Reach for the stars, and the nearest save point.

Another entry in the Star Ocean series has finally arrived, and luckily, it is a long and worthwhile journey that will keep you entertained for well over 100 hours. If you like Japanese RPGs and Star Trek, you will love this game. You are Fayt Leingod, whisked away into space after being attack by aliens while on vacation. It turns out that they are after you, and are willing to do anything to have you in their custody. It's up to you to flee the aliens and meet up with your father, and child-hood friend. Along the way you will encounter friends from other worlds, as well as interact with people on different planets. The graphics are solid, but the character models tend to lack emotion. The cinamatic cutscenes are incredible though. The music is very lively and upbeat. The tunes sound as though jazz, techno, and rock are moulded into one, and it's highly catchy too. The voice acting is excellent, but there are occasional bad voices that don't fit, and there are often pitiful yells and screams from characters *coughFAYTcough*. The battle system is done in real time. You run around and smack enemies with a variety of moves. However, your range of moves are limited in battle, and you'll probably only stick to a few. The magic system is horrible. If you want to cast a spell, you'll need go into the menu in mid battle and select the spell. It would be much more convienent if you had hot-keys are something. The battle system can be very clunky at times. Sometimes you'll pull off a special move as your enemy gets up, and you don't even damage him even though your attacks appear to connect. A character will be knocked out if you lose either all your HP OR MP. Personally, I think it is incredibly stupid to die of lack of MP, but it does offer a good deal of a challenge. The battle system can feel clunky and unbalanced at times too, and your characters tend to go berserk no matter what tactics you assign to them. Nevertheless, it's still a refreshing change to turn-based battles. There are also a huge variety of sidequests and treasures to collect. The inventing system allows you to compete all over the universe with your inventions. By participating in it, you can gain a great deal of money, as well as some notoriety. Dungeon crawling is a major aspect of this game, as well as survival. You see enemies on maps and battle them by touching. If they run into you form the side or from behind, you will get ambushed, or rear-attack. However, if you blind-side an enemy, you get no advantage. Battles have a Bonusese in them as well. By finishing the enemy quickly, or taking little damage, you can gain double or triple experience or money. The dungeons are incredibly long, and offer few save and healing points. Unless you reach that save point, you will probably die very quickly later on in the game. Even if you overlevel and buy super-powerful weapons, the enemies are still very strong, and give you one hell of a fight. Sometimes it seems no matter how much you power up, it doesn't help much at all. In short, SO:TtEoT is an incredibly addicting, long, and enjoyable adventure that will take you away from the world and thrust you into the universe.