Star Ocean The Second Story was consider to be the best rpg game for the Playstation console in this reviewer personal opinion as well as some other rpg fans out there. So it's no wonder that in the year 2004, the most eagerly anticipated rpg game for the Playstation 2 was Star Ocean Till the End of Time Director Cut. Spanning over 2 game discs with new added features that were never featured in the game when it was originally first released in Japan, North American fans had a chance to experience a full version of what the game was fully meant to be. We can now humbly conclude that this game does not disappoint in any way whatsoever. Till The End of Time continues to carry the Star Ocean tradition of outstanding gameplay with a long epic adventure that most rpg game no longer carry. It's safe to say that we can now dubbed Star Ocean Till the End of Time, 2004 rpg of the year.
STORY
Death..it's all part of the game.
Welcome to my Matrix!
In the year SD 772, Fayt and his friend, Sophia, were vacationing on Hyda IV when that planet suddenly became under an invasion from the Vendeeni Empire. With the evacuation signal given to all residents of Hyda IV underway, Fayt took an escape pod and landed on a planet known as Vanguard III. Here, he waited for a rescue ship while being separated from his parents and Sophia during the escape of Hyda IV. After awhile helped arrived in the name of Cliff Fittir. Cliff is a member of Quark, an anti-Federation group. Cliff job isn't so much as to rescue Fayt but to bring him to Quark leader so he/she can have a word with him. No more details were given to Fayt after that. During the trip to Quark HQ, Cliff's ship came under attack by the Vendeeni forces too. Taking heavy fire from the Vendeeni, the ship crash landed on the planet known as Elicoor II. The duo soon learned that their ship was a total loss in the crash and must wait for rescue from the rest of Quark organization. And to top things off, Elicoor II seem to be right in the middle of a war between the two kingdoms of Airyglyph and Aquaria. They however befriended one of the Aquarian warriors by the name of Nel. Nel enlisted the aid of Cliff and Fayt by having them help build a powerful runology weapon that can crush the Airyglyph armies. During the initial battle between Airyglyph and Aquaria, the Vendeeni appeared and wiped out both armies with their advance space weapons. It soon became evident to Fayt that the Vendeeni was after him. Under this stress of revelation, Fayt displayed some awesome powers that eliminated the Vendeeni ship. As dawn came, Quark rescue ship arrived to finally deliver help and the leader of Quark, Maria. Maria soon explain to Fayt that Fayt like her had secretly been used as test subjects to have their genes alter to be able to possess some awesome unique powers by Fayt father. Why this was done to them is unknown but Maria likes to help Fayt find and rescue his father from the Vendeeni in hopes of having him answer that exact question. Their long journey to discovering the truth behind their powers are about to begin.
At first if you look at the story, it seem interesting enough. The revelation that Fayt possess some awesome power and that there's an evil that threaten the universe. But then about half way into the game or beginning of the second disc, the story sort of take a U-turn and went in a different direction. A Matrix direction if you will. I suppose this is sort of the plot twist that the director likes to provide for us. In a sense the plot twist isn't so bad just that it wasn't delivered very well. The whole Matrix revelation actually made the whole story more confusing and less sense than actually help make the story more interesting. It started out as Fayt and Maria having special powers and the reasons why this was done to them to the whole idea becoming pointless. Other than the introduction of their special powers and the reason behind it, there was no more further plot development there because the story went in a different direction. Look at it this way, someone was writing a story then all of a sudden during half way into the story decided to change their mind about the story and decided to write a different one. Then they try to blend the two different stories into one. Well the end result here wasn't very good. The Matrix idea was good as you saw in the Matrix movies but you need it to be more thought out than what was done here. The Matrix plot in this game pretty much killed the whole point of the first half of this story. It also doesn't help that there's no clear cut bad guy introduce in this story. In most cases, you have a clear cut rpg bad guy that you need to find and beat up by the time you get to the end of the game. Well in this game, you don't really see the so called end game bad guy till you actually have to fight him at the very end. But by then, it seem like the bad guy was just thrown in the end of the story just for the sake of having a end game story boss to fight and beat up to finish the story off. The story could've been great, but really became too confusing and too big for its own good by the end of it all. The ending of the story didn't make much sense to me as well. Either that or that I just didn't plain buy the ending that they gave us, the gamers.
Score 8/10
CHARACTERS
Together we shall save the universe.
There are a total of ten key characters featured in this game. Out of the ten key characters, the story really mainly focuses on six characters. The other four characters involvements in the game have little effect to the overall storyline. The six characters that seem to have a purpose in the story are Fayt, Cliff, Maria, Sophia, Mirage, and Nel. Abel, Adray, Roger, and Peppita don't really add much value to the story other than providing small guest roles and filling in the slots for extra party members. Most of the background development goes to the characters of Fayt, Sophia, and Maria. There are some small bits of attention to Nel and Cliff. The rest really don't have any background character development to them at all. You get maybe a brief few sentences on what they do for a living but that's about it. This is kind of disappointing that with a cast of ten characters, only three of them are fully developed characters within the story. Another drawback is that the game might be stretching a bit by having ten characters since as stated earlier; four of them have no purpose in it at all or seem to be added into the mix for no reasonable reason. Peppita was introduced for a brief moment into the story but then she disappeared for the most part and then re-introduced in the later chapters of the story. At that point if the gamer decided to re-add her into the mix of characters, it wouldn't make much sense at all in terms of the overall presentation of the story because she's been out of the loop for so long. Adray and Roger seem to be added into the story for the sole purpose of comedy relief maybe. They rarely have any involvement in term of story segments after their initial introduction into the party. Abel who started out as a villain became a party member half way into the game. This seemed to be more of a forced entry into the party in hopes of adding or having at least one so called cool party member in your party. Abel involvement in the story didn't seem to make much sense after his initial defeat as a villain. Character wise, Abel should have been left off as a villain then being forced fed to us as a new party member. Sometimes it's good to have lots of characters while other times having too many characters can lead to having some pointless characters in the game. This is more to the latter. Fayt doesn't come off as a true hero that gamers can relate to. Sophia ends up more as an annoyance then someone you cared about. Cliff and Nel are probably the more decent and realistic characters in the game. Maria introduction was ok but her reasoning in becoming the leader of Quark or her being as Quark leader doesn't make much sense. One minute she was just a kid as a member working for Quark then next minute she helped save the people on her ship by displaying some sort of strange power that she has no idea about and then she is appointed as leader of Quark because of that. Not a very realistic approached. It takes more than simply saving some people by accidental means to be a true leader. The cast of characters overall is decent but nothing too spectacular. And no one outstanding character that stand above the rest for gamers to care about or really relate to.
Score: 8/10
GRAPHICS
I'm so beautiful, I'm gonna faint.
For such a deep epic rpg game, Star Ocean kind of disappoint in the visual department. It's not really bad in terms of graphics but for such a heavily highly popular and expected rpg game, you sort of expect the graphics to be on par with other heavily popular rpg games like the Xenosaga series and the Final Fantasy series. First the CGI cut scenes are mostly limited to visual spaceship segments as oppose to character story segments or key story event segments. The CGI are good mind you, just that you expect to see more than just a spaceship flying out of the CGI segments. The environmental backgrounds such as buildings, houses, trees, and other things look good with nice rich details. But due to the way the camera angle is worked into this game, you don't really notice just how good the surrounding environment can be. But the most disappointing is the approach used for character model designs. Instead of a more realistic look for the characters which you sort of expect from such an epic rpg game, you have a more anime style look with the big eyes and small noises. The character designs also lack rich details on them, especially their faces. The character models look just too plain sometimes. They sort of look out of place in this game, especially with an environment that look more realistic than them. The graphic is more on par with other rpg games as oppose to a game that's suppose to be one of the best rpg game for the Playstation 2.
Score: 8/10
MUSIC
Is that a music device?
Music is top notch in this game. It's really a mix bag of everything. You have the basic themes of each score from character musical scores to battle musical scores. What makes the audio a treat is that there are different types of sound used. This is most noticeable in the battle musical scores. While normal battles seem to carry the usual rpg battle music, the boss battles however are compose of two mix bags. A more opera/beehoven musical type of score and a more hip hop rap musical score. Each one getting you into a groove of a boss fight making the fight more enjoyable. During the story segments that take place in space, you have a more futuristic theme playing in the background which fits the atmosphere nicely. During your journey on land as well as other more emotional story segments, the musical themes help define the right mood for the moment in the story. Despite the music being top notch, the game has a problem on deciding when the volume of the music should be pumped up and when it should just play quietly in the background. This is key evident in some of the story segments where the musical background while good as it is, is actually playing too loud and over the voices of the characters which in turn makes it hard for you to hear what the characters are saying. On the other hand, during boss fights, the excellent music that is playing behind the background isn't loud enough as you want it to be. The game just has a problem deciding when the right time to have the music loud over everything else and when it should play softly and quietly in the background. This is probably the first rpg to actually use a rap tune as part of it's boss fights and it's actually very good.
Score: 9/10
GAMEPLAY
I summon Meteor Swarm!!!
Ethereal Blast!!
Game Information
Genre: Action/Traditional Rpg
Publisher: SquareEnix
Disc:2 DVD Discs
Memory:175 KB
Players: 1-2 Players Mode
Analog Control:Yes
Vibration Function:Yes
Digital Control:Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: August 2004
On the surface, Star Ocean Till the End of Time looks like a vast game with a complicated game system but in reality it's really not as complicated as one would think. It is however a vast game but the game system is pretty much set up like those of a traditional rpg game but in this case a traditional rpg element but with an improve Star Ocean game system. If you've played Star Ocean The Second Story then you shouldn't have any problems picking up where things left off. You'll probably only need to understand the learning curve of the new and improve Item Creation feature in this game. For the most part the game system is pretty straight forward. You basically progress the story along by talking to party members and NPCs. They in turn will tell you where to go next whether it is another town or another dungeon. You can stock up on supplies and new equipment in towns before you head out. Exploring dungeons is basically just working it through like a maze. At the end of the dungeon you'll fight the usual bosses there. Like with other rpgs, dungeons have treasure chests scattered around so you can loot them at your own leisure. Enemy encounters aren't base on random system since you can see the monsters roaming about. You get into battles if you run into them or they run into you. All of these things mention above you've seen before from other rpgs. The battle system is a more improve version of the previous Star Ocean battle system. But it still works pretty much the same way. Instead of a four party sytem you have a three party system instead. This is an action rpg game but not just your basic hack and slash party system. It's a bit more complicated than that with party members, many battle skills, and magic. You basically get to control only one party member while the CPU controls the other party members. However you're allowed a bit more flexibility on how you want the CPU to control the other party members. You can allow or disallow what magic or battle skills you want the CPU to used. You can also assign what sort of tactics you want the CPU to use whether it is just stand back and concentrate on healing and curing party members or going all out on the enemies. Of course the flexibility of being able to switch and manually control other party members during a heated battle is also there for you to use making the battle system a lot more flexible than most other rpgs that are an action rpg with party members. The none battle gameplay is your basic traditional rpg one while the battle system is your action rpg elements. Now we'll go into a bit more detail on what some of the new unique features are in the game.
Private Actions:This is a returning feature that was introduce in the previous Star Ocean game. The concept behind private action is basically short story scenes between the main hero, Fayt, and his party members. Each scene with each party member is different and in most cases the scenes will have you choose to give a reply from a selection of replies that are made available to you as you interact with a particular party member. How you reply will affect your relationship rating with that particular member. This in turn will affect what kind of ending you get since this game has multiple endings base on the relationship rating between Fayt and whomever that has the strongest rating with him. In short, private action is a way to boost or lower a party member relationship rating with Fayt so you can manipulate what ending he gets with what party member you like to have him coupled with. HP/MP: Now normally this wouldn't be mention here at all but this game has a unique way or choice on how you want to defeat the enemies in this game. Unlike most rpg game where you kill an enemy by knocking their HP to zero, in this game you have a choice of killing an enemy by knocking their HP or their MP to zero. In other words the game gives you two separate way of killing an enemy.
Now this also works on you as well. Your party members can die either by having their HP or MP reaching zero. This is a unique strategic way of allowing gamers to decide whether it's best to kill a tough boss by HP death or by MP death. Fury: In this game you have a fury gauge. The concept of this fury gauge is fairly simple; every single action you take in battle will consume a certain amount of fury. If your fury gauge is at zero then you can't do anything. What this translate to is that whatever action you decide to take, whether it is to use a battle skill, casting magic, or just doing a normal attack, you have to make sure you have enough fury on your fury gauge to be able to carry off such an action. Your fury gauge automatically start to refill itself if you just stand still and do nothing. Weak, Strong, Guard Attacks:Interestingly enough, regular attacks aren't base on just simple hack and slash moves. In this game there is a three way relationship between regular attacks. You have weak attacks which are assigned to the cross button and you have strong attack which are assigned to the circle button. The third attack is your guarding attack which is basically a party member standing still having with their fury gauge full. Weak attacks are fast and do less damage but cannot break a guard attack. Guard attack works when someone decide to use a weak attack on a player that is guarding. An anti-attack aura will be set off by the person that is guarding against the person that is performing the weak attack. The effects of the anti-attack aura will vary from stunning the attacker to doing damage back to the attacker. Strong attacks are very slow attack but does a lot of damage and can break guarding attacks. So in concept, strong defeat guard, guard defeat weak, and weak defeat strong. Understanding the three way relationship will determine how you will approach an enemy and deciding what attacks will be used to counter against the attacks they are using against you. Battle Skills: Battle skills are your special attack moves of your fighters. Each fighter will have their own set of battle skills that they will learn as they level up and through using an item. The catch however is that despite the fact that they may learn a lot of battle skills; they won't be able to equip and use them all. Each party member has a total of 15 capacity points. Each battle skill will require a set number of capacity points that are needed to be available in order to be able to equip that battle skill. With only 15 total capacity points available, you have to decide and choose carefully on which battle skills you like to have equipped. The more you use a particular battle skill, the more chance of it leveling up. Symbology:This is just another term for magic. With the exception of your two main pure magic users, symbology can only be learned by the other fighters through the use of an item. The more time you use a particular symbology, the more chance of it being leveled up. Bonus Battles:Bonus battles are battles that provide unique bonuses at the end of the battle that you don't normally get from regular battles. There are four types of unique bonuses that a bonus battle can provide. They are triple experience, double fol (money), better chance of receiving an item, and higher auto recovery rate after a battle. At the start of a regular battle you would have a bonus gauge at the right side of the screen. Each chain of hits of attack on an enemy raises the bonus gauge. Once the bonus gauge is full, you enter a bonus battle. Bonus battles will last as long as your character doesn't die or doesn't have his/her guard broken against. Battle Trophies: There are 300 battle trophies in the game. Each battle trophies are a set condition that you can achieve or try to achieve during a battle. There are seven different set number of battle trophies that you can try and achieve. Each set number of battle trophies will unlock special features in the game like different costumes for your party members, different difficulty modes for the game, and a music mode. Item Creation: In a strange sense, Item Creation is the heart of this gameplay. To be able to pretty much create, refine, and combine almost anything in this game is what makes Item Creation so addictive. Since Item Creation is so huge, we won't be able to go over it in full details here as you have to play the game to understand its full grasp. We'll try and break down the concept of Item Creation. Item Creation is broken down to pretty much three main categories, Original Creation, Specify Plan, and Synthesis. Original Creation is pretty much what it is, the ability to create anything in the game as an original creation. Once you make an original creation, you can submit it to the Guild to have them submit it to stores for sale. You can then buy the stuff you created later on from the stores for usage on your journey. In fact this is the best way to approach things as the stores won't sell all the things you want it to sell until you actually invented the item through Item Creation. Specify Plan is actually improving the stats of an item that you created. Let's say you created an armor that gives 20+ defenses. We can then use specify plan and double the defense of that armor with another 20+ defenses. This is a great way of powering up an equipment, food, or battle item. Synthesis is basically combining an item to your weapon. In most cases an item, armor, accessory will have a factor, a special attribute, attach to it. When you synthesized an item to your weapon, you are basically stealing that factor so it can be attach to your weapon but in the process destroying that item. This is a great way in creating a very powerful weapon with various different attributes attached to it. As you can see for yourself, by understanding how Item Creation works, you can literally create a powerful fighter by pumping up their armor or weapon they are using. In fact the game almost requires you to dig deeper into Item Creation to create power weapons and armors to complete this game. By the end of it all, it's just fun to be able to create and refine any items of your choice.
In terms of sheer gameplay grading, this is by far the best gameplay for any rpg game for the Playstation 2. Well the best so far as this review is currently being written as who knows what new rpgs may have to offer that is yet to come. There are two factors that make this gameplay great. The first factor is that the battle system is a fun and fast pace system where you need to actually get involve in the action as oppose to just pushing a button in a turn base system. You literally are running around in a 3-D fighting ground, attacking various targets with your battle skills and magic. Nothing is more fun then doing massive damage by combining battle skills with battle skills. Add in the battle skills of your other party member and magic raining down on the enemies from the other one too, it's just cool to watch those hit combo rate rising and doing up to 9999 damage on the enemies from all three party members. It's just fun and fast pace. Not some simple hack and slash action. The second reason that makes this gameplay so enjoyable is its use of customization. Item Creation is one of the most addictive things to be messing around with once you get the hang of using Item Creation. The idea of being able to literally create, improve, and combine almost anything in this game is like a dream come true for gamers who like to build ultimate weapons, armors, ect. Item Creation is sort of a like a crafting hobby that gamers can't seem to put down once they really get into it. A third factor that can be added is the peer fact that this is really a long game once you combine everything together. In today's world, most rpg game offer about 40 hours of gameplay time. This game will offer you well over 100 hours of pure gameplay time. That's getting your money worth right there. The driving force in you wanting to play this game for hours and hours during the morning, afternoon, evenings, and late nights is the gameplay. And if gameplay is outstanding then the overall game will be outstanding too.
Score: 10/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
I want a sequel to Valkyrie Profile now!
This game alone offers over 40+ hours of extra gameplay time which is pretty much equal to the normal gameplay time of most regular rpg games today. This game offers a balance of everything in terms of extras. What you will find in this game are small side quests, mini games, battle tournaments, bonus dungeons, a Versus mode, and even different difficulty game levels with multiple endings. Let's break down the extras first. Surprisingly in this huge game, there's very little in actual side quests events. Most of these very small side quests are done through Private Action sequences and only purpose really is to unlock and gain some small cool items for your party members but nothing that you can't get later on in the game. Mini games too are limited to about two mini games, well three mini games if you include the battle tournaments as part of the mini games since it's located in the same area as the other two mini games. The concept of the mini games is pretty straight forward. Play them to win cool prizes. The battle tournaments is where the heart of the mini games is since it's broken up into various categories with each category offering different prizes. However completing all the battle tournaments will take quite some time due to the various difficulty levels and it will require you to have your characters at a very high level to reach the top. The heart of the extras of course is the bonus dungeons and the various cool extra bosses that can be hand by exploring those dungeons. There are a total of four bonus dungeons. One of the bonus dungeons you can access during the game while the other three dungeons you can only access after completing the game and loading up your clear game data. The three bonus dungeons that you have access to after completing the game are pretty huge and contains very difficult bosses. These dungeons also allow you to obtain the best weapons for your characters. You be spending a lot of gameplay time on these bonus dungeons. One of the dungeons is called Sphere 211 and requires you to travel 111 floors to reach the top. Climbing 111 floors isn't going to be done in a few hours, especially when you have to go back and use Item Creation to boost all the items you find in there. Finding unique and interesting bosses to fight are also one of the interesting things about these bonus dungeons. Versus Battle Mode game can be unlock by obtaining a key item from one of the bonus dungeon. The concept of the Versus Battle Mode is you can play in 1P VS CPU, 1P VS 2P, 1P VS 2P VS CPU, and 1P VS CPU VS CPU in a combat battle arena fighting style. It's just a fun little activity you can try outside of the actual game itself. You don't really get anything from playing Versus Battle Mode though other than just fun.
The draw in replaying the game again is the fact that game does have various multiple endings base on the relationship that Fayt has with his comrades in battle. There's also the draw that since you won't be able to recruit all the characters at the same time in one game, you can try and pick up the other characters that you couldn't recruit in your first game to try them out on your second game. Finally if you're really good at collecting Battle Trophies, you should be able to unlock two more difficulty levels to choose to play in, giving you a more challenging game the second or third time around.
On the surface the extras don't seem like much but when you start trying them out, especially the bonus dungeons, you'll soon find out there's a lot more to it than previously thought and you'll be immense in hours and hours of extra gameplay time.
Score: 10/10
Don't let the final score fool you. This game is a better than what the final score indicates. Granted that the story and characters in the game could have been better which hurt the final score but the greatness of Star Ocean Till the End of Time comes from the massive size of its gameplay. As of up to this date, no other Playstation 2 rpg game can come close to what Star Ocean can provide in terms of time spent and addictiveness to a game. The driving force behind why Star Ocean Till the End of Time is 2004 rpg of the year and probably in the top five best rpg for the Playstation 2 is it's gameplay and long epic quest. If you're looking for a massive rpg game that you can sink your teeth into than you need to pick up this game. This is an rpg game that all rpg fans must pick up and experience on their own. 120+ hours of game time clock on this game doesn't tell you enough on just how epic this rpg really is. From this reviewer personally opinion, this is the best Playstation 2 rpg game base on just the enjoyment of playing this game.
