Opening Comments:
Playing Star Ocean 2 on Playstation was a wonderful experience for me. I really enjoyed the storyline while finding Claude Kenni as a likeable person. The real-time battle system with freedom of movement was a first for me, yet it became one of my favorite battle systems in an RPG. What I really liked most about Star Ocean 2 was the astonishing soundtrack composed by Motoi Sakuraba. Having the opportunity to play Valkyrie Profile, the music excelled Star Ocean 2. Now, I was just waiting for Enix to announce a sequel to Star Ocean 2 developed by Tri-Ace, along with Motoi Sakuraba composing breathtaking music.
Hearing news from around magazines and the internet about Star Ocean 3 being in development for Playstation 2 had me really ecstatic. Despite all the delays for the domestic release, I was enthusiastic to hear that the Director’s Cut version of Star Ocean 3 was coming stateside instead of the original version. The game was released around my birthday, so it turned out to be an early birthday present for me. Ever since I put the game into my Playstation 2, I was hooked.
Storyline/Characters:
By looking at the stylish box art to Star Ocean 3, my first impression was that I would be traveling through space throughout the adventure. I ended up being both right and wrong that the setting would be similar to Xenosaga Episode I.
The story starts off where Fayt Leingod and Sophia Esteed are on a resort planet known as Hyda. Fayt wants to spend his time playing a virtual reality, combat simulator game. On the other hand, Sophia isn’t too happy with Fayt playing the game and wants him to spend time with her on the beach. It’s kind of interesting how both Fayt and Sophia are dressed, because the type of clothing is worn by people nowadays, like the khaki cargo shorts on Fayt. Fayt tries to convince Sophia to play the game with her, but when they do, Hyda is attacked by an unknown military force. Fayt and his parents, along with Sophia try to aboard an escape shelter, but they get attacked along the way separating Fayt away from his parents. Fayt is very determined to save them, but Sophia and Peppita force him to escape to an Evacuation Facility. A few more short story events occur then Fayt and Sophia will end up on Herle. When Herle gets attacked, Fayt convinces Sophia to take an escape pod, while Fayt boards another shortly after; however, the two of them be separated. A story sequence will follow with Fayt riding the escape pod, but luckily he lands on a planet. Throughout the storyline, Fayt is on a quest traveling to different planets, with many surprising twists, to find his father and Sophia.
The story progresses on different planets. Some planets or places are very interesting, while others may either be a little stale or seem un-needed. For a long period of time, the game can feel slow paced for some, but it really gets much as it progresses. The main story is linear but there is some opportunity to change some story through private actions, choosing who will be in the final party, and so on. Star Ocean 3 definitely has a lot of good story, although it’s unfortunate that it is heavily spaced out. There may be several long story sequences one after another, and then they’ll be times it will be a long time until the next story sequence will occur.
The characters’ in Star Ocean 3 are terrific. Fayt Leingod, the main character, really grew on me throughout the adventure. He was around my age and is honest like myself. It’s good he will never abandon someone when they are in need, although he can be stubborn every once in a while. Sophia is a cute looking girl who happens to be Fayt’s cousin. She always has the wonderful smile and will look up to Fayt like he’s a big brother. Cliff Fittir tries to act like a tough guy, but I can see that he has a few soft spots. He’s a very confident man and tries to push Fayt into not blaming himself for everything. Nel Zelpher is a kind of the cool character of the party. She looks a little mysterious and is a strong willed person. Her goal is to always complete whatever mission she takes on. Maria Traydor is the leader of Quark, an anti-federation group. She’s good looking, but mostly seems determined to do research. There are other characters involved in the story such as Peppita, Roger, Mirage, etc. but there’s really not a lot about each of them, other than help out when in need. Personally, I really liked most of the characters I met, but I didn’t like Maria too much although she does play an important role in the story.
Seeing the picture on the back of the Star Ocean 3 DVD case, with Fayt and Sophia beside one another, had me feeling emotional. It’s hard to explain why, but just seeing those two together side by side really motivated me to finish the game, unlike some RPG games where I play little by little. A reason might have been how I really liked watching scenes of both Fayt and Sophia together. Seeing the two of them split up really saddened me.
Private actions return in Star Ocean 3, but a button does not have to be pressed to initiate one like in Star Ocean 2. A private action is a mini-scenario that happens between characters and can affect the relationships between characters. Within a town being visited, each member is scattered throughout the town. When approaching some of them at certain times, a short little event will occur. A private action that comes to my mind is one where Fayt comes across a good looking girl on the beach. Sophia appears and the good looking girl as Fayt who she really is. Depending upon the answer chosen, Sophia can be happy or even upset with Fayt. The private actions are great because more can be learned about the party, and they affect the characters reactions to each other. I did come across some private actions, but I really missed the opportunity of several of them.
Gameplay:
Playing battles in Star Ocean 3 were extremely enjoyable. The battles are similar to Star Ocean 2, where the battles are in real-time. The combat feels much better this time around. Compared to turn based RPG games, the action is always happening so there’s no falling asleep in battles. The battles were extremely fast paced and it usually did not take me long to finish battles, including a lot of the boss fights earlier in the game. It’s great that I can do a few combos using the X or circle button, but I mostly see myself either mashing the X button to do a normal attack or mashing the circle button to do a heavy attack. It’s hard to say whether I liked not being able to attack an enemy on the ground. I dislike it seemed my characters’ missed around 40%-60% of their attacks. On the other hand, it makes some sense because the enemy is getting back up. I got use to it and didn’t have many problems after a while. There can only be three characters’ in battle at one time, compared to four in Star Ocean 2. I actually preferred three because there’s less confusion handling three characters’ compared to four within a real-time battle system. Now, the A.I. controlled characters’ were actually pretty intelligent on doing whatever tactic I set them to. I can definitely say that A.I. was not perfect, because a melee character was skillful while the symbology (magic) user was not too skillful. They would do very little healing in battle when needed and usually ended up killing themselves too easily.
A character has HP, MP, and Fury gauge in battle. It’s self explanatory as to what HP and MP are; however, enemies can take out both HP and MP when attacking a character. Unfortunately, if either the HP or MP goes down to zero, the character will be knocked out. Enemies attacking MP wasn’t too bad at the beginning of the game, but it really became a nuisance especially towards the end. The fury gauge is a pleasant addition. Fundamentally, it fills up when a character starts attacking or when the get attacked. Fury attacks can be used depending on how the X button is held, and it will perform a special attack to the enemy. My favorite new feature in battle is the battle gauge on the right side of the screen. As long as my percentage is not zero, the gauge will continue to fill up; however, if I get attacked by enemy, then my percentage goes down and my battle gauge cannot increase. When the battle gauge is at maximum, I can triple experience points, double Fol, increase probability of gaining an item, and recover more heath after battle. The battle gauge will break when an enemy does big attacks to the party, running from battle, or quitting the game.
The magic in Star Ocean 3 is called symbology. Despite that being a rather interesting name, there’s really not a whole lot to it. Some of the party members will already be set with a few symbology spells, and eventually new ones as they reach a particular level. Sophia is the biggest symbology user doing spells that can support the party members’ and damage enemies. Most other party members’ do use symbology, while some do not. Similar to most every RPG game ever created, symbology uses the character’s MP. When the A.I was controlling my characters’ in battle, usually they’d use a bunch of magic but didn’t use it right. I rarely used symbology when controlling a character in battle; however, I mostly controlled Fayt who has very few symbology spells, so that could explain why.
After each battle, the party gains experience and Fol. Fol is exactly the same as what most RPG games refer to as gold. Fol was also used in Star Ocean 2, so I’m glad to see Tri-Ace continue the trend in the series. Gaining experience is very much the same as other RPG games, where battles are played and experience is given out. After gaining a certain amount of experience points, the character will gain a level up. A character’s HP and MP will increase, along with given some stat points. Early on in the game, gaining experience and Fol seemed to be quite difficult to do. I didn’t do much leveling until Elicoor II, when the experience gained seemed to be higher. Throughout the adventure, gaining a good amount of experience was normally difficult, but I’d usually gain enough Fol. Gaining triple the experience points was always a wonderful treat, since gaining levels would become relatively easy. The stat points could be used to increase the character’s HP, MP, attack, and defense. There is a limit as to how many levels a character’s stats can increase the stats, but it’s a good feature since it allows little customization for each character. I personally found myself maxing out both my HP and MP, since enemies love to knock out a lot. I felt that by having larger HP and MP, it would take the enemy longer to knockout my character.
Characters’ learn skills that they can equip to use in battle. The skills are learned when they reach a specific level. Equipping skills to the X button will use a character’s Fury gauge when executed, while equipping to the circle button will drain a character’s HP gauge. My skills became very useful and I’ve found myself using them most in battle. Despite learning a lot of new skills, I didn’t exactly change mine too often. Each character can also equip some support skills, such as healing a party member in certain situations, which are also helpful. The bad thing is that the best skills cannot be equipped at once, since there is a limit.
If a certain condition is achieved during a boss battle, such as defeating an enemy without getting hit, a battle trophy can be received. Battle trophies were a feature revised in the Director’s Cut Version of Star Ocean 3. They really add replay value to the game and really force you to work harder in battle. Unfortunately, little memory card space cannot save the collection. By accomplishing a certain amount of conditions, extra costumes for each character in versus mode along with a sound test and a really high difficulty setting can be unlocked. I did not attempt to gain battle trophies, so I unlocked very little.
Inventing items in Star Ocean 3 is something I don’t think I’ve really done before in an RPG game. Basically, go to workshop in each town and try deciding what is going to be created and who is going to create it. Things that can be done are cooking, alchemy, craft compounding, etc. To do any of them at a particular workshop, they have to be bought then add slots to create more inventions at one time. Creating items can be done by a member of the party or by specialized workshop people. I wasn’t too big into the idea of item creation, so I assigned someone else to do it for me. Whenever there is an update, a notice will pop up on the upper left hand corner of the screen and can happen most anywhere except battle. The inventions can then be checked under the menu. Welch will mention what’s been created and where along with the rankings of the inventors. There may be some who like the item created, but I personally didn’t care for it. I just listened to updates and nothing else.
There were a few mini-games and side quest found in Star Ocean 3. I did not make an effort to try many of them. I was forced to do the hauler mini-game in the Kirlsa Caverns. Several attempts were made to get to the right place I needed to. Afterwards, I didn’t want to do it again. The mini-game I wanted to play most is versus mode. The versus mode could be unlocked by visiting a certain dungeon and completing it, then showing the item to someone to unlock it. I thought versus mode would be like a fighter, but it was more so like a regular battle, except only playing 1 on 1 or 2 on 2. A second player can play too. As the game progresses, more characters will be playable in versus mode. I felt versus mode was enjoyable despite rarely playing it. There are several other side quests that can simple to extremely difficult. I rarely spend time doing side quests in an RPG, but by doing the amount offered could really boost play time above 70 hours.
There is no world map in Star Ocean 3, like Star Ocean 2 has. The game is mostly done by stringing places together. A town may have several exits that lead to some kind of path. When taking the different paths, they can lead to another town or maybe even a dungeon. The paths and dungeons is where enemy encounters will happen, while the towns are a place to stock up on equipment, do some private actions, and even to progress the story along. In all honesty, I prefer the world map setup of Star Ocean 2 because it made traveling easier and less confusing to get to other towns. On numerous occasions, I found myself going out the wrong exits in towns or even getting myself lost taking paths. The other problem I had about stringing places together was that it became very tedious to go from a town like Airyglyph all the way back to Aquios. Several of the paths felt like a maze also.
Speaking of maze like places, that’s how most every ruin, cave, etc. that is visited in the game appeared to be. Not only are they mazes, but lengthy and time consuming. It’s nice there’s a map on the side of the screen that shows areas already explored. My problem is that the map doesn’t accurately map the area too well, so it can still be confusing trying to find the way out. Several dungeons contained puzzles. They are not too difficult to understand; however, doing them can be a huge pain especially towards the end. Dungeons contained several treasure chests. A lot of the items had to be put back into the chests since I’m being limited to 20 of the same item. It’s really frustrating when a dungeon has a door that could only be exited, while not entered. Another big complaint is that the save sphere’s are usually spread far apart from each other. I went through many long sessions where I tried to find a save sphere, but ending up dying before I could get to one. The good thing is that most every boss fight has a save sphere before the fight in case I cannot defeat the boss. Dungeons can be a drag, but I felt a good sense of accomplishment when completing them. Towns on the other hand were not maze like, but some had several narrow paths hard to spot. Towns contained treasure chest too, but I highly doubt I found everyone due to some being difficult to find. The towns and villages I visited were great, so I have no complaints about them.
Controlling Fayt did feel odd when I first played Star Ocean 3. After giving it some time, I grew to adore the controls mostly because he moved fast. I say odd because it looked like he was making some huge steps while waving his arms around. Before I played Star Ocean 3, I felt the camera was going to be static like in Star Ocean 2. I was wrong since the camera is controlled using the L1 and R1 buttons to rotate the camera. At first, I wasn’t too fond of the manually camera since I greatly prefer static cameras. I grew into liking the camera after a while. What does bother me about the camera is that it will sometimes put me on an overhead view and I cannot change it. The controls in battle are very fast and targeting enemies isn’t too bad. It’s really good that switching between each character is relatively easy along with turning on/off a manual controlled character. For the most part, the controls in Star Ocean 3 are great although I would have been more pleased with a static camera.
Sound/Music:
The background music in Star Ocean 3 was really, really good. My favorite music was normally the themes I heard it towns. Several towns had a memorable theme like Kirlsa, Whipple, etc. The theme in two of the ruins is some kind of rock music. At first, I thought the music was out of place in the game, but I greatly appreciated it after a while. The themes in caves aren’t really all that great, but very few RPG games I’ve played had good themes. Whenever I was on a spaceship, the music was more upbeat and definitely sounded futuristic. The regular battle theme is something I really loved. I played around 1500 battles and never grew tired of it. The music really motivated me to fight harder. The victory fanfare was also really good although nothing comes close to Final Fantasy in that regard. The boss battle themes were good, but I found very few of them to be memorable. The music during emotional story sequences was very soothing where I could feel the emotion. I remember those scenes very well due to good music in RPG games, and I was able to remember the best scenes in Star Ocean 3 the same way. I admit the soundtrack may not be as good as Valkyrie profile, but I liked it better compared to Star Ocean 2. I definitely applaud composer Motoi Sakuraba for a job well done.
Hearing different characters’ voices can be good for some, while being bad for others. I felt that Fayt and Nel had fantastic voices. Fayt had a voice that really suited someone his age and personality. His voice isn’t annoying and it’s definitely not boring. Nel is that kind of character who looks cool and luckily her voice perfectly matched the personality. Roger had a voice that can be annoying, but it really suited him well. Cliff’s voice sounded weird at first, but really wasn’t too bad after a while. Maria’s voice left a lot to be desired though. Hearing her voice seemed to ruin a lot of good scenes because it sounded loud and annoying. The rest of the characters in the party sounded all right. The characters that did not join the party or that had very little to do with the story, sounded atrocious. Some of them sounded like I heard them before, such as Claire, but sounded a whole lot worse in Star Ocean 3. It’s just dreadful that Square Enix could do such a wonderful job with the voices in games like Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts, while doing mostly an average job in Star Ocean 3. I wonder if Enix originally had something to do with the voiceovers, because their voiceovers on Grandia Xtreme and Robot Alchemic Drive were poor. I was also a little disappointed in where voiceovers were used. There are a few big boss fights I had to play, and I watched the characters have a conversation with no voiceovers. I wonder if Square Enix ran out of time or something, but they really should have put voiceovers on all scenes unless I’m selecting to talk to people in towns. Actually, it seems like the voiceovers were placed in better situations at the beginning compared to the end. It seems like Square Enix decided to place voiceovers on random scenes while not thinking whether it’s the best place to put them. What I did like about most of the comments made by characters when they finished off the enemy in battle.
The sound effects in Star Ocean 3 are fantastic. Hearing different sounds when walking on different kinds of ground that suited the type of ground very well was amusing. The sound effects for menu selections are exactly the same as in Star Ocean 2, but that’s a good thing for me since I adore it. Nothing much else I can say, but what’s there is good.
Graphics:
The background graphics in Star Ocean 3 are really some of the best I’ve seen in any Playstation 2 RPG game. Surprisingly, it looks so good and it’s not pre-rendered. Each of the towns looks fantastic and I can really see the detail. In the town of Aquios, I just love how the granite on the ground walked on looks. What impresses me most is the amount of detail in the homes I visit. I see stuff like old mirrors, tables, and a whole bunch of other junk scattered around. I barely knew the Playstation 2 was capable of showing such good detail in several objects within a home. Not just the towns look great, but the ruins look outstanding too. I would put my controller down to look at the beautiful backgrounds. The graphics in caves though are no where near as good, since it’s mostly brown dirt. Still, there’s some detail in the ground the looks good enough. I originally felt Star Ocean 3’s graphics looked good, but not too great in screenshots. After playing the game for all this time, no screenshot I ever saw does the game any justice.
The character graphics were very good, but compared to the background graphics, a little disappointing. Fayt looked really good dressed in his normal clothes and his armor clothes. Sophia, Nel, Roger, Peppita and Maria also look great graphically. Cliff and Adray really didn’t look all too great to me. My reason was not necessarily the faces, but their body structure. Their big muscular arms looked kind of blocky, although not blocky as in Cloud Strife arms. Otherwise, I feel the characters’ are well done and some of the better I’ve seen graphically. There really wasn’t a lot of still artwork in the game, but there was some on the status screens of each of the characters and in battle. I personally felt that the artwork was okay at best, since most characters didn’t look much like they do fully animated, especially Nel.
Before playing Star Ocean 3, I felt the game would be filled with CG cinemas. Square Enix has a reputation for putting a lot of CG cinemas into RPG games, but that’s not really the case in Star Ocean 3. There are some CG cinemas here and there, but most of them are short and really don’t add much to the game. The CG cinemas I saw though appeared to look blurry and not too clear. I was still glad they were included because they were good for scenes with explosions. I wish many more CG cinemas were used and they were cleaner, but they were still good.
I’ll admit that Star Ocean 3 does have some occasionally loading time problems. Around five percent of the time, it would take around one or two minutes to load the status screen. The game also took a while to load every once in a while when entering different screens or touching an enemy to engage in battle. It’s hard to say what the problem may be because it would never happen twice in the same spot. Mostly, it was just random.
Closing Comments:
Despite having a few flaws in the load times on occasions, having to put up with Maria’s voice, along with beating my head against the wall in a few dungeons, Star Ocean 3 was a magnificent experience. The storyline gave me emotions of happiness, sadness, hatred, and many other feelings. Fayt Leingod has easily become my favorite character out of every RPG game released this generation. The gameplay was great, especially the fast paced battles. Graphics, music, and the controls were also great. Together, having great of everything makes a truly great RPG game. Add to that, the very lengthy gameplay with loads of side quest and mini-games that can easily take over 70 hours. I’ll always remember Star Ocean: Till the End of Time deep within my heart. It may not be my favorite RPG game all time, or even this generation, but it definitely remains as of the best RPG games I ever played. Anyone who loved Star Ocean 2 or RPG games should definitely give Star Ocean 3 a try. I feel that spending 53 hours playing through the game was worth it. It’s sad all the wonderful story had to come to an end of time. One day, I plan to go back in time to experience the magic once again.