Star Ocean: First Departure, released in October 2008, is a remake of the 1996 SNES game "Star Ocean". This PSP exclusive uses Star Ocean: The Second Story's game engine, and thus looks and plays much like it's predecessor. The game features a unique real-time combat system, an original item creation system, beautiful graphics and almost fully-voiced dialogues.
First Departure's story begins when a group of bandits attack the town of Kratus. This is where the player meets Roddick Farrence, a member of the town's Defense Force, as well as his friends Millie and Dorn. The Defense Force takes it upon themselves to save the village and drive away the bandits. The hero's are thanked, and at the end of the day it seems everything has turned to normal. Unfortunately, a nearby town is plagued by a mysterious disease, and everyone who makes contact with the disease turns to stone.
Because of this disease, Roddick and Millie meet two people, Ronyx and Ilia, who claim to be from the planet "Earth", and have come to try to find information about how the mysterious disease was spread on the hero's planet, Roak. Ronyx and Ilia explain to the Roakians that Earth is much more technologically advanced than Roak and the disease was place on Roak by an equally advanced civilization that Earth is at war with. Roddick and Millie decide they will do anything to help their planet get rid of the disease, and thus join Ronyx and Ilia in the investigation.
The group uses a mystic time gate to travel back in time to a much more uncivilized Roak in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease. However, an unfortunate turn of events separates Roddick and Ilia from Ronyx and Millie. Roddick and Ilia then decide the most important thing for them to do is to find Ronyx and Millie, and worry about the disease second. This is when your adventure starts!
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If you've never played Star Ocean: The Second Story, the combat system should be a pleasant experience. Your team for battle can consist of four party members. Battles take place in real-time, and the AI controls three party members, while you manage one. There are three ways to take on enemies - up close, with killer moves, or with spells. The first option is usually for your strong warrior party members, and unfortunately, when controlling one of these characters you'll often find yourself mashing one button. These types of party members also have special attacks, called "killer moves", which allows the user to unleash a powerful attack to help overcome enemies. Each member can unlock a plethora of killer moves, which have various benefits, such as multiple attacks, elemental damage, or ranged techniques. Killer moves also get more powerful the more you use them.
The last form of combat is essential for those party members who are spell casters. Each spell caster usually falls into one of two categories, offensive or defensive. Offensive spell casters focus on area of effect spells to overwhelm enemies and support those close-combat fighters. These spell casters often deal more damage than the close-combat fighters, but they must watch their MP and make sure they don't run out, because they're next to useless without it. The other type of spell caster, defensive magicians, play the role of nurse on the battlefield. They're given spells to heal teammates and null status effects, along with giving them stat buffs to tear apart their enemies. Defensive mages are often a standard for battle teams because of their healing abilities.
Depending on your tastes in combat, you can choose which party members you would like to recruit for your team. Apart from the required four hero's, you're given four slots for optional members. There are seven optional characters in the game, each with their own story and recruitment process. Because of the 4 member limit, you have to pick and choose which party members you want to invite to your team. If you reject someone from your team, there's no chance of getting them again. There's also a catch; if you recruit someone to your team, you're almost guaranteed to lose the option for another member. This adds a great deal of replayability; you miss a large portion of the storyline for each character you don't have.
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Each party member and a few of the NPC's have their own voice actor, and 90% of the game's dialogue is voiced. This always makes room for unintentional comedy, but First Departure actually does it well. There are very few "facepalm" lines, the voice acting fits the characters, and the actors, while not superb, are very believable. The top-notch 3D graphic cutscenes also help add to the voice acting, and often feels like watching an anime, in the best way possible. The background music in First Departure is well composed, often fitting the mood of the player's surroundings, and when combined with beautiful "2.5D" backgrounds, you might feel like you're in the game its self. The scenery is very good for a PSP game; sometimes I had to take a double-take.
Along with these other features, First Departure also has a few unique gameplay features that help add to the experience. One of the most important gameplay features in the skill and item creation system. As players level up in combat, they're given skill points, which they can dump into some 30+ skills. These skills are building blocks to unlocking Specialties, which open up various item creating techniques for the different characters. For instance, put your skill points into the "Mineralogy", "Eye For Detail", and "Aesthetics" skills, and you'll unlock the "Crafting" specialty. The higher this gets, the stronger jewelry you can make with your gems. The idea for this system is just amazing to me, and becomes very important to the player later in the game, where the best weapons and armors are only found through item creation.
The only problem I had with the game was the difficulty. For anybody who's played the original Star Ocean or Star Ocean 2, this game will be a walk in the park for you. Developer tri-Ace invented a new three-hit combat system, allowing the player to unleash a chain of three attacks, unlike the previous one-hit system. Someone once said "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." That somebody obviously was not on the tri-Ace system, because they changed the flawless old system into this simple "mash x" method. I actually played and completed my second run-through of the game by doing a common challenge - a solo run. This meant I'm only allowed to use 1 character through the entire game.http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p105/Icy_X-Cel/team.jpg You want to know the truth? The game was just as easy; after hitting maybe level 30, I had no struggle with the enemies, and I didn't die the entire game. It's obvious how this could be a turn-off to some, but the game had so many other redeeming qualities that I didn't let the simplicity bother me.
To sum it up, Star Ocean: First Departure is a title PSP RPG'ers should not go without. It boasts some good looking cutscenes with fully voiced dialogue, the graphics are pleasant and the music is fitting, the character's backgrounds are interesting and the gameplay mechanics are solid. It provided me 23 hours of fun, and that was definitely worth the $40 I spent on it. If you own a PSP, like RPG's, and haven't picked up First Departure, you're doing it wrong.
Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, a PSP remake for Star Ocean: The Second Story, will be available January 20th.
