Not much to say about this one. Star Ocean was good all the way to the end, and didn’t outstay its welcome (22:10h) but I never regained that “ZOMG this is awesome!” feeling I had in the first few hours. Incredibly easy game. Really glad I never grinded, or I would have felt like a right ninny when I got to the final stage and went down a few steps to find a bonus dungeon where the enemies gave 100-300,000 EXP per battle (by comparison the last boss’s 2 forms gave less than 40,000 combined).

The Good stuff

• Not too long, not too short.
• The story made sense, more or less. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but it made sense.
• You could change the controls. I’ve been playing a lot of Japanese games lately so I’m more comfortable with O being ‘yes’ and X being ‘no’.
• I liked, or could at least stomach most of the characters.
• Lots of skills to learn, quite a number of sidequests to pursue as well.
• I liked the virtually automatic battles that let me kick back and AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS! AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS! DRAGON ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON TORTOISE SMASH ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON TORTOISE SMASH ROAR DRAGON ROAR DRAGON ROAR TORTOISE SMASH AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND DRAGON ROAR THE CLOUDS! AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS!
• Your party AI was pretty good. I could actually trust Millie to heal me as necessary.
• Voice-acting was good, as far as English voices go.
• Music was okay, didn’t notice anything one way or another.
• While the dungeon encounter rate was just as bad as the world map rate, it makes up for that with a high EXP payout and frequent level ups. I don’t mind fighting a lot as long as I feel it’s worth it.

The Not-so-good stuff

• A little too easy, even for me.
• Private Actions were a boring pain in the ass. At least I wasn’t forced to do them so that’s good.
• A lot of the skills and abilities were completely useless. But again, I wasn’t forced to use stuff like Publication and Compounding, so that’s good.
• It’s called “Star Ocean” but we only visited 2 planets.
• Forced backtracking. I hate forced backtracking.
• World map encounter rate was pretty high, and skills like Scouting and Music did not do much to help.
• The latter parts of the story felt rushed. Jie Revorse and the whole Fargett thing took less than an hour, but he’s supposed to be the “third party” around whom the whole story revolved? It’s just too hasty.
• What was up with that planet blowing up in the beginning? I get the part about Revorse trying to take over the Earth, but why blow up a planet?
• Apart from a cloaking shield, what did the Fargettians need to turn the Roakians to stone for? It’s not like they put the cloaking shields to any particular use anyway. Those poor 150k Roakians…
• In fact the last 2 or 3 hours of the game were just … meh, whatever, it’s over.

Conclusion

I enjoyed myself. It’s a good game, and I’m looking forward to playing Star Ocean: Second Evolution down the line, since I hear it’s even better. My only other experience with Star Ocean was Till the End of Time, which I didn’t really give the time of the day. I’d like to work my way up through the series and give that another try someday.