I'm quite disappointed with the aspect of what Star Ocean could have been, and honestly it's a shame that it starts out with such a neat sci-fi premise only to sweep it all under the rug in favor of generic fantasy fulfillment. While there is still a bit of sci-fi involved in the end, for the most part Star Ocean's story is as generic as they come despite having an interesting beginning.
Thankfully the more appealing aspects of the game isn't really it's story, but the many diverges that this game has along with it's character interactions. While most games give you solid cast of characters to watch develop and interact with, Star Ocean instead has different party members you can acquire pending on who you agree to let stay, parts you investigate, and even who is in your party at the time. This means that your experience with Star Ocean may in fact be different from mine, and with the amount of characters to interact with and gain/lose means that in order to fully experience this whole game, you have to play through it 3 times completely optimized. While I don't think you should be using a guide to fully grasp your experience, it's important to note just how permanent your choices are. It's a real shame too because the game never really gives proper reason to think you can lose party members or need to go looking for them, having a better indication of this would have been nice, but I can see how explaining that would ruin the flow of the narrative.
Course Star Ocean is more than just party members, as the combat system is akin to most action RPGs with your ability to control any one character while the other party members end up doing generic commands you can send them unless you want to manually use them. While I don't recall any of my characters being useless throughout my playthrough, a lot of character growth does come from leveling up certain skills and passively gaining the boosts from said skills. Again, the importance of these skills and how it effects your character really isn't explain that well, but thankfully the majority of the game is fairly easy. For the most part, you can get by just by focusing on certain enemies, changing some small battle strategies, and leveling, but there is a notable difficulty spike at the end with the final boss.
Star Ocean: First Departure is a nice remake of the SNES game, and did help with graphical changes as well as improved dialogue and voice acting. The only problem is that Star Ocean's base story is just so blatantly average that it kinda gets lost in the sea of JRPG story telling. Thankfully the more remember-able bits of figuring out what members I should get, as well as how I should build my team stay with me, and for that I wish the franchise more success in the future.
Thankfully the more appealing aspects of the game isn't really it's story, but the many diverges that this game has along with it's character interactions. While most games give you solid cast of characters to watch develop and interact with, Star Ocean instead has different party members you can acquire pending on who you agree to let stay, parts you investigate, and even who is in your party at the time. This means that your experience with Star Ocean may in fact be different from mine, and with the amount of characters to interact with and gain/lose means that in order to fully experience this whole game, you have to play through it 3 times completely optimized. While I don't think you should be using a guide to fully grasp your experience, it's important to note just how permanent your choices are. It's a real shame too because the game never really gives proper reason to think you can lose party members or need to go looking for them, having a better indication of this would have been nice, but I can see how explaining that would ruin the flow of the narrative.
Course Star Ocean is more than just party members, as the combat system is akin to most action RPGs with your ability to control any one character while the other party members end up doing generic commands you can send them unless you want to manually use them. While I don't recall any of my characters being useless throughout my playthrough, a lot of character growth does come from leveling up certain skills and passively gaining the boosts from said skills. Again, the importance of these skills and how it effects your character really isn't explain that well, but thankfully the majority of the game is fairly easy. For the most part, you can get by just by focusing on certain enemies, changing some small battle strategies, and leveling, but there is a notable difficulty spike at the end with the final boss.
Star Ocean: First Departure is a nice remake of the SNES game, and did help with graphical changes as well as improved dialogue and voice acting. The only problem is that Star Ocean's base story is just so blatantly average that it kinda gets lost in the sea of JRPG story telling. Thankfully the more remember-able bits of figuring out what members I should get, as well as how I should build my team stay with me, and for that I wish the franchise more success in the future.