star ocean

[timothy]

So i was wondering if anyone here has ever played star ocean till the end of time? If so then who is your favorite character? Has anyone beat the game? Just wondering cause i am playing it and i have almost beat it?

[Dante]

Yep. Played it and beat it - although that was quite some time ago. Favorite characters are kind of limited because... as I'm sure you've noticed, Fayt, Nel and Cliff are with you for so much of the game, that the other characters are basically worthless (I never got Roger Huxley - although he may have been pretty cool - poor kid, wonder what ended up happening to him given that I never found him XD).

As far as attacks are concerned, I liked Fayt because I could just spam Dimensional Door, till the end of time... no pun intended. Of course, in the final boss, I actually found that I was better off just running Fayt in a giant circle avoiding the attacks while throwing healing items at my allies... otherwise we'd all gang up on the main boss and he'd kick us back to the ground using some nasty powerful attacks (he has a way of teaching you humility). Not exactly the most exciting way to win a game.

Ultimately, the game was pretty good, but I have a feeling that Fayt will one day have an existential crisis from all of it XD.

[LadyRushia]

Moved to Gamers Galore.

[timothy]

well roger is in the city of sufferio but if you say no to him then you will never get him

[Dante]

What if you forgot to rescue him XD?

[timothy]

You never rescued him? lol

[MomentOfInertia]

I played it, but never finished it...I think I'm got to the entrance of Sphere corp...or whatever they're called. It's a fun game, someday I'll go back and finish it....and FFX and Dark Cloud 2....Why do I have this problem finishing JRPGs?

[FllMtl Novelist]

It's not just JRPGs.

[Furen]

It's not just JRPGs.

Conversations in chat XD

[ADXC]

I love Star Ocean 3 (AKA Till the End of Time). To be honest, it's my favorite one. The fourth one was alright, but it didn't quite have the same appeal that 3 had.

My favorite character? That's a tough one because I liked them all.

For male characters I'd say between Fayt and Albel. For female characters, I think Sofia or Maria.

[Nate]

I love Star Ocean 3 (AKA Till the End of Time). To be honest, it's my favorite one.

When I started playing 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, people who had been into D&D for years laughed at me and said it was apparent I'd never played first or second edition before. I said I hadn't, but so what, what did that matter? They said "If you'd played first or second edition, you'd understand."

After reading this comment, now I understand exactly what they meant. Truly these can only be the words of someone who never played Star Ocean 1 or 2. Because if you'd played them...you'd understand.

[Seto_Sora]

Would one possibly understand if one actually finds Star Ocean 3 rather boring?

SDG

[Nate]

Okay, perhaps I should expound a bit.

Star Ocean 3, by itself, isn't a particularly bad game. It has its share of problems, to be sure. BIG problems. But overall it's competently made and is at least somewhat interesting storyline-wise.

...until the stupid, stupid, horrible, terrible, garbage, pants-on-head retarded piece of crap awful plot twist halfway through the game. More on that later.

The problem is that Star Ocean 3, compared to 1 and 2, is just...lacking. And limiting. It restricts you far more than the other games did, and for no real good reason. I'm talking, of course, about two things that were a big part of Star Ocean 1 and 2: Crafting and Skills.

Skills were things you used in Crafting. Each type of Crafting required certain skills. Cooking, for example, required three Skills: Kitchen Knife, Recipe, and Good Eye. A character had to have at least one level in all three skills, and when they did, Cooking was available in the Item Creation menu.

The Item Creation menu could be accessed literally anywhere in the game aside from battle of course. Even at the beginning of the game (though you wouldn't actually be able to do anything with it at that point). All you needed was the required skills and a raw material and boom, you could create anything. It probably wouldn't be anything GOOD, but you could do it. Crafting also required certain Talents, and certain equipment and items could improve your chances of making something good (or allow you to make special items) but that's not important to my explanation.

My point is that Crafting in Star Ocean 3 is, well...crap. There's no other way to explain it. It's horrendous. Awful. An insult to the franchise, a flat-out slap in the face to fans of the first two games. You can't even use it until like fifteen hours into the game, not that you'd want to, because it's painfully awful and just...so bad. Really really bad. I don't know how to express how effing terrible it is.

Anyway, back to Star Ocean 1 and 2. The second was Skills. Now, you remember Skills are necessary for Crafting. This is true! However, Skills ALSO served a secondary function. They increased your stats and provided various other benefits. For example, Kitchen Knife. Each level of Kitchen Knife you put points into raises your Strength by 20 x the level. In other words, if you have Claude and give him one level in Kitchen Knife, your Strength immediately increases by 20. Give him a second level, and you get another 20. Ten levels in Kitchen Knife (the highest level you can have in a skill) gives a 200 point bonus to Strength.

Biology gives you an HP increase. Herbal Medicine increases the healing powers of certain items like Blueberries and Blackberries. Effort reduces the amount of experience points your character needs to level up. So on and so forth. Skills were not only useful for creating items, but also made your character stronger! Part of the fun of the game was knowing which skills were best to put points into to best compliment your character's strengths in battle. In fact, without cheating (though that depends on whether you consider reloading a save file repeatedly "cheating") if you played your skills right, and got really lucky, you could have the third most powerful sword in the game not even halfway through disc one (basically you have to steal an item from someone that when used gives you three random items, and the sword is one of the random items the item can give you...it's a really, really low chance, probably less than one percent, but if you reload enough times you can get it).

And Star Ocean 3 has...well, nothing. There's SORT OF "Skills" in the menu, but they're all combat focused and don't do anything to your stats, nor do they let you use any special abilities outside of battle or allow you to create anything.

And that, THAT is why anyone who's played Star Ocean 1 and 2 would understand why the phrase "Star Ocean 3 is my favorite one" could only be spoken by someone who never played the first or second.

Then the plot twist. The stupid plot twist. I won't say what it is, but the plot twist manages to be not only ridiculously nonsensical and idiotic, but ALSO manages to insult people who like the first two games. If you know what the plot twist is, you'll understand why it's insulting...not to mention creates a couple of nice big plot holes, specifically one involving the Time Gate from Star Ocean 1 and another involving the Ten Wise Men from Star Ocean 2.

At any rate, as I said before. Star Ocean 3, by itself, is not a terrible game. It just shouldn't have been a Star Ocean game. It is objectively worse than the first two games in character customization and Item Creation, and has a really stupid and terrible plot twist that made me just throw down the controller and say "Really? REALLY? Come on."

I personally blame Squaresoft for Star Ocean 3's failings. The game was made after the merger between them and Enix. Had Enix stayed its own separate company, Star Ocean 3 would have been a significantly better game, no doubt. As it is, it just stands as a slightly above-average game for anyone who's never played a Star Ocean game before, and a steaming dog turd for anyone who has.

[ADXC]

We've had this discussion before.


I believe you, but I do not have the resources to play them because I do not know where to get those games and my PlayStation is at home. They are ps1, so I imagine it to would be tough so I cannot really assess what you say. Unless you can find me a emulator of some sort.


Also, I'd rather not invest money into this. So free or cheap is best for me.

[Nate]

Actually, Star Ocean 2 was the first one released in the US, and yes, that was PS1 (though of course, it has been ported to the PSP).

The first Star Ocean was actually a Super Famicom game. However, it didn't get brought over to the US because Enix's American branch was closing down. It's a shame, because much like Tales of Phantasia, the first Star Ocean game used every bit of memory available on the Super Famicom cartridge. In fact, due to a special chip, Star Ocean had even more data on it than Tales of Phantasia did, and more voice acting too (though the voice acting was of lower quality).

It was also remade and released on the PSP, but there have been fan translations of Star Ocean available online for quite a while. In fact, that's how I originally played the game. XD I didn't think it would ever get remade, and since it was a Super Famicom game, there looked to be little chance of it ever getting officially released. Fortunately they proved me wrong. But the Super Famicom version is still around online if you look hard enough.

[ADXC]

Hmm, then I'll search for some then. Hopefully I'm successful. XD

[Souba]

[color="RoyalBlue"]I'm not going to be a hard nose about games(shudders at DMC fan boys), basically if I like the characters and storyline after a rent I buy it. With Star Ocean 3 I liked Fayt and his gang so I bought the game and played it, hee hee.
The fourth SO didn't pull me in though which was surprising but I did like the fact it was on Xbox 360, and I loved the enhanced graphics.

Still I have to say SO 3 is my favorite As for fav characters hmm I really liked Albel with Fayt close second the most out of the males, and Nel, then Sopia out of the girls. I guess you'd say Albel is my most fav, yeah the guy who makes gamer guys uncomfortable. Well you can see how much I like him with case and point here lol!
Beloved in Grace,
Souba[/color]

[Jingo Jaden]

I always got this mixed up with star ocean the last hope. Shortly summed up, I hate the last hope. The animators did an incredibly rushed production on it, but they did a million times better than those who designed the character personalities and story. It goes along the same lines that a lot of the other rpgs of this day and age do. Like Lost Odyssey, I freaking hated that game.

It might be that the old rpgs had some advantage with not having stunning graphics, kind of like when you read a book you visualize things for yourself and it works, or that they had likable storyline, or maybe I am just getting too old for stopping to help a farmer who lost his pitchfork. I'd like to think legendary games such as Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger and FF IX were just vastly superior in nature, but hopefully, nippon ichi will continue to release some good story-driven games like Soul Nomad and the world eaters, despite being a bit of a different genre.

[raider~joseph]

When I started playing 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, people who had been into D&D for years laughed at me and said it was apparent I'd never played first or second edition before. I said I hadn't, but so what, what did that matter? They said "If you'd played first or second edition, you'd understand."

After reading this comment, now I understand exactly what they meant. Truly these can only be the words of someone who never played Star Ocean 1 or 2. Because if you'd played them...you'd understand.

That applies to a lot of rpgs as well.Star ocean....good times.That was truely one of the greats.But my all time best rpg ever is still Final Fantasy X. (Cloud still has a much more interesting life story though.)I remember playing this game non stop until I beat it.Ahhh Star Ocean....