Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Square Enix?s latest interstellar epic holds a few surprises but there are a few black holes interspersed among these stars.

Despite having a title that implies eons, enormity, dying races, and human extinction, the story of Star Ocean is rather intimate, and the setting is surprisingly grounded. A big chunk of the game is an extended Star Trek: The Next Generation away-team mission with a team of future-ites forced to interact on a primitive planet (in this case, quasi-medieval), completing their mission without accidentally breaking the Prime Directive and revealing they?re actually from outer space. The graphics are great, the fighting is fun, the story is good?and man oh man, is it certainly long?but a few black holes do exist in this sea of potential supernovas.

299,792,458 m/s
Know first that Star Ocean?s battle system is great?fast, challenging, well-presented, and thoroughly enjoyable. The customization and symbology (Star Oceanic for magic) options offer lots of variety, the level-up pacing is rewarding, and the characters boast diverse moves that have more uses than just generating large damage numbers. Every character has a Fury bar that?s closely tied to all their best attacks?standing still builds the bar, and holding down either [X] or [C] unleashes them based on how you?ve customized your characters. Enemies behave in clearly different ways, and their animation routines (and even posture) often affect your strategy. Switching between your party members is easier than it is in, say, Tales of Symphonia, so the game feels a lot less like a one-man show than some other RPGs with action-heavy encounters. The only unfortunate thing is that the controls have a high learning curve and are sometimes unresponsive, especially when trying to pull off your Fury attacks.

The story is good, but if you want weird, stick with Final Fantasy. The cut-scenes boast a very Xenosaga-like vibe with all that?s good and bad about that?sometimes overly chatty, but always well-produced with vibrant, fluid, and personable anime characters solidly voiced by distinctive actors. The music is schizo, though, mashing gorgeous orchestral pieces with some really heinous pseudo-metal guitar-demigod rock.

Time Dilation
The biggest issue in the Ocean is boring and repetitious town and dungeon designs?most dungeons and outside areas are flat, sprawling mazes with chests to find and beasties to avoid but little by way of landmarks or interesting puzzles; they feel less ?planned? than those of some of its role-playing peers. There are exceptions, of course, but the overall effect makes the game feel slow-paced, and you definitely feel the thrum of reiteration sooner rather than later.

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is a fine, lengthy entry in a series that puts the Star Ocean name closer to equal footing with the greats, but don?t cancel your preorder of Final Fantasy XII just yet. The battle system is out of this world?the rest of the game is a little more grounded.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment