Hiroshi Mishima said:
I know this is gonna sound weird.. but... what the HELL does Star Ocean have to do with Earth? If I recall the first two games right, there was NOTHING to do with Earth. Why did they have to go all Front Mission in Space on us like that?
This was supposed to be a prequel to the series.
Anyway, awesome review. I have only played this game once at a friends house, but it was for like 12 hours straight, so I do have some idea how it plays out, at least the beginning. I thought the game itself was good but the cut-scenes sucked. In one of ther early conversations, you are specifically told about a mission to explore a planet to see if its safe for human colonization. A quote is "we already checked it out with unmanned probes, and there weren't any large heat signatures, so you don't have to worry about any giant space bugs or anything, just plant". I accepted this as the makers of the game basically just saying "there most definantly ARE doing to be giant space bugs", and, sure enough, within minutes of your entire fleet crash landing, a giant space bug comes out of the forest and eats half of the crew (apparently there futuristic giant space guns couldn't hurt it, which is why throughout the entire game you use swords and bows instead of... well giant space lasers. although, even though you stop fighting these things after half an hour, you never get new giant space lasers to use on all the other monsters). the main character grabs a laser sword placed convieniently on the ground, yells "I'm taking one of those legs home with me" and cuts off one of its legs. later, you are sent to find another ship the crash landed. The last surviving cre member, crawls up to you, tells you about a meterite ssample they found that they brought back for study that turned them all into monsters that started killing each other, and to stay away from it. Then a black mist comes from the ship and turns him into a boss. after killing it, it disapers into black mist, leasving only a small rock. The make character picks it up, and says "this looks like a piece of a meteorite, I think I'll take a sample back to the base for study". It's just really hard to not root for the evil monsters when the great heroes act like that.