Star Ocean is an obvious hit of nostalgia, but it goes beyond that and is filled with quality of life additions and modern touches that new players will enjoy it as much as returning players. The games visuals blend pixel art characters on fully 3D backgrounds and look great. There are some surface level comparisons to Octopath Traveller, but beyond sharing a genre, Star Ocean stands on its own.

I give points to its pacing control and quick battle system. These elements make or break a good RPG, and being able to have so much control as the game goes on and opens up was a huge surprise. Battle frequency, simple encounters, AI control, etc all allow you as a player to dictate how much of a grind you want to play or skip without impacting progress.

The opportunities here are related to inventory and item management. You can sort items in your inventory, but a bulk way to trash or sell would have been nice, and the frequency that you get new materials and equipment with an investment into the IC/Skills system makes finding what you just got a chore, even with a “recently acquired” tab. You’ve got so many items to find, buy, restock at towns, manage for crafting and customizing, etc. Plus, the auto equip feature defaults to DEF or ATK and bonus abilities you may want to keep on a character can get lost unless you manage equipment one-by-one with your full party of 8 characters.

Overall, the story isn’t heavy handed or too far out there. It is one you can follow along and be involved with and I really enjoyed the amount of variety in the additional characters you can pick up along the way. Seeing the main story from two different perspectives with the two different main characters is also fun. This game is captivating enough that I’m going through a New Game+ run to see and experience more. Star Ocean gets a big recommendation from me.

Well, I'm converted! This was my first Dragon Quest game, and I can safely say that I regret not giving these games more attention sooner! Dragon Quest's strongest and most enduring quality is that it doesn't try to be anything other than the most quintessential JRPG, and it is only striving to refine and perfect that tried and true formula.

While i can totally see people writing this off as overly vanilla, it's anything but. Everything about this game is so endearing, it's almost intoxicating. Rab and Sylvando are absolute MVPs.

Clocking in at 81 hours upon defeating the Act 3 boss and obtaining the true ending, at no point did I ever feel the game was dragging along, which says a lot about a JRPG as this genre is packed with games that end up bring glorified endurance tests. With additional playthroughs, I will most likely be bumping this up to 5 stars.