Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

"Beautiful game with minor flaws."

Before Star Ocean came out, I hadn't played a lot of RPGs. Kingdom Hearts was my favourite because of the Real Time Battle System. It was just better than turn-based. One day I looked up release dates for up-coming RPGs and found Star Ocean:Till the End of Time with the release date of August 31, 2004. I watched a trailer someone had made, got immediately hyped up about the game and earned enough money to buy it the day it came out, along with the guide. I was not disappointed. This game was near perfect in my standards.

Story 8/10

Okay, the story starts off very well, I though. You're Fayt, an ordinary college boy who's on a vacation with his family and friend, Sophia, on Hyda IV. You get to explore the hotel which is pretty neat, and afterwards, you go to a battle simulator where you are taught the basics of how to fight. Afterwards, suddenly, a race called the Vendeeni attack Hyda and Fayt and Sophia escape to the Evacuation Facility, and are separated from Fayt's parents.

You spend a good 20-30 minutes moving along a few ships as you learn more about the attack. The Escape Shuttle becomes under attack by the Vendeeni and Fayt is forced into an Escape Pod. He lands on Vanguard III. The story goes on from there but I personally think it worsens until half way through the game.

The story gets points docked off because I was expecting a cool Sci-Fi RPG that started out just like I imagined but the game quickly turns towards Medieval. The first half of the game seems like one long sidequest as it doesn't really do much for the actual story. You tend to forget about what is actually going on. There is also a major plot-twist, which I won't spoil. The only thing I'll say is, you either like it or hate it.

The story doesn't get back on track until disk 2 and many of the characters don't join until late in the game, which is annoying.

Music/Sound 9/10

The music tracks in this game were amazing. Very well-done. The voice-acting was bad either, but they were seriously too quiet. In half the cutscenes, you could barely hear what the characters were saying over the loud music. The music was good, but they could have lowered it for cutscenes.

The voice-acting was good, but there were long pauses in between character's lines, making the conversation feel less like it was real.

Gameplay 10/10

Simply put, Star Ocean has the best battle system I have ever played for an RPG. It is well developed and fast paced and it rarely gets boring. You can change who you control simply by pressing L1 or R1 and there are two types of attacks. Strong attacks and Weak attacks. Basically, weak attacks are quicker to produce but generally do less damage and can be guarded against if your target has 100% fury. Strong attacks take longer to come out but are more damaging and break through enemy guard.

Fury is like your character's energy. As you use attacks and Battle Skills, you use up fury and when you have low fury, you can't use attacks. To recover fury, you simply stay put and wait for it to replenish. If you have 100%, you can guard against weak attacks and can emit a AAA(Anti-Attack Aura) if you turn it on.

Battles are fast and while story bosses are a bit too easy, post-game bosses could possibly be the hardest RPG bosses in an RPG game yet. The game has a lot of challenge in it and I doubt anyone's going to breeze through post-game and complain about it being too easy.

By pressing triangle during battle, you can access the battle menu where you can use items, cast symbology, escape from the battle, etc. The game pauses while you're in this menu.

As your characters level up, they learn new battle skills and symbology (spells) which can be assigned to Short X, Short O, Long X, or Long O. Basically, there is a range factor in this game. Depending how far you are from the targeted enemy, you use different attacks. Some attacks are more useful than others so this brings out more strategy. Most Battle Skills consume HP while Symbology consumes MP. And unlike most RPGs, your characters can die if they run out of MP!

The last thing about the battle system was the Bonus Battle Gauge (BBG). As you attack enemies, you'll notice a bar on the top-right part of the screen with a percentage beside it. As long as the percentage is above 0%, the gauge will increase with each hit you make on the enemy. Depending what kind of attack you use to fill the gauge, you'll get a different bonus. There are four in all. Most people like the Triple Experience bonus while I prefer the Double Fol. (Fol is the currency).

The battle system was very well done. Fast paced, challenging, and fun, it will take a while to get bored of it. And there are no random encounters. You trigger battles by running into enemies on the field so if you don't want to get into battles, you don't have to!

Throughout the game, there are scenes that you can view that allow you to interact with fellow party members. Depending how you act in these events, you can make your party members like you more or like you less. These events are called Private Actions, or PAs. These affect what kind of ending you get at the end of the game. There is a total of 11 different endings in this game but don't worry, you don't have to play through the game 11 times to view all of the endings. There are ways to view multiple endings in one play through but I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

Graphics 8/10

I thought the graphics were fairly well done. They weren't spectacular but they were eye-catching none the less. Many of the characters have large eyes (Sophia comes to mind), so some may find the characters to look goofy. I don't mind the large eyes, myself. The characters all seem to have different hair colours, making the cast quite colourful.

There are some strange errors like Fayt's head going through open chests, but those are only minor and don't really affect the graphics.

Difficulty 10/10

This game has four modes. The hardest mode, provides such a challenge that you'll want to avoid all encounters. Since this game doesn't have random encounters, you can simply dodge all battles in a dungeon. However, those who tend to do this find themselves in big trouble for boss fights and the game over system is not very friendly. If you get a game over, you load from where you last saved, without anything you had before dieing.

To make things worse, you can only carry 20 of each item. This stops you from having 99 of each item and making the game too easy. With the small limit of 20, you need to use recovery items sparingly on difficult boss fights.

Replayability 10/10

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time offers a very unique side-quest that can take well over 300 hours to complete it all. There are 300 Battle Trophies and if you do something well in a battle, you can be awarded with a battle trophy. Many of these involve defeating bosses within a minute or taking no damage in a boss fight. It takes at least 3 play-throughs to get all 300 BTs so there will always be something for you to do.

There are also 4 difficulty modes. Two of them you can unlock upon obtaining a certain amount of BTs. You start out with Earth Mode (Easy) and Galaxy Mode (Normal). You can't collect BTs on Earth so Galaxy is recommended for a first play through. Universe Mode (Hard) is unlocked and so is 4D Mode (Insane).

There also happen to be 4 bonus dungeons in this game. One of which has 211 floors. This dungeon will take a while to complete so you won't be completing this game very quickly like all of the other RPGs.

This game also offers a Versus Mode. This allows you to fight against a friend. Verus Mode is great fun and you start out with the first 6 characters and unlock the other 4 throughout the game. With this multiplayer mode, you'll be playing this game for an even longer time!

Overall Score 9/10

I have yet to play a perfect RPG that deserves a 10. This game is the closest to perfect that I have played yet. I'd definitely rent the game first as this game is one of those that you either love it, or hate it. If you're a Kingdom Hearts fan then you could just skip the rental and just buy it. It's only 20$ now.

So what made this game not perfect? Well, I would have preferred to have a 4 person battle party with the ability to play co-op up to 4 players. This was the only thing that I wished this game had and if it did have co-op, this game would have earned a 10.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/05