. The only other negative I can really think of is being petrified, there are a number of enemies in the game that have the ability to petrify you. When you're petrified you can't use items or do anything and if all characters in the battle are petrified you get a game over, even if they all had maximum health. At certain points in the game it was difficult to find out how to cure being petrified as well, which was very irritating. It was my pet hate with this game!

Conclusion

So in conclusion, I have ranked Star Ocean 9.8/10. I personally absolutely loved this game and it is in my all time top 10 favourite games! The story was brilliant, from the start it had me hooked and it was really exciting to find out what was going to happen next and gave me a real buzz. The characters themselves were all really likable and mysterious in different ways. You wanted to find out more about them and follow their side stories, while also see how they reacted during the Private Action phases. The Private Action phases themselves were always tense as you wanted to say the right thing, and even though it was pretty basic the options weren't clear cut as positive and negative. There were quite a few times when you had to choose an option to favour one character that would upset another character. It was really easy to get into the game and imagine yourself being there, when the end of the game came I was left with a sense of sadness at it finally being the end, I really wanted it to continue and couldn't wait to play the next game in the series! The Graphics, albeit outdated now, were among the best at the time of release and still respectable today, while the scenery varied quite a lot and was detailed and fitting.The battle format was different, considering the usual RPG battle formats are generally pretty similar it was an exciting addition which really added to the quality of the game. The soundtrack is full of quality music that ticks all the boxes. The repetitive music is catchy, while the more serious music fits the scenes really well. The introduction of dialogue again really added to the game and also gave a bit more likability to the characters. I have said it many times during this review, that Star Ocean is ahead of it's time and it really is. Considering it was made 18 years ago, for it to leave this much of a lasting impact on me, for it to be enjoyed this much and spawn some fantastic sequels it really is one of the greats!

UchuCazador : Good review. I was seeing all these 10s and my eyes were starting to glaze over, but I'm glad you put in a small section to talk about its small stumbles. Really like you took time to mention the private actions, the ability to miss some characters, and its unconventional battle system.  

This may just be me, so just take it for what you will (or not), but when people do a review and in the story section say something like 'its awesome 10 out of 10, but i won't tell you any of it for spoilers' feels like a cop-out. Even the back of the case usually can tell you a little bit about whats going on! Is it a save the world type plot? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Both? Does it include star-crossed lovers? How are we supposed to get an idea of what you thought was so great? 

However, that aside, the review seems pretty solid, and since I tried Star Ocean 2 and found it fun,  I'd like to get time to check this one out.

endings : Thank you for your feedback, I'll make sure to explain a little bit of what the story entails in my next review. I have edited my review to answer your questions, which will hopefully make this review better, while also answering them in this reply too.

Star Ocean is a combination of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, with the majority of the game being more fantasy based with certain Sci-Fi elements thrown in at random times, but completely relevant to the story. The story, your initial task is simply to save one of the characters, however there is not a cure available on the planet at that time. The story then expands with so much happening in quite a short period of time and it turns into much more of a save the world type plot. It is literally a case of you start playing and think this game is brilliant and then before you know, it becomes epic. One of the things that made this game so great was the fact it took no time at all to get going and each part of the story is exciting in the sense you really want to find out what happens next.

Then when you take into account the fact this game was on the SNES, I really don't think they could have done much more to make it any better.

UchuCazador : Thanks, it sounds fun! I'll be playing this one for December.