This is probably the most frustrating game I've ever forced myself to slog through. It made me white-knuckle angry. On the surface, its a technical marvel. They really did cram a whole SO game into a GBC. it's like 45mb, which is fucking HUGE for a GBC game. its fucking wild and you've got to respect the hustle from tri-ace for sure. The astmosphere is really good, the art direction is beautiful, the music never gets old, but...
The progression system boils down to "pour all of your skill points into one person." The Star Ocean games have generally been easy enough that the crafting system felt tacked on, and this is the worst example of it. I was overpowered for any given encounter, I couldn't imagine making it any easier. And yet, despite it being that easy, the combat, which is condensed into only the horizontal plane, feels extremely one-sided. Either you kill any given thing in three hits, or you find yourself going back and forth landing a hit with miniscule damage because the attack gets canceled in favor of the enemy's attack, and then taking miniscule damage from said attack. And then out of nowhere there will be some attacks that are near unavoidable and nearly wipe the entire party in one go. It feels like any given fight really boils down to whether you land that pre-fight stunning hit, and then a healthy amount of RNG to go with it. The gauntlet of Milleniums in the final dungeon made me take a damn smoke break.
And then the dungeon design itself had be nearly tearing my hair out. every single dungeon it was some puzzle you'd have to have a galaxy brain to intuitively figure out instead of following a walkthrough or stumbling across the right answer by blind luck. There's a dungeon that on your SECOND visit, makes you visit every floor multiple times each, and my characters were nearly maxed by the end of it, because I was there for a quarter of my playtime. I bet the strategy guides for this one were going like hot cakes back in 2001.
What I will say about this game is that it doesn't have a dumbed down story for the benefit of the platform its played on. Despite it being incredibly frustrating, it does still FEEL like a Star Ocean game at heart. The ending was actually very nice.
The progression system boils down to "pour all of your skill points into one person." The Star Ocean games have generally been easy enough that the crafting system felt tacked on, and this is the worst example of it. I was overpowered for any given encounter, I couldn't imagine making it any easier. And yet, despite it being that easy, the combat, which is condensed into only the horizontal plane, feels extremely one-sided. Either you kill any given thing in three hits, or you find yourself going back and forth landing a hit with miniscule damage because the attack gets canceled in favor of the enemy's attack, and then taking miniscule damage from said attack. And then out of nowhere there will be some attacks that are near unavoidable and nearly wipe the entire party in one go. It feels like any given fight really boils down to whether you land that pre-fight stunning hit, and then a healthy amount of RNG to go with it. The gauntlet of Milleniums in the final dungeon made me take a damn smoke break.
And then the dungeon design itself had be nearly tearing my hair out. every single dungeon it was some puzzle you'd have to have a galaxy brain to intuitively figure out instead of following a walkthrough or stumbling across the right answer by blind luck. There's a dungeon that on your SECOND visit, makes you visit every floor multiple times each, and my characters were nearly maxed by the end of it, because I was there for a quarter of my playtime. I bet the strategy guides for this one were going like hot cakes back in 2001.
What I will say about this game is that it doesn't have a dumbed down story for the benefit of the platform its played on. Despite it being incredibly frustrating, it does still FEEL like a Star Ocean game at heart. The ending was actually very nice.
2 Comments
then i guess a video essay straight up lied to me because i didnt doublecheck. go figure
kediny
4 months ago