Starry-Eyed Surprise (Star Ocean - Till The End Of Time (PS2))

Member Name: tom1clare

Product:	Star Ocean - Till The End Of Time (PS2)
Date:	08/08/05 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely presentation, great detail, mammoth longevity, innovative battle-system

Disadvantages: Lengthy cut-scenes, occasionally baffling puzzles, tough at times

I’d like to think that I play all the games I end up reviewing thoroughly so as to form a definitive view of the product, but its safe to say that few have been put through their paces quite as rigorously as Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time (ST: TET). Five months and over 105 hours of playing time fortunately haven’t gone completely to waste now that I’ve finally got around to writing about it, and so without further delay, here are my findings…

Life for Star Ocean began back in the mid-nineties on the SNES, before making an appearance on the PSOne in the guise of Star Ocean: The Second Story which, incidentally, is one of the rarest and most expensive games ever to appear on the format, and in 2004 the latest instalment arrived on the PS2. It’s developed by the giants of the role-playing genre that are Square-Enix, the clever people responsible for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises, and to an extent Star Ocean aims to combine some of the strongest elements from each.

The mammoth adventure centres around 19 year-old Fait Leingod, identifiable (like many RPG characters) by his flamboyant blue hair and who, as the story begins, is enjoying a family holiday with his scientist father Robert and best pal Sophia. Things go a little pear-shaped from here on in however – the world he is staying on, Hyda IV, is suddenly attacked, and to make matters significantly worse his friend and father are captured by a powerful race known as the Vendeeni and upon successfully fleeing the planet, Fait discovers that a number of races across the galaxy want him for purposes unknown.

But this is just the beginning of a 2-disc game well and truly deserving of the term ‘epic’ – at one point or another you will traverse no less than four (yes, four!) worlds, though by far the largest and most prominent is Elicor II, where the majority of the story develops. Fait faces the problem of trying to avoid influencing the technical development of the world, but this becomes increasingly difficult as he finds himself embroiled in a vicious war between a military superpower known as Airyglyph, and the theocratically ruled Aquios. After reluctantly opting to help the latter Fait must look for a way off the planet, find his loved ones and figure out what he holds that has brought half the galaxy out looking for him…

Star Ocean mixes some pleasingly ambitious ideas with more conventional role-playing elements, to good effect. The gameplay, as is to be expected, consists of the usual exploring of towns, slaying of beasties and carrying out specific tasks to keep things ticking along. Unusually for a Square-Enix creation, there is no world map to act as a hub between environments; every area on the planet of Elicor II is linked to another – the scale of things will inevitably impress, but those without photographic memories will find the lack of maps and large quantity of backtracking somewhat tiresome.

The battle-system is very nice; featuring a combination of real-time battling and menu-based magic, with the added incentive of having 300 ‘battle trophies’ to uncover depending on a wide variety of objectives, ultimately leading the unlocking of new outfits for your party and harder difficulty settings to tackle, if you feel you can afford to devote another 100 hours! Tactics are important in battle as two of your three party members are A.I. controlled – particularly annoying when they stand around like lemons allowing the enemies to pummel them, but in fairness this tricky-to-implement system could have been a whole lot worse. The only real trouble with the fighting involves the fact that, for reasons unknown, enemies can not be harmed if they have been knocked off their feet – either by magical or physical means, which is a bit of a cheap trick and irritating when you’ve just unleashed a multi-combo special-move only to find your foe avoiding the main force of the attack because they had hit the deck at the beginning of it.

There’s no faulting the presentation or the visuals though; menu screens are decked out in a slick turquoise and are easy to navigate, indeed very much reminiscent of those seen in Square’s Final Fantasy games. The many in-game cut-scenes are nicely done whilst the smattering of full-motion video clips that crop up are spectacular; at times it feels like they would not look out of place in a blockbuster CGI-movie. Whilst the visuals may lack the realism of Final Fantasy’s, they make up for it in detail and definition, as well as a mightily impressive, fully rotational camera-system that can be swung in either direction thanks to the L1 and R1 buttons, giving a convincing 3D feel, with absolutely no flaws to speak of. It’s a similar set-up to that seen in Grandia 2, though with considerably better visuals.

It’s easy to see that a heck of a lot of work has gone into SO: TET; there’s a dictionary feature selectable from the menu screen that collects all ‘key’ terms you pick up throughout your adventure, giving background information on towns and cities you visit, different worlds, technical jargon, individual people and races, cultures, customs and even myths and legends – there are literally thousands of entries to view should you so choose. Perhaps even more impressive a feature is that of the ‘Invention’ idea, which will no doubt delight long-term RPG fans as it allows the player to invent and patent various items in the fields of cookery, alchemy, engineering and writing before seeing them sold in shops across the world. Even the less successful experiments hold some value as the item descriptions are unusual to say the least, and often hilarious: ‘Just seeing it makes you wish it never existed’, ‘Laughable product that tempts you to sit around making fun of it for hours’ and ‘Expresses a deep sadness, as if it is apologizing for its own pitiful existence’ – now you don’t see that in every RPG!

Design-wise it’s a mixed-bag, and a real game of two halves. Whilst the towns and cities are generally fantastic and occasionally even memorable (from the gloomy, ominous Airyglyph to the bright ‘n’ shiny pleasure resort of Gemity), the sections in-between (dungeons, mountain paths, mines) are often quite long-winded and horribly bland – the developers throw in the occasional puzzle or boss-fight but otherwise its just corridors filled with monsters, making for some rather dull parts that spoil things a tad.

One other criticism is that the adventure is rather slow moving, even for a game of this ilk. Often entire towns must be combed over to locate the desired person/object/cut-scene, and the level of backtracking across old territory is like to make you dizzy. One cut-scene near the beginning lasts more or less half-an-hour (!), and unlike with the best RPG’s, progression is staccato and sometimes unclear. This is a shame as Star Ocean can, when it really gets going, become incredibly addictive (the proof being that it nearly ruined my exams earlier in the year!). The characters you get to control are somewhat hit-and-miss too, generally falling into the categories of ‘likable and amusing’, ‘annoying’ or ‘bland’, and considering who developed the game, its surprising to note that few have particularly interesting pasts to show for themselves, even if they will insist on making you sit through laborious flashback scenes.

The music is fairly good and certainly well-suited to the areas it is assigned to, the tempo changing in accordance to the situation, and helping to create a decent atmosphere. However, its best to turn character dialogue off in my opinion, and play Star Ocean like one of the old-skool breed of RPG’s with just subtitles, as the American-dubbed voices really start to grate very quickly.

There’s no denying its longevity, and if you love your role-playing games, then this will certainly seem like excellent value. I paid £14.99 for it on play.com, and taking into consideration the obscene amount of playing time I’ve racked up on it, I would have to say it was worth the admission fee. However, it’s no classic in the mould of Final Fantasy VII or Grandia, and for all its extra features and unlockables, its unlikely you’ll want to play through it all twice.

SO: TET holds a recommended age of 12+, though aside from the monster-battling, there’s little here that could really be considered unsuitable for the youngsters. They may even be drawn to the cute, saucer-eyed protagonists and bright, beautiful locations, though it can be a tough game at times, and completion would be a daunting task unless you have some prior experience in the RPG genre.

In the end, Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time is simply a decent game. Square-Enix have combined the classy presentation of their Final Fantasy’s with the bewildering depth of their Dragon Quest’s, and yet failed to best either thanks to some bland and uninspiring landscape design, slow to develop narrative and characters and excessive backtracking. Its battle-system is promising, its humour well-judged and its gameplay efficient at worst, but though it represents great value, Star Ocean lacks that something special to make it a true classic.

Summary: Gigantic, well-crafted RPG lacking the spark of inspiration that would have made it a classic