"One of my all time favorites"

I remember when I first played this game about 6 or 7 years ago. I was hooked like it was crack. I played the heck out of this game and spend over 100 hours getting all the items and killing all the enemies. This game is definitely in my top 10 favorite games of all time list. If you like rpgs at all then this game is definitely for you.

Story: 10/10

I loved the story to this game, and I thought it had some of the best characters ever. First of all you get the choice between a male and female character. The male is Claude and is the son of Ronixis who was the hero in the previous Star Ocean game. He comes from Earth and he is an ensign on his fathers space ship. You can also choose to control Rena who is a magical orphaned girl who lives in a small village on the planet of Expel. Regardless of who you pick you will still get the other as a playable character. These two fates intertwined in a very excellent well told story. There are plenty of characters to meet and all kinds of hidden scenes and dialogue. There are these things called private actions. Basically you and your group will split up in a town and you can go around talking to each of them individually. This is a great way to get to know all of the characters and is just plain fun to toy around with. You can see some pretty interesting conversations. There are also a whole bunch of different endings and you can make the characters fall in love with each other. Its pretty awesome and I really think Square-Enix needs to do this with all of their Star Ocean titles.

Graphics: 9/10

The graphics are excellent. The backgrounds and environments are some of the best you will see on a playstation rpg. There is all kinds of colors and they just look very lush and detailed. The character sprites are kinda goofy looking, but they are tolerable. The battle graphics are pretty good, and have some very nice looking spells. All in all I really loved the graphics in this game and I couldn't picture them any other way.

Gameplay: 10/10

Wow this game is really fun to play. The battles are very sweet, because you can choose between standard combat, or real time. I suggest real time, because it simply is a blast to play. You can choose have up to 4 characters in battle and you control one of them. The computer controls the rest according to what type of tactis you have them follow. The computer usually does a good job of doing what you want. However some of the spellcasters will cast some pointless spells some times. This can be easily fixed by turning off the spells you don't want them to cast. You will learn all sorts of special abilities that you can use n combat. Also there are some very hard enemies and at the end there is a secret cave you can find that has all sorts of goodies in it. You will be about level 75-80 when you reach the final boss just to find out you can go to this secret cave and level your characters up into the 100s+. Its simply amazing how well you can develop your characters for battle. Outside of battles is just as fun as battling. You can do all sorts of stuff and make an insane amount of items. Here are some of the examples of stuff your characters can do: Cook, blacksmith, alchemy, art, pickpocket, have an orchestra with all characters having their own special instrument, play all sorts of sweet minigames. This merely names a portion of what you can do. Really you could spend hours just making all sorts of interesting items on your menu screen. I know because i have done it. There is simply alot of things to do. I never once got bored while playing this game. The gameplay is awesome!!

Sound: 9/10

The music to this game is excellent. There are alot of memorable tracks that I can think of and they are simply a pleasure to listen to. The only problem I have with the sound is the characters will shout some strange things out during battle. Its not too bad and you will get used to it. Sometimes you will just laugh to yourself over the cheesiness of it.

Control: 10/10

No problems here at all, you press a button in battle and your character will automatically run towards the nearest enemy. When out of battle you will also have no problems, because thankfully Enix is smart and doesn't take out the run button. *ahem Suikoden*(sorry your still one of favorites)

Replay: 10/10

I have played this game over many times, and its one of the few I can stand to play after 2 play throughs. Few games have caught my attention like this one has and I still have many years of enjoyment to get out of it. I pull it out usually every couple years to beat it again.

Overall 10/10

This game is very close to perfection in my eyes. If you haven't played this game before by some horrible mistake pick it up on ebay. I doubht you will pay over 30 bucks for it and its worth every last penny. Buy it now and achieve rpg nirvana.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/06