In this bit, I will be reviewing the longest game I've ever played. Exclusively for the PS2, Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is still one of the few games that I have not beaten, but have put over 120 hours of gameplay into. Given, half the time I didn't know what I was doing, so about 50 hours of that is my dicking around without a clue in the world, but it's still a remarkably hefty game.
This is your basic, plot driven, Final Fantasy style game, which comes as little surprise, seeing as how it's developed by Square Enix. In short, you journey around multiple maps plagued with monsters (unless you're in a town), with random encounters in which you have to fight off said monsters, or run away, to survive/progress. However, unlike in the FF series, you can avoid encounters in this game a good deal easier. The levelling up system is a bit different as well, not totally sure it works as well with the game as the whole sphere chart thing with Final Fantasy X, but whatever, it does it's job and it does it well enough. You have the stand in for magic, called Symbology, which holds a hefty role in the entire plot of the game, and is a great help in the battles you fight. Probably my favorite part of the gameplay itself is the battle system. It's based on a real time fight environment, with a menu screen that pauses the game so that you can select an item, symbology invocation, or whatever else you might want from the selection available. It works, more or less, and can still provide a decent challenge unless you grind as horribly as I do in RPG's.
Anyway, gameplay isn't the strongest point of this game, despite it being overall functional and flowing. No, this is a game that you play for the story, and what a story it is. It is years upon years in the future, not completely sure the year. You are the character named Fayt, a college student from Earth who's dad is a brilliant scientist in the field of Symbological genetics. His cousin's name is Sophia, whose parents work with Fayt's dad in his lab. They're on vacation on Hyda IV when it is attacked. You follow Fayt and... well, consistently Fayt, as he tries to get his dad back and, of course, save the universe or something. That doesn't really become clear on the first disk, though, but rather soon into the second disk it does. I'm not going to go much farther because it's a great story and I don't want to ruin it for the ones who would actually play the game.
Back to the gameplay itself. The enemies in SOTET are a brilliant array of well developed monsters and villains, ranging from little mushrooms that hop around and shoot supersonic waves at you that make you go totally loopy, to giant dragons that have the wisdom of a thousand lifetimes and stomp all over your face, to the well oiled battle machines of the various powers of the time that seem to all want to kill/capture you. The battles may seem to play out the same when you first look at them, but they all are unique in their own way. Different strategies and abilities can be utilized to take down each group of enemies as they are encountered and then you'll learn new abilities and have to pick and choose which ones you want based on the character customization interface.
There are eleven total playable characters, each with a unique fighting style and repertoire of abilities (except for Cliff and Mirage, but what can ya do). Each ability can be strung together with others based on the placement and usage of each, and you can pull off massive damage and combos if timed correctly, reducing all who oppose you to tiny shiny pixels that disintegrate away. Combining tactics with your two AI battle partners can come in handy, and utilizing their strengths can work to your benefit.
Each of these characters also have a set of skills for inventing. The most useless and possibly greatest addition to the game that the developers made was the invention system. You can sign other npc inventors to your crew and have them invent items for you, which you receive a profit for every time they file a patent. It also provides a number of sidequests that bring usefulness to items that seem utterly meaningless otherwise, and can give a break to the endless carnage that otherwise ensues.
Overall, SOTET is possibly my favorite game ever made, and if it isn't, it ranks really high up there among them. The story telling is brilliant and well strung together. The battle system and character customization are intuitive and require tact, and the invention system is a quirky, but fun, addition to the game that allows the gathering of money in an unconventional way. For those of you who are RPG fans, I highly recommend getting this game, you will enjoy it despite the mediocre voice acting. For those of you who aren't RPG fans... start on something that doesn't completely tear your life away from you in order to finish it in any reasonable amount of time.
>Ryft
That patent system was always hilarious to me, it made you feel like Thomas Edison having his interns invent cool shit and then slapping an Edison decal on it.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, that's like every major company's R&D department.
Star Ocean is like life.
Now I'm sad.