Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

"Deserves instant oblivion."

One good thing about the merger of Square and Enix is that it is going to be easier for us occidentals (specially Europe) to enjoy Enix and its associated companies rpgs (companies such as Tri-Ace or Chun Soft, although it seems that Chun Soft is no longer making Dragon Quests in favour of Level 5, the makers of Dark Cloud, which is scary). Without this merge, games like the above mentioned Dragon Quest or this one, Star Ocean, would have never reached the European shores. The problem is that given the current state of the rpg industry this isn`t always good news, and Star Ocean`s third installment is a good example.

Story 5/10:
Man, it just get me mad how much wasted potential there is in most rpgs, they use to have promising premises and a nice bunch of cool ideas, then why the final result is formulaic and obvious?, developers just don`t take any risks, and again, Star Ocean III is a perfect example.

The plot itself is great, but as usual it is not aware of its own potential and divagates too much from its central premise, we spend a lot of time doing silly tasks that do little to move on the story, which is a shame because I repeat, the plot is great, in fact, I would say this game features one of the most potentially good stories in a long time, the main twists at the middle of the game is great, or, I would have been great if it were developed enough.

But there is more, the story is also marred by some poorly executed Full Motion Videos (or not executed at all). Their quality is extremely high, but most of them are way too short and sometimes completely irrelevant, the video sequences are usually great, but they feel like unfinished or end too abruptly.

The story usually involves grand scale battles and mass destruction, but we just see a small image on the screen of a PC or someone explaining that something happened somewhere, instead of a video showing a city being destroyed we just see our space ship taking off or things like that, and what is worst, we only participate in one of these battles, and with pretty laughable results I may add.

At the beginning there is so much story and it is so cool that it feels like you are playing a Metal Gear game, there are loads and loads of cut scenes and hardly a couple of minutes of gameplay, but right when we land into the second planet the game goes downhill till the end.

The cast of characters is heavily wasted too, except for two or three the rest of them are merely decorative, they hardly ever talk or do anything, you could say there are only four characters in the whole game. And the same about the enemies, there is an evil race called Vendeeni who looks great, the problem is that they hardly do anything during the game.

The putrid and painfully annoying dungeons are the last issue when it comes to story, sometimes you`ll spend so much time in them that you`ll forget what was the story about, but more on that later.

Graphics 9/10:
The graphics are great, but again, no one is aware of their potential. There a nice bunch beautiful towns, but everything else is extremely lame, specially the dungeons, you`ll get tired of them in no time because they are nothing but endlessly monotonous corridors without any interest at all, usually once you have seen the first room of a dungeon there is nothing else to see.

The characters designs, even if some of the girls have very odd faces (Sofia and Mirage for example, they remind me of ducks), are very good, not only you can tell their expressions by the look on their faces, their body language is pretty cool too. They are probably the best part of the game, even if most of them are not developed enough.

The CG sequences are awesome, but like I said before they are way too short, nothing like the ones from a Final Fantasy, here ten seconds max.

Music 6/10:
Well, most of the towns have very nice themes, but that is as far as it gets, everything else is so uninspired and sometimes annoying that you`ll want to turn off the volume.

There is a couple of songs too, but neither of them are specially noteworthy, in fact, and to make matters worse, the second one is a horrible hip-hop song that plays not one, not two, not three but four times!

Something really stupid and extremely annoying is the sound of our footsteps, not only they interfere with the music, they are so horrendously loud in most dungeons and some areas that they are going to make you lose your temper very easily.

The voice acting is mostly very good, and sometimes excellent, there is a couple of overacted and annoying voices here and there, but nothing really important.

Gameplay 6/10:
I repeat, to me one of the biggest problems are those horribly annoying dungeons, they are painfully long and atrociously monotonous, and sometimes it is easy to get lost without knowing what to do. They remind me of Ephemeral Fantasia`s infamous dungeons, I mean, they are not nearly as tedious and obscenely long and hard, but almost. And I specially dislike are some of the camera angles, most of the time we play using some kind of 3/4 view, but there are a lot areas where we have to play using a very ugly semi-third person view, I hate those parts.

Now, they affect the pace of the game, and A LOT, but this isn`t the only reason why the gameplay blows, as I said before once we land into the second planet the game basically ends, everything is so insipid and so uninteresting, you`ll ask yourself ``why am I playing this?.

Since I haven`t played Star Ocean: The Second Story (yet), all I can say is that the battle system is a huge improvement over the first Star Ocean, it is still messy when we first start playing, but it gets better and better with time, this time we can easily move our characters around the battleground and switch between them whenever we want. It isn`t flawless though, but that is only because of the ``external features``, the battle system itself is excellent, this is the type of battle system Tales of Symponia should have had.

Not surprisingly, the magic spells are uninspired, only that this time they are uninspired even for a new generation rpg, and that sure means they are uninspired. There are very few spells also, about ten I would say, and neither of them are new or remotely original or even useful. Fortunately the special techniques are much cooler and very useful.

In the bloody disappointing Tales of Symphonia (I know I am the only one who thinks this, don`t worry) giving orders to the party members was extremely easy and useful, this is certainly not the case with Star Ocean III. Instead of useful orders like ``heal only`` or ``keep your distance`` or ``run like hell from that boss because he is a freaking bastard and I`ve run out of Fresh Sages for God`s sake!``, we only have things like ``attack with all your might`` or ``don`t do anything``, which are completely useless, so better have loads of Fresh Sages for your party members, you`ll need them.

The guild and item creation system is extremely bland and pretty much useless, I don`t know how this system worked in the second Star Ocean, but I found this feature boring and unnecessary.

A world map would have been nice too, it is really annoying when you have to wander around those big areas looking for the right direction, I got lost a lot.

One last thing that is beyond me is the reason why this game comes in two DVDs, because Star Ocean III isn`t nearly as big and varied as it should be, which very well could be the most fatal flaw together with those damn dungeons. You could say there are five planets in the whole game, and you will spend at least 70% of the time in two of them, and we have to revisit a lot of places many times.

Replay Value:
There is a place similar to Final Fantasy VII`s Gold Saucer where you can play several mini games. Nothing to get exited about though, except for the usual Coliseum most rpgs have, where we can fight to obtain special objects and stuff.

The PAL version is also the Director`s Cut version, which includes new enemies, items, cut-scenes, dungeons, spells and even new characters, which means the first version of the game was even more lackluster and uninspired, go figure.

As a Result:
Star Ocean: Till The End of Time is not a good game, and I didn`t liked it, but I can`t say I didn`t enjoyed it, it is hard to explain but, hey!, I spent about sixty hours playing, yes, 60 hours, that`s got to mean something, right?, I mean, if you spend so much time playing something you don`t really, well, there`s got to be something else, I guess.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/01/05