Daikatana? Oh wait, it's just Star Ocean 3!

[Olvelsper]

This game has got to be the most disappointing game I've ever played in my gaming career. I was one of the many who loved Star Ocean 2, so when I look back and compare these two games I find its lacking in several departments.

To begin with these complaints, I will focus on the technical issues. A wide assortment of glitches in assorted colors and flavors! From characters that freeze up in battle if you ever dare take them off the 'Battle with all your might!' type of AI which can be fixed via a simple mp healing. 'Cuz apparently if they hit close to 0 mp while on any other setting they won't do anything and just run around like headless chickens. Fun times, those.

Talking about headless chickens reminds me of yet another annoyance with the game's coding. Would it hurt them that much to have refined the hit detection in this game? I find that more often than not a lot of my attacks miss the enemy because the enemy moved just a tiny bit from its original position, making my characters run around the enemy in circles like idiots because the enemy keeps moving and they can't go back to their position. I found this happened in SO2 once in a while too, so it isn't a new complaint, really.

Another lovely one I tend to find from time to time is that the game freezes on you while you're wandering around leveling up in certain areas. Whenever you're running around certain areas, the game just...stops for a while. You can hear the background music rocking out in the background, but the new area won't load at all.  It may take a few seconds, or even a whole minute or two. One time the lag lasted so long that I just chose to turn off the game rather than waste anymore of my precious time waiting for it to load the area up. I find that those areas in question tend to be near the Bar Mountains and on Planet Styx.

Another map related issue I've come across is regarding the towns. Every once in a while I've found that the map will sharply pull away when you enter certain towns, most notably Airyglyph (sp?). This will continue until the town is just gone from sight, the perspective having pulled that far away...

Something else that seem to be a technical error (or a localization one?) is that I find that the music more often than not acts like a hindrance towards the story in the game. It's blaringly loud over a lot of the voice acting during the most plot critical moments, and its occasionally overdone in other less important scenes.

Gameplay wise, everything seems so much more simplistic in regards to skills, and so unintuitive with item creation. Before, the skill system seemed to add a hint of character to the heroes you controlled, letting you make Iron Chef Dias or Nerdette Celine. But now the only real things you can expend points on are hp/mp boosts, and 'training' your AI. While the older skill system seemed a bit clunky at times, it was fun in letting you craft personalities for your heroes...and more importantly for Item Creation.

With the loss of the skill system of old, Item Creation exclusively relies on trusting in the roll of the dice, which just does not rock. You hire inventors by meeting various criteria, then put them on assembly lines in labs/workshops you find along the game. You can include your own guys or even exclusively rely on them, since they have their own proficiences as well. But the thing I despise is that not only do you have to hit a certain level in proficiency to get an item...but a *cost* as well.

If you don't nail the ballpark in the cost, you'll never get the item you want, even after including the odds of succeeded with whatever level of proficiency you have currently. This stinks of too much of a draw of the luck for my liking.

Plotwise...well, it's average. I just can't say more than that.

In the end, even with the time it took for Tri-ace to iron out the majority of the bugs for our enjoyment...they left this gamer woefully disappointed. Rent it before you buy it.

[Anastasia]

As someone who hasn't had any problems with glitches in Star Ocean?

I dunno. I've kept tabs on various message boards and  heard accounts of the game, but none to the degree of the bugs you've experienced. Myself, I've never encountered any AI bugs, nor any long loads past 2-3 seconds once in a great while.

As for the music volume and town camera work? I can't complain about either, I didn't have any problems with them. I dunno again, this isn't a complaint I've heard anywhere else. It's...odd.

Talking about headless chickens reminds me of yet another annoyance with the game's coding. Would it hurt them that much to have refined the hit detection in this game? I find that more often than not a lot of my attacks miss the enemy because the enemy moved just a tiny bit from its original position, making my characters run around the enemy in circles like idiots because the enemy keeps moving and they can't go back to their position. I found this happened in SO2 once in a while too, so it isn't a new complaint, really.

Again, I can't say I've had any issues with this, either. It's puzzling, since the combat system has felt far more refined this time around, and this isn't an issue at all.

I do agree with the item creation rant by and large, however. While it does look cool on paper, in practice it's clunky and not as fun as Star Ocean 2's system. Also done to greatly limit your ability to twink out...

...yet they left Orichalcum in, which breaks the game wide open until the Cave of Trials. Either let us go crazy or close that glaring door in an attempt for game balance, guys. Also, would the abilit to manually select a n exact price have been too much to ask, or showing the hidden modifiers each PC has on invention costs/time?

Plotwise? That's a loaded question and a giant land mine rolled into a one word inquiry.

*Spoilers*

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Big ones. You may want to skip this part until you've finished the main game.

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Okay, right. Let's go.

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The 4d world angle and the Eternal Sphere being a game is innovative. Before anything else, I want to give them kudos for that. It's not often a console game's plot gives me something honestly unexpected such as this. But is it good? Tough call. I want to say...not really. While it's an amusing concept, it's just too easy to fall into the mindset of 'Hey, you mean the Star Ocean games aren't even real in this universe? This sucks!'.  The validity of that is highly debatable, but I've seen it too much already to have a high opinion of the plot.

It's also hurt by the Creator, Luther. He has zero screen time until the very end of the game, and even then he's merely a figurehead stereotype. With what they were trying, a strong, evil villian could have seriously saved the concept, not a remote and uninteresting baddie. It needed a personality and face to what was trying to be done. His underlings were no better, the trio of Azazer, Berial and Belzelber having stock and 2 second personalities.

(Go go random name censoring, guys! Way to drop the fucking ball there! I thought we were over this after Star Ocean 2 and the renaming of the Ten Wise Men. Yes, it's probably shoddy symbolism in this case, but at least keep it to the intent of the game designer. Argh.)

The story isn't bad enough to seriously hurt the game, however, as the focus is clearly on the battles even to the end. This is probably a good thing, as the battle system is by far the best feature of the game.

Overall? I still dunno, Olg. Objectively, I want to say you got a nasty combonation of a bad copy of the game/PS2/whatever mixed with some irritants, a combo which I can easily see ruining a game.  While there are a few flaws in it, all the strong points, such as superb voice acting, the battle system, wonderfully rendered graphics, lengthy and absorbing aftergame dungeons, battle trophy collecting, and other awesome things, they more than make up for those few weaknesses.

I do think Star Ocean 3 is a far better game than your review indicates, and is probably the current contender in my mind for RPG of the year. (I haven't gotten far into SH2, though, to be fair.) There's so much good stuff here, even if I agreed with every one of your complaints, that the game shines brillianty.[/code]

[Olvelsper]

Well, the problem I saw is that there was a lot of wasted potential, to be sure. Which is something that sometimes offends more often than not. In terms of plot, I'd decided to not judge it on that alone, since it's something that's pretty objective for different people. A lot of people could've found it done well, but the plot just felt so *slow* to me, with the inclusion of those two medieval planets, when the whole theme of the game was (in my eyes) established in the first hour.

It just seemed like it was a needless distraction, and they could've probably used that extra time to impliment the infamous plot twist better into things, in my eyes.

And glitches are glitches, so I can only judge from my end of things, but I can tell you one thing, my PS2 is essentially brand new, and a newer model to boot, so I shouldn't be having so many problems. :/

[Anastasia]

Well, the problem I saw is that there was a lot of wasted potential, to be sure. Which is something that sometimes offends more often than not. In terms of plot, I'd decided to not judge it on that alone, since it's something that's pretty objective for different people. A lot of people could've found it done well, but the plot just felt so *slow* to me, with the inclusion of those two medieval planets, when the whole theme of the game was (in my eyes) established in the first hour.

It just seemed like it was a needless distraction, and they could've probably used that extra time to impliment the infamous plot twist better into things, in my eyes.

And glitches are glitches, so I can only judge from my end of things, but I can tell you one thing, my PS2 is essentially brand new, and a newer model to boot, so I shouldn't be having so many problems. :/

I know. The glitches you've ran into puzzle me - it seems to be the most extreme possible mix of them short of inventing brand new ones just for your gaming pleasure. To that, honestly, go figure. The same deal as someone I knew had a FF9 disc that wouldn't play in his Playstation no matter what, but worked like a charm in the one they had at EB to test exchanges.  

In other words, strangely bad compatability. That's the only idea I have offhand.

As for Elicoor and relating to th e main plot? I'm torn...

On one hand, a base of operations/ PC recruitment was needed, but on the other, your point is valid. I'm somewhat in the middle there, having not made up my mind firmly yet.

[Olvelsper]

Regardless, it seems that people beyond me have gotten glitches, and quite a few of them. Considering the fact that we had to wait so damn long for them to release the game since they were cleaning it up and some of us still got glitches in the DC version of SO3 makes me feel freaking sorry for the japanese.

Just imagine what it must've been like for them. *shivers*

[Dracos]

I've heard a fair number of glitch stories from the game myself.

I also have hit a fair number of lag points, where the game just stalls out for a bit.  Really bad form there.  Admittingly, I'm still on disk one, but... damn if every time I hit one of those, I don't want to play something which was coded better.

Dracos

[thepanda]

Is there any truth to that 'zero mp = instant death + cannot be rivived because life restoring items don't return mp as well' glitch?

[baka]

I'm not very far into the game, but there's an item called Fresh Sage which revives a character from KO with 30% HP and 30% MP, if I remember rightly.

[Dracos]

Is there any truth to that 'zero mp = instant death + cannot be rivived because life restoring items don't return mp as well' glitch?

I've never mp died, so I can't say ^^;

Dracos

[Olvelsper]

Zero mp does indeed equal instant death. But the revival items restore mp as well. *nods to baka-ken*

Enemies can attack your mp, yet you can attack theirs too. They have theirs in in the same proportions as your group does, so you pretty much cut down battle time by half/three fourths as soon as you get your mp hurting moves.

[kpjam]

Overall, I enjoyed the game.  Not great, but enoyable.

I did have the, 'characters running around lost because they couldn't get next to their targets,' glitch.  Though, that's the only real glitch I've encountered.

Also, I HATED item creation.  Way too annoying, time consuming, and costly/  Even with a faq, regenerating costs was timeconsuming.  Waiting for them to finish, assumimng they could, ate money alive.  Would it have been so hard to do a simple thing like give a list of the different costs?  Or added a description of what the final product might be, or would be if you've ever created it before?

[Rift120]

ADMIN EDIT: Rifty, this is just not acceptable.  You know better than this.  You can type better when you slow down and in a forum environment, you have no excuse for not slowing down.  I don't want to see this again from you.


Original Crap:

Ah Star Ocean 3.... how do you dissapoint me..let me count hte ways.

Okay combat wise... I've met the AI problems you've had... not ot mention one amusing incident where I had one of my AI partenrs doing a little SIdestep dance int he corner of hte battle map wiht his back to the enemy O_o;;;

Speaking of which..is there any more useless addition to combat thant he sidestep? I gave up on using it early int he game andmy battle ablities improved 200%

HmmI also hated how they changed the combat controllers.. I liked haveing the baility to assign 4 specials to my shoulder buttons... certianly much better than this system where i Have to time how hard i press the button...half the tiem I can't pull off the attack I want to....


Item creation Grrrrr.....

Its like the bleeding lottery. WOuld it have been so hard to add a fourth option that lets you try to create things you or your inventors invented witha chance for failure or success? Instead of haveing ot play random luck, hope you saved prior ot entering creation time?

Voice acting ranged from appropiate to WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? I'm sorry..... but a top of hte line spy ina  enemy country should not sound..so...so...SQUEAKY!.....

and my final gripe...

The DICTONARY... a good concept , doento ridiculous extremes... I understand rembering keywords... but when you add the Encylopedia's defintiion of Copper to the mix you have GONE TO FAR!!!

On a unrelated note Nel Rocks as the mainc harcter controlled ^_^

[Dracos]

Never did follow up on this did I?

I got stuck on the item development.  It is addictive, I give them that.

It's also distinctly unfun.  It's pulling the slot machines.  After a while, you don't switch to poker, you leave the casino.  ANd that's what I did.  I wasn't interested in the plot anymore.  I didn't have any momentum left after a few hours of that and I just stopped the game and moved on.

Wasn't all the item developments fault, it just exaceberated the problem that the game had little momentum and draw for the first fifteen twenty hours to get one moving.  Too much movies, not enough excitement.  Meh.

Dracos