"Worth a shot, at the least"

Blue Sphere is a good, enjoyable, solid little game, but it doesn't touch its predecessors in the series.

The plot is simple: Ernest and Opera crash on some random planet, and the rest of the crew, sans Claude and Rena, try and find them. Standard ''going from point A to point B via points Q through 97.F'' storyline.

All the Star Ocean 2 characters show up again, although they suffer from ''RPG Sequel we-forgot-all-our-moves'' syndrome. They give an explanation for what everyone has been up to; a risky move. A lot of the fun of Star Ocean 2 was goofing around with pairing people up, and there being no set match ups or results, only suggested ones. This game, however, sets the ending to the previous game in stone. This can be both good and bad, depending on whether or not you like what has happened now that tri-Ace has closed the open-ended possibilities of what happened to everyone.

Battle has changed. It's now more like Tales of Phantasia with the inability to surround your opponent, but it's still enjoyable. No more random battles. You can see your enemies and try to make maneuvers around them, except with the ants that always sneak up on you.

So, no one can remember the incredible moves they used to have. Oh well. They can be regained through item creation or by using the move a lot. Sometimes executing one move over and over results in a new move being learned, and subsequently performed. The game follows Star Ocean in that regard more than Star Ocean 2.

There's more environment interaction this time around, which means that there is some at all. Jump, push, pull, gather herbs, light things on fire, all that fun stuff and more. Each character has some unique skills that they perform, meaning some forced party compositions to get through certain areas.

You only get money from chests and selling stuff. Don't worry, though--just teach someone how to cook and start selling high-quality meat products. Cash winds up not really being an issue, so long as you can buy meat and have the patience to flip it 32 or however many times for each chunk of meat. That's one of the new things in the game--you create an item by playing a mini-game instead of pushing a button and praying. It gives you, in some cases, exact control over what item you want, although it takes longer. Spending the extra time is mostly worth it, in my book.

Skills are basically the same, with one cosmetic and two key differences: Everyone has a graph that visually represents where their skill strengths and weaknesses are, new skills are learned on your own through leveling up lower-level skills, and everyone shares the same SP pot. The best part is that last detail--there are a dozen characters in this game, and with only three to a party, certain characters can easily be ignored for hours and hours on end. The solution? Keep a pile of SP free for the poor ignored li'l guy or girl to use when he/she is needed. You can power someone up in reserve without ever having them fight. Since party-member swapping happens fairly often, this feature is critical to keeping the fun coming, without worrying about hanging back in a weak area to power up someone before moving on with the plot.

The music is good. Not great, but nothing you'll wince at.

All in all good, clean fun, but not as good as the first two in the series, and I can't stand it how they cemented the ending to Star Ocean 2. I'd like to compare these games to the ''Alien'' movie series: Alien and Aliens (SO and SO2) are incredible movies with few worthy peers. Alien 3 (Blue Sphere) is a decent movie in its own right, but the things it does concerning the plot and characters of the previous two movies makes you want to pretend that it never happened.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/31/03