Star Ocean: Till the End of Time - Gamespot review

Alex said:
Grandia II was close to the worst sequel ever made. It had absoluely nothing on the original.

Iwadare > you. Best battle theme composer ever.
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I have to disagree with you. :P I thought G2 was an awesome game. The battle system is still the best in any RPG ever, the battle themes were great, and I thought to story was okay(some good and bad thing, but enjoyable still). The only things I didnt like about G2 was that for the most part character design wasnt great. Pretty much your entire playable party members. Most of the bad guys looked and acted bad ass, especially Melfice, but none of the actual party members did anything for me aside from maybe Millenia who was cool because she was like all cutsy one second and a mega bitch the next. The game was also a too linear and way to easy save for 1 or 2 boss fights, and Im pretty sure there were like zero sidequests, at least good ones. That sucks, the last boss was rather lame also. Giant buterfly = WTF! still, probably ones of my favorite RPGs ever gameplay wise. The battles were fast paced and awesome and the level up system and spell effects were fantastic.

Grandia Xtreme I like, but for some reason the battle system didnt feel as fluid or as good as G2, still fun but not as good for some reason. I dont know if it was the camera or the changes in the system. The large selection of ultimatly better characters was nice though, Jade and Luna kick ass. The story and voice acting were lame though, but for me, its all about the battles in this type of game.

Hopefully we see Grandia 3.
 
SO3 seems (I've learned to emphasize that word, hah) to be slightly sub TOS in terms of quality. I'll probably snag it, but I'll wait for an option to get it cheap like I did TOS ($16). TOS is a solid game, I like how they refined the battle into 3d, its quite smooth. I'm not too fond of how cooking is handled, and the story has nothing on Destiny. Not to mention Lloyd's voice actor is the same as Max from Dark Cloud 2, and that just grates me ears. Everything else though I'm fine with or really like. I've always loved the % restore items in the Tales games as well.
 
This just doesn't bother me anymore. A year ago, when I thought this would originally come out, I might have cared. Now, I just don't.

I'm kind of glad it apparently didn't turn out. I already have ToS and I'm mostly done with it. My next RPG purchase is SMT and then Paper Mario 2. The less of them, the better. Gives me more time.
 
"Grandia Xtreme was fantastic"

CORRECT.

"I thought G2 was an awesome game. The battle system is still the best in any RPG ever, the battle themes were great, and I thought to story was okay(some good and bad thing, but enjoyable still"

INCORRECT.

*shakes fist*

Concerning SO3, I hate letting impressions get the better of me, but I've decided to simply wait until it's budget.

Sloppy battle mechanics and more importantly, lack of balance, really irk me in RPG's. And I have plenty to keep me busy anyhow. Hearing the sub systems were of poor quality on top of the whole battle engine fiasco was basicly the final nail for me.

Also, I can't say the plotting of the game I'm aware of has made me terribly motivated to see if I can look past all the busted elements, and see if a fun, but flawed adventure is contained within. Not at the moment at least, and not for fifty bucks.

Nocturne is probably the only new JRPG RPG, along with MAYBE Baten Kaitos (unless you count Chains of Promathia and Monster Hunter) that I'll wind up playing the rest of the year. Too much stuff to do, although I'll hate missing the release topics for Command Mission and the like.

PS: Now that Tri-Ace is done fucking around with Star Ocean, I demand Valkyrie Profile 2 in a timely manner.
 
Alex, I hate to ask another post of you, but I am curious as to what you found so incredibly wrong with Grandia 2. I mean, I also prefer the original to it (obviously), but I thought it was a good game in its own right.

Outside of the mana egg system, I enjoyed the battle system in the sequel more. The only complaint I could see is the plot, but that hardly dominates the game to the point that it would ruin it (though I didn't mind the plot, despite some issues). If the storyline and characters ARE the reason for your hate, I could understand...but surely there is more to your dislike of the game than just the story.

Grandia was a better adventure and Grandia Xtreme had the best gameplay mechanics and dungeon designs, but Grandia II was still a solid RPG.

I'm just kinda curious, that's all, and I suppose I missed round 1 of the bashing.
 
I could tell you what I didn't like about Grandia II's battles, but I think there's enough evidence against me for no one to care what I say about RPGs anymore :D
 
Semjaza Azazel said:
This just doesn't bother me anymore. A year ago, when I thought this would originally come out, I might have cared. Now, I just don't.

I'm kind of glad it apparently didn't turn out. I already have ToS and I'm mostly done with it. My next RPG purchase is SMT and then Paper Mario 2. The less of them, the better. Gives me more time.
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Then DDS. :p SMT and DDS are the only 2 RPG's I care about this year. Although i'm starting to think they're going to delay DDS till next year. It's being released in November right now, which isn't a good move for an unknown title.
 
RevenantKioku said:
I could tell you what I didn't like about Grandia II's battles, but I think there's enough evidence against me for no one to care what I say about RPGs anymore :D
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Yeah, the fact that you enjoy the RPG equivalent of Big Rigs pretty much kills any creditbility you had. =P
 
dark10x said:
Yeah, the fact that you enjoy the RPG equivalent of Big Rigs pretty much kills any creditbility you had. =P
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Hahaha, FFX-2 isn't that broken. And I guess my complete copies of all the SMT games but 3 doesn't give me enough street cred, does it?
Actually I didn't have many issues with the game (Grandia II) other than it didn't keep my interest, but its funny how similar I found its battle and FFX-2's to be.
 
RevenantKioku said:
Hahaha, FFX-2 isn't that broken. And I guess my complete copies of all the SMT games but 3 doesn't give me enough street cred, does it?
Actually I didn't have many issues with the game other than it didn't keep my interest, but its funny how similar I found its battle and FFX-2's to be.
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I was talking about Kingdom Hearts. ;)
 
efralope said:
Square's only "big" (as in blockbuster potential) release this year IMO is Kingdom Hearts GBA
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Well, I was kind of meaning "biggest release" by Square Enix themselves, as in the only title they'll put much advertising bucks behind. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is either a Nintendo title, or a Disney Interactive one (anybody know for sure?), so if it gets advertising put behind it, it'd likely be done by one of those two companies instead.

That said, I do think Star Ocean could end up a success if Square Enix plays their cards right. Keep the TV ads going, have a print ad for a few months, and maybe throw in a contest (hey, it helps sometimes :P). Just things to promote it. That coupled with word of mouth (I'm thinking it'll generally be positive), review scores, etc -- it could all end up boosting sales quite a bit.

I guess we'll see, but I'm sure that's kind of what they're hoping for.
cvkpaladin said:
Actually, whatever happened to GameArts anyways?
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They were originally partially owned by Enix, pre-merger. It was a small stake in the company, with a publishing deal thrown on top. After the merger, though, it seems like it all faded away... Enix hasn't spoken on GameArts' behalf since before the merger, and GameArts has also started XBox development, where-as Enix doesn't even have a publishing license for the system (as far as I know, at least).

Odds are that GameArts has just gone back to having no set publisher, so we'll likely see their games come over by multiple companies again (Lunar by Working Designs, Grandia titles by Ubi Soft, etc), instead of (Square-) Enix handling everything worldwide.

As far as their projects go, they were hiring programmers/technicians for a few online projects awhile back, as well as working on the newly announced Gungriffon game for XBox. They also had that "Pure Dragon" title, but it seems to have disappeared. That's about it...
Alex said:
Grandia II was close to the worst sequel ever made. It had absoluely nothing on the original.
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I personally thought the battle system, Skill Book & Mana Egg systems, and the voice acting were all sizable improvements over the first.

However, for the battle system, the improvements weren't really necessary at all in the long-run. Most of the game was painfully easy, with maybe the odd boss fight or two being even remotely challenging. In fact, the only portion of the game I thought was well-balanced was the side dungeon with the Gargoyles. Now if only more of the game was like that...
 
Well, I was kind of meaning "biggest release" by Square Enix themselves, as in the only title they'll put much advertising bucks behind. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is either a Nintendo title, or a Disney Interactive one (anybody know for sure?), so if it gets advertising put behind it, it'd likely be done by one of those two companies instead.
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According to Nintendo's latest release list, Chain of Memories is actually published by Square Enix (unlike the Final Fantasy compilation on GBA, which is published by Nintendo). So they'll be handling the promotion in conjunction with Disney, as was the case with the original Kingdom Hearts.

We heard fairly recently that Game Arts was doing Grandia III for Squenix, but the guy we got the story from was pretty drunk at the time, so who knows?

Pure Dragon wasn't even a game. It was some kind of attempt at a multimedia character franchise or some whacko shit like that.

DFS.
 
WarPig said:
According to Nintendo's latest release list, Chain of Memories is actually published by Square Enix (unlike the Final Fantasy compilation on GBA, which is published by Nintendo). So they'll be handling the promotion in conjunction with Disney, as was the case with the original Kingdom Hearts.

We heard fairly recently that Game Arts was doing Grandia III for Squenix, but the guy we got the story from was pretty drunk at the time, so who knows?

Pure Dragon wasn't even a game. It was some kind of attempt at a multimedia character franchise or some whacko shit like that.

DFS.
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yeah, FF Tactics, 1 & 2, and Sword of Mana have been Nintendo published, but I imagine because of the Disney licensing issues, it was simpler to have Square put this one out themselves (the first Square non-Sony-system published game since the SNES I believe). It will probably be their only one though, as Nintendo has been pushing their help as a 3rd party for then they have been eager to help, although the DS signals are pretty strong this time...
 
I'm looking forward to this one - my copy shipped today, which means I should get it the day I leave for two weeks of holiday. Huzzah.
 
kevm3 said:
So did anyone pick up a copy today? How is it so far?
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Err, today was the US release date, right? If so, it's only ~7:30 in the Eastern Time Zone...so there is no way that anyone could have picked it up. Was the European release date possibly set for today as well?
 
dark10x said:
Yesterday was the ship date. It should be reaching store shelves today, however...
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Yup and I'm at work until 5... have off tomorrow for a doctor's appointment, and Friday's only a half a day, and of course Monday's labor day... I'm gonna get a LOT of gaming in this weekend.
 
I hope Square and Ubi dosen't fuck up the PAL-version. Now that the game is on 2 DVDs they should have "enough space" as they call it to include a 60Hz switch.

The bonusdisc seems awesome btw!

Includes additional DVD
Features:
- Trailers of Final Fantasy XII and Brave Fencer Musashi.
- Interview section with the studio of development.
- 7 tracks with more than 17 minutes music composed by famous Final Fantasy composer Sakuraba.
- Gallery section featuring artwork from the game.
- Trailers for Ghost Recon 2 and Myst Revolutions
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Just picked up the game. The game comes in an actual box, when you take the DVD case out the cover is the same as the Japanese cover (the back of the DVD box is a picture of Fayt and Sophia looking up). So for those that didn't like the US box with Fayt on the cover, you'll be happy to know that the one with Fayt isn't the actual DVD cover.
 
SolidSnakex said:
Just picked up the game. The game comes in an actual box, when you take the DVD case out the cover is the same as the Japanese cover (the back of the DVD box is a picture of Fayt and Sophia looking up). So for those that didn't like the US box with Fayt on the cover, you'll be happy to know that the one with Fayt isn't the actual DVD cover.
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Mmm, cover goodness..
Does it have the same shiny feel as the Kingdom Herts cover?
 
One hour to go, then gotta weave my way through Long Island traffic like I'm in a Cave shooter and I can finally get my copy... I'm really anticipating picking up the guide, I hear it's really large... I made the mistake of never getting a SO2 or a VP guide, and those sell for quite a bit on ebay nowadays.

Got my play-asia order with Slime Mori Mori Dragonquest today... so I'll have that to play too.
 
Ok i've put in a little time with it now (only got to the first village though).

As far as options go, you've standard screen and widescreen (16:9). For audio you've got Mono, Stereo, Dolby Pro Logic 2 and Headphones. You can select to have events play without being able to skip them or to have it where you can press a button to skip them. Then you've got you voices option, Voices w/ subs where you have to press X after each line, Voices only, Subs only, and Voices w/ subs where everything flows together.

Graphically it's a mixed bag. The main characters look really good and animate very well (especially Peppita). The NPC's range from ok to pretty bad, especially when you see close ups of them, they become really blurry and you can see how undetailed they're. It's basically like the drop off in quality you see from Shenmue's main characters and the regular characters. Backgrounds so look really nice (i've only seen a few so that could change). They're pretty detailed and have nice texturing. Overall i'd say they're above FFX level, mainly because of the animation quality of the characters which is so far beyond FFX.

Musically, as always SO is Sakuraba at his best. That's all that really needs to be said.

Gameplay, this is the main reason I really play all Tri-Ace games, and as of now SO3 is delivering. Battle controls are pretty simple, X is for Weak Attack and Circle is for your Strong Attack, standing still is your gaurd and L2+Analog is used to evade. You've also got other moves such as cancels. Battles are very fast paced, even moreso than ToS. You basically run into an enemy and the screens fades and goes into battle. You then have full control over your character just like in ToS to move anywhere you want on the map (and they tend to be big battle maps even when you only have 1 enemy to fight). It's very fluid though, much moreso than SO2 was.

As a whole i'm really enjoying it so far. It's suppose to start going downhill later on according to reviewers so we'll see. But it seems like a great game if you've enjoyed the series before. If only because of how fun the battle system is.
 
Wow, I've just started just to test it out before dinner...but damn, this looks amazing!!!

Progressive scan support should be a requirement for RPGs from now on. I dunno what it is, but this is one of the sharpest, most colorful games I've ever seen on here. It's almost unreal. The detail levels aren't shocking or anything (though they look good enough), but the good textures combined with crispness of everything else is truly magnificent.

SO3 has the quite possibly the best image quality of any game on PS2 and manages to best almost every GC and XBOX game I own as well (outside of a few). I seriously can't get over how beautiful this looks!!

Although it may not be the most complex, this might be my vote for the nicest looking JRPG we've seen yet. Virtually flawless image quality combined with 60 fps along with truly nice textures and models.

Shew, I'm just so impressed by this, so it probably sounds a bit crazy. :P i mean, I expected nice IQ...but this is simply among the very best I've seen on a console. Damn it, PS2 developers, LOOK at this game and realize that you NEED progressive scan. Shame on Namco for not including it in Symphonia, which is on a system where 480p is very common...

Having played ToS all day (up till now), this is like a breath of fresh air. SO3 really looks a lot better IMO (and oddly enough, has superior textures...which is odd for a PS2 title).

Well, time to go eat...then I can get back to this and enjoy the game!
 
Yea, I played a few hours of the import, and the progressive scan support was a REAL nice touch. Walking around that hotel, particularly near the windowed rooftop terrace was stunning stuff. Clarity is fantastic.

Despite the lack of 480p support in ToS(really weird), I still have to argue that game as having a great visual output despite. It could just be the vibrancy of the areas and the heavy use of bright color definition(distinct black levels), but it's quite a looker regardless. Been playing ToS very heavilly lately(DAMN THAT ABYSSON!), but I am drawing SO3 comparisons from year-old memories...
 
I wasn't BSing when I said Star Ocean 3 was a fucking awesome looking game when the game first came out ;p
 
Yes! Picture quality! That's why I buy my games!

I wish I had a high-def TV. Maybe then I'd forgive this game for playing like crap. :(
 
What the hell, didn't they fix the bugs?!

I just changed a couple options in the game and when I tried to exit the menu...the music stopped and the screen stayed black. I had to reset the system...

Well, we'll see...hopefully this doesn't occur again.
 
dark10x said:
What the hell, didn't they fix the bugs?!

I just changed a couple options in the game and when I tried to exit the menu...the music stopped and the screen stayed black. I had to reset the system...

Well, we'll see...hopefully this doesn't occur again.
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HAHAHAHAAHA

...it begins =p
 
I played about 4 hours so far, its okay but I dont think its better then ToS.

The voice choices for the characters arnt terrible, but the delivery is. The characters feel like robots. And whats with the 10 second pauses inbetween every sentance. Horrid at times.

The controls suck too. Not in battles, battle control is really really great. But walking around the world Fayt feels like an old fucking tank. After 3 minutes of playing, I almost was going ot quit and return my copy. Thats how bad it is. I dont ever recall playing an RPG where the out of battle control was THIS bad.

Thankfully though the story seems interesting even if 90% of the character are annoying as hell(partly because of the acting) and the battle system is fun.

As I said before, there isnt anyway this touches ToS. Symphonia has it beat on almost every level, expect for maybe the battle system and graphics. But thats hard to tell because even 5 hours into the game ive only fought like 10 battles. This game is cut-scene manias, buyers beware if you hate that kinda shit.
 
AeroGod said:
The controls suck too. Not in battles, battle control is really really great.
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YOU WILL LEARN

But walking around the world Fayt feels like an old fucking tank.
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yeah. i have no idea what's up with that. it's bizarre. you get used to it.

As I said before, there isnt anyway this touches ToS. Symphonia has it beat on almost every level, expect for maybe the battle system...
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HA HA HA

But thats hard to tell because even 5 hours into the game ive only fought like 10 battles. This game is cut-scene manis, buyers beware if you hate that kinda shit.
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it calms down. prepare for the slog!
 
Shouta said:
You think Fate controls like a tank? Weird, I thought he moved incredibly well outside of battle O_o.
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First of all, unless im doing something wrong you cant walk at all. No level on control with the stick. Thats dumb. And he gets caught up on some world objects and other NPCs WAY WAY to easy. Maybe its not as bad as I make it out to be, but it sure isnt good.


HA HA HA
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I liked ToS alot. Especially the battles sytem. It was fun, fast paced, and you had good control over your characters. Star Ocean feels a bit more actiony and switching between characters is easy, plus i like the whole HP MP F concept. But like I said, ive only fought a few battles so it has plenty of time to get bad.
 
ferricide said:
YOU WILL LEARN


yeah. i have no idea what's up with that. it's bizarre. you get used to it.


HA HA HA


it calms down. prepare for the slog!
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Why are you so spiteful towards this game? Did it rape your children or something?
 
Let's see... the graphics are absolutely beautiful... sharp and detailed, much nicer than TOS's rather washed-out and blurry backgrounds. Being able to rotate the camera is really nice too (especially after having played Xenosaga and TOS), I wish you could go into a first person POV mode.

Music is really cool, sounds very symphonic and with high quality instrument samples. I like some of the ambient music used, seems a bit richer and less buttrocky than Sakuraba's other stuff. Buttrock is fine in an RPG (I love the Ys soundtracks), but it's nice to have something different every now and then.

Story seems nice, I love the dictionary (an option I liked in Xenosaga), and the links to the worlds of SO1 and 2. I have a feeling that I've seen this all before, but that doesn't phase me too much.

The battle system doesn't feel as responsive as SO2s, which is my favorite battle system ever. I'm not far into the game, but it doesn't seem horrible. Just a bit stiff, I guess it's because I'm trying to play it like TOS, and you can't combo in this game... Also, it seems to only focus on your lead character, making it very easy to lose your other 2 characters... I'm coming into this with just recently replaying SO1, so I'm used to everyone on the same screen, maybe... we'll see if I can get the hang of this.

Biggest annoyance so far - the battle trophies, every time you get one, you have to save it to the memory card.

So far, I'm really pleased with my purchase. The guide looks really nice too. It was cool, when I went to pick it up, 2 customers in there were discussing SO2. They were talking about fighting Indalecio with his limiter removed.
 
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