This review contains spoilers
For the past seven or eight years there have been so many times that I started it and then dropped it by the end of the opening cutscenes. But now that I have Xenoblade X and Star Ocean: First Departure under my belt I felt like I was finally in a position to enjoy it. It really had to struggle for it, but I think I'd call this a good game. The scale of the environments was quite impressive, and it was refreshing to find a HD-era JRPG where each dungeon was several hours long. Likewise it was refreshing to find a sci-fi JRPG where they actually spend a significant amount of time in space or visiting multiple planets, whereas often it just involves crash-landing on a single planet for the entire game. Edge had to work for it, but he ended up being an interesting protagonist thanks to that alt-Earth arc. The entire cast ended up being pretty endearing, since the massive ensemble is generally one of the Star Ocean franchise's biggest strengths.
On the flipside though, the music is like much of Motoi Sakuraba's compositions - enjoyable in the moment, but totally indistinct from one another, and not memorable in the slightest. And the battle system is the worst. Usually when people call action RPGs button mashing it comes from a place of ignorance or vitriol, but this was genuine button mashing. You play as Reimi and just tap X until you win, and the battle system never moves beyond that in the entire 47 hours, never even having a semblance of difficulty or complexity. You really get boss battles ranging from 15-25 minutes long where literally all you do is just repeat the same action for so long it briefly induces insanity, before it decides to die. Overworld movement was kinda button-mashy too since they had a sprint button, but the sprint itself was super short range, and the sound clip that played alongside it got grating very fast.
On the flipside though, the music is like much of Motoi Sakuraba's compositions - enjoyable in the moment, but totally indistinct from one another, and not memorable in the slightest. And the battle system is the worst. Usually when people call action RPGs button mashing it comes from a place of ignorance or vitriol, but this was genuine button mashing. You play as Reimi and just tap X until you win, and the battle system never moves beyond that in the entire 47 hours, never even having a semblance of difficulty or complexity. You really get boss battles ranging from 15-25 minutes long where literally all you do is just repeat the same action for so long it briefly induces insanity, before it decides to die. Overworld movement was kinda button-mashy too since they had a sprint button, but the sprint itself was super short range, and the sound clip that played alongside it got grating very fast.