Yes, I'm back, and I'm talking about some of my gaming experiences for one of my favorite gaming series, Star Ocean. This is also going to cover the missteps by tri-Ace and Square Enix on something that is quite the gem if they actually paid attention to their missteps instead of brushing everything off. They found with Final Fantasy, if there was something wrong with the game play, they did better for the next game in order to keep sales bolstered. The same thing could have been done here if the time had been taken.
Spoiler Alert: If you have not played these games, some of my complaints and loves for this series are parts of the actual game play itself. Please be advised on this and either proceed with caution or hightail it out of here.
For those of you who have never heard of this series, it's not quite in the granddaddy category, like Dragon Quest, or in the popular kids category, like Final Fantasy, but, of the RPGs I've played, it's among the most unique. Journey to Silius went more in the direction of science-fiction in terms of RPG play, from what I recall. Final Fantasy tends to combine straight up fantasy elements with urban fantasy and steampunk while Shining Force and Dragon Quest tend to go more straight up fantasy in terms of setting, character, and game play.
From the brief history I've learned about this particular series, it came about because of a love for Star Trek so the developers and designers took many of their cues from Roddenberry's dream child. It's a futuristic setting where someone from Earth sets about exploring other planets. Got the Star Trek influence so far? Great, because that's actually about where it ends. Star Ocean: A Space Odyssey first appeared in Japan for the Super Nintendo. It didn't hit the U.S. In fact, many in the U.S. wouldn't know about this series until the development and distribution of the very first PlayStation console, where the second game in the series, Star Ocean: Second Story, was released.
Games One and Two would see eventual updates and re-releases to the PSP, and, according to the official Star Ocean Facebook page, the first game, now dubbed First Departure, is heading for the Nintendo Switch. When that happens, well, that's anyone's guess at this point. The page itself was updated in May.
Now, I have not officially played First Departure just yet. I currently lack a PSP in which to play the game, though I may break down and buy myself a Switch just for the joy of it. (I'd much prefer to get a refurbished PSP at this point because I have have Second Evolution, the renamed revamp of Second Story, along with some of the very first Final Fantasy games I purchased.) As a result, I really can't comment too much on the game play for Game 1. I can comment on the characters a little bit, but that's based on limited play for the most recent addition to the series, Anamnesis. U.S. residents, don't get too excited. Service for the game is concluding in November, the announcement coming last week and taking many of us who were still playing the game by surprise. There will be more on that after I get through the predecessors.
At any rate, because I have yet to actually play this game, I can't comment on what was done right or done wrong. I know from speaking with a friend who has played the Japanese version that there isn't any planet hopping. Time portals into the past? Yep. Got it covered, but there's only one planet that gets explored, and that's pretty much it. I know the planet in question is Roak, and Roak isn't your typical underdeveloped planet at this point, at least not what you'd see in a Star Trek episode.
I have started to play Second Story a little bit after finding a used copy at a local store here in Tulsa, but I've not gotten very far. It's been over a year since I've played, and some of it is I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing. I also found myself feeling liked I'd already played the game once before for some reason, and, in a way, I had. Both Star Ocean and Final Fantasy are developed and distributed by Square Enix and tri-Ace. Before we'd moved from Michigan, I'd borrowed my brother's copy of Final Fantasy VII and played that all the way through. Well, to the best of my abilities, anyway, and the writers for Second Story took a lot of the elements from Final Fantasy VII and plopped them into the game. Second Story, however, does have a few things over the Final Fantasy games I have played, and that something is you can choose who to play as: Claude Kenny or Rena. Whoever you choose affects your game play as well as who you can recruit later on. If you choose Claude, you're unable to recruit Dias Flac after meeting him. Also, if you recruit a young man named Ashton Anchors, you're unable to recruit select characters later in the game. This definitely encourages multiple gaming logs for different outcomes. There are certain characters you're going to get, no matter what. And, fortunately for me, all I gotta do to play this game is to set up my PS2 and go from there to hit as many of these options as possible.
Based on what I've observed, again, in Anamnesis, this is where the planet-hopping in the series begins. You, the player, start out stuck on a planet, but you don't remain there. Your adventure takes you to select, yet different areas of the universe, all in an effort to stop a group of individuals from destroying it.
This is going to be the common theme for Star Ocean from this point forward. Also going to be recurring is the planet-hopping, in some form or another, for most of the games. How it happens in SO2, I don't know yet. Those who have played it do know, and I will kindly ask that they keep that information to themselves. LOL. I do want to play this game, even though it's twenty years after the fact, so please no spoilers. I'm struggling and fighting myself to not ask questions about Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age as it is! The only game I can't attest to on this is Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, which was released in Japan only for the GameBoy. I just don't remember if it was for the GameBoy or GameBoy Color.
Because of the space/technology aspect and the characters roaming on underdeveloped planets where magic and dragons exist, this is one area that makes Star Ocean unique amongst all of the Japanese role-playing games. It is a flawless combination of Star Trek meeting Dungeons and Dragons. It's a good series to play when you want both out of a gaming adventure.
The second thing that makes Star Ocean unique amongst the RPGs is the chronology behind it. All of the games are connected but loosely so. In fact, if you were to ask me in which order you should play the games, I'd ask you which way do you want to go? Do you want to go in order of release? Or do you want to go in order of timeline? Either way, it's going to be similar to playing Final Fantasy. You're just not really going to be lost on what happened before, and that actually can make it easier to play if you're new to the series. But, if you wish to play the games in chronological order over release dates, you'd play The Last Hope, First Departure, Second Story (set twenty years after First Departure), Blue Sphere (set two years after Second Story and featuring some of the SO2 cast), Integrity and Faithlessness, and ending with Till the End of Time while Anamnesis takes place between Integrity and Faithlessness and Till the End of Time. If you want to play in terms of release date, you'd start with First Departure, Second Story, Blue Sphere, Till the End of Time, The Last Hope, Integrity and Faithlessness, and finishing up with Anamnesis.
So how did I get into this series if I haven't played either of the first two games, you might ask? Well, I actually saw a commercial for Till the End of the Time back in the day and thought it looked cool, but I never got around to actually gaming at the time, either. Keeping up with the gaming systems kind of didn't happen after my stepdad got the Sega Genesis. My brother kept up with the systems, but he was in the Air Force. I was watching one of my friends play Till the End of Time at his house after he'd borrowed the copy from his brother. I didn't get my own copy until 2005, and I still made some of the same goof ups I did in my new play-through as I did in my first.
I fell in love with this game. Fayt Leingod became one of my favorite characters to focus on and torture in my Star Ocean fanfiction. He also became the inspiration for Fen Willows in my Arc of Fantasy series, but I twisted the situation around, for those who have played Till the End of Time. In fact, there are a few deviations away from this game to say it isn't fanfiction. Mind you, it never started out as fanfiction, but I digress.
Till the End of Time was the first RPG I ever played where I could go planet-hopping. In fact, I never knew about the connection to Star Trek until years later. Am I surprised by it? Nah. The influence was quite obvious, from the naming of the Pangalactic Federation to the UP3. The only difference is in Till the End of Time, humans are already traversing the universe and are enjoying tropical planet getaways instead of tropical island.
Like Second Story, you have characters that you can recruit to complete your party of eight. Your battle party consists of three, but you have eight playable characters to see you through. Some - Maria, Sophia, Adray, Cliff, and Mirage - you're going to get, no matter what. They're what I'm going to dub as the non-negotiable characters. That leaves Albel, Nel, Roger, and Peppita for your recruits, which can lead to interesting party combinations, and, of course, opens up some endings for those characters. Note: If you never pick up Roger, the only time you'll see him is after the end credits have finished, and he's in a cave. While he's not a favorite character of mine, getting him does have some perks, like finding items that you cannot get unless you rescue and recruit him once. To recruit permanently from the aforementioned four recruits, you're going to be about halfway through the game and choose who you really want between Roger, Nel, and Albel to have. After that, you can choose from Peppita, and whoever you didn't choose the first time around. Tread carefully in this respect, you can lose some golden opportunities if you haven't already decided who you want. And, if you want the Defeat Luther at Level One battle trophy, you're going to have NOT level up Fayt immediately or Sophia upon gaining her AND you'll have to recruit Peppita. These are the only characters who start out at Level One. Otherwise, you will never see that trophy.
And because of the recruiting thing, again you have different play-through options. It's another game that encourages multiple play-throughs and on various difficulty levels before you start playing.
Till the End of Time sets another precedence for the series, or so I'm presuming (again, gotta play the first two to make sure): The genetically modified and enhanced character designed to take down the threat to the universe. And we're not talking something accidental here. We're talking intentionally, and, for this game, there's a good reason for why it's done. Mind you, the story, when you start to tear it apart, is weak. Not everyone enjoyed the story line. I personally did.
My main complaint about this game is the lack of true development for the main female characters, Maria and Sophia, and almost nothing for many of the secondary characters, including the recruitables. In fact, the only ones who experience any type of development and treatment are Fayt, Cliff, Nel, and Albel, and that's probably why they're amongst the fan favorites. (Yes, Sophia and Maria have fans as well, and it's for them that I say these two characters actually got the worst end of the deal when it came to character growth and development. They both experience some, but it wasn't enough for it to stick. I believe there's only one fanfiction piece out there, out of all the SO3 fanfiction out there, that deals with Sophia's captivity by the Vendeeni. There might be more, in other languages, but, amongst the English-speakers, just one. For me, I'm keeping my annoyances with her settled on her battle dialogue - she seriously tells the bad guys that what they've done isn't nice when they're not out to be nice; they're out to kill you and stop you from reaching your objective - and her spell-casting times. It took a Sophia fan to tell me how to increase her casting time because she and Adray have the worst wind up times imaginable, and they are the primary healers. They are even the primary spell-casters, having the wider arsenal of attack spells, and they're naturally slooooow! And even putting them on focus on healing only tactics can backfire. Main attackers down to fifty hit points? Oh, I'm going to cast Firebolt! Mind you, Nel knows healing and if you find one of the right items, anyone else can learn how to cast basic healing spells, but they give the better spells to Sophia and Adray, including revival spells. If you can work with the accessories and the like to cut their casting times in half, they're great for the party, but I would still recommend going into any higher level battle fully stocked on restorative items. Just in case!)
So, as we're going in chronological order here: First Departure was originally released in Japan in 1996 with a setting of 300-something S.D.; Second Story in 1999, set twenty years later; Till the End of Time in 2002, which is set in 772 S.D. - we get to the fourth game, The Last Hope. This game is the prequel to everything we have going on. It's time setting is 10 S.D. We're actually doing space exploration because life on earth sucks worse than it does now. I'm forgetting the release year, but then this game may have had two different release years. The Last Hope is the first, and only, Star Ocean game to be released to two different systems around the same time. The first time the game was released, it was to the XBox360 and possessed a lot of bugginess in the game play. tri-Ace and Square Enix took note, along with the many complaints from fans, and they made the upgrades along with making a slightly exclusive version for the PS3. Many Star Ocean fans, at the time, didn't own an XBox360, and the games they could get on that system, they already had for the PS3. If I recall correctly, this was an attempt on Square Enix's part to broaden the fan-base, which actually failed. Aside from the bugginess in Till the End of Time for the Japanese release, this was one of the only times the companies paid attention to fan complaints and did what they could to improve upon the games in question. The U.S. didn't get Till the End of Time right away, and we didn't even get the original release. We got the Japanese director's cut straight up.
Once again, we're doing the whole planet-hopping because we're exploring for a suitable new home for the human race - note: it doesn't happen because our cast from the previous games - Ronyx J. Kenny, his son Claude Kenny, Fayt Leingod, Sophia Esteed, and Maria Traydor - are all born somewhere on Earth; at least most of them are; I believe Sophia was actually born on Moonbase, but I'm not about to go double-checking at this point. We're looking for this new home because of the environmental degradation on Earth thanks to none other, World War III.
It's taken me a few years after playing and defeating this game for me to start ripping this game's story line to shreds. Make no mistakes here: I love this game. Do I love it as much as Till the End of Time? Nope. While SO3 might have a weaker story than SO4, the plotholes in SO3 are not nearly as monumental as the travesty of SO4.
For the SO4 story line, part of the reason why Earth is in such bad shape on an environmental level is the result of World War III. This actually hails back to the Star Trek roots, in which the aftermath of World War III caused humans to build a warp drive engine. (Watch the ST:TNG movie, First Contact, for more details on how this plays out.) While WWIII isn't necessarily a bad trope to use for creating a more enlightened human environment, where I start to have problems with the SO4 story is the way they try to go about and creating the horror of the aftermath. The opening scenes will show you the actual devastation of WWIII and the aftermath, which leads to mankind looking to space for survival. Once you get through it, you have Edge Maverick's monologue about the same events to get started. He says that weapons of mass destruction were used with impunity upon the planet's surface, which in turned nearly decimated the human population. The final effects are no animal life, very little plant life, and an obviously degrading environment all the way around. Humans are living in underground cities at this point. And they do demonstrate each time in the beginning just how massive these nuclear strikes are. There was really no regard for innocent lives in this, and that's one of the driving forces behind this plot device.
What the writers didn't do was consider potential environmental impact of certain natural locations if everyone who has nukes started firing off nukes wherever they could. Even if super volcanoes weren't a well-known thing at the time (which I'm expressing my doubts because, well, geologists know these things, of course), there are still geological places you just don't want to hit with a nuclear strike. The San Andreas fault line, for example. Not only would that cause massive earthquakes along the West Coast of the U.S., it could possibly trigger the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire, which would have catastrophic environmental effects. Hawaii and Japan would cease to exist, thanks to volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. And that's nothing to say of what would happen if a nuclear missile with 100 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb hit the Yellowstone Caldera. If that thing goes, well, North America would cease to exist in its current state. The Caldera going could get the New Madrid fault line going, and, if that one goes, it does have the potential to rip the U.S. in half. Maybe that's just me going fantastical on potential natural disasters, thanks to films, but, as we're going with the worst case scenario for why humans can't live on the planet's surface, this is as about as extreme as I can. I personally feel a consultation with a geologist could have made sure such a glaring error not so glaring. I did my own research into this some years later and long after the film 2012 hit the theaters. There are six known super volcanoes, and three of them are in the U.S. On a geological level, for the Yellowstone Caldera alone, you don't want to fuck with the U.S.
That said, I also believe that any leader who wants to keep a position after a war is over is definitely going to avoid the use of nuclear weapons as much as possible. The aftermaths of WWII were bad enough. While we do have some idiots out there, the vast majority of the world's leaders would be like, no. You do that, and you will not live to see the light of day once this is all over. (Plus, there are also protocols in place to keep such things from happening.)
As with the whole geological aspect, a quick military consultation could have proven quite beneficial for the game's WWIII usage. Based on the knowledge I have gained over the years since playing SO4 and watching the cut-scenes on YouTube, I'm running with the theory that, while World War III happened, the usage of weapons of mass destruction was quite limited, and what really did in the planet was climate change. The powers that be needed something extra to blame for the carelessness of the human race, and World War III itself became the perfect scapegoat because it certainly didn't help matters any.
With the World War III trope out of the way, we get to the actual story itself. A cautionary tale about rapid evolution and how it can destroy a culture. In the case of the game, quite literally. One of the first species you encounter is quite violent and ultimately destroys itself because it couldn't handle the technological power it wielded. The evolution happened rapidly.
I'm not sure what caused the Federation in Star Trek to come up with the Prime Directive, which is we shall not interfere with a civilization less advanced than we are. I'm personally presuming that some part of history managed to survive the onslaught of World War III, and everyone remembered what happened when Europeans came to the Americas and nearly destroyed indigenous culture. If a Trekkie out there can tell me otherwise, awesome! But I'm presuming Roddenberry studied history, saw what happened, and knew that it would be a likely outcome for space exploration.
This history is apparently LOST in SO4. Our hero has to learn the hard way and set in motion the rules governing what to do when encountering an underdeveloped civilization. In fact, there are no rules governing space exploration here, only that it gets done, and we have minimal crews on each ship. Our main character, Edge Maverick, is 20, about to be 21. Reimi, our main female character, is 19. Part of the game play with these two are their specialized areas of anthropology and smithery for Edge (better drop rates on humanoid enemies, like the scumbags and basically weapons creation master for Item Creation) and botany and cooking for Reimi (pretty much the same thing, except the botany covers hidden harvesting points along with the increased item drop from plant-based enemies), which, in terms of training, would have started them out young for this project. The back of the game's strategy guide says the two volunteered. I'm wondering at what ages. That could be good fanfiction fodder, you know? ^_^ Anyhoo, there's a lot of preparations involved in getting ready for space exploration. They build the Moonbase and five spacecraft, but no one decides to set forth any rules. At this point, I'm having to come up with a legit reason for why this is: the planets chosen had no actual alien life forms, etc . . . But even the Eldarians, who join up, should have had something in place. The whole lack of actual guidelines for intrepid space explorers just seems off.
Let's add into this one of the crew members has the ability to fight off any disease whatsoever, even it's alien. Here is where the genetically modified and enhanced humans come on, and what frightens me about this is no one barred this particular character from joining the ranks. The game designers didn't stop to think that a character whose body could adapt to any illness or ailment could also cause that ailment to mutate and wipe out an entire planet. It was a story device to create angst and self-loathing that ultimately served another part of the story directly, and it worked. Sadly, as a science-fiction geek who gets exposed to natural disaster stories and disease stories, I know that this type of plot device is one that would backfire. On anyone. I would expect anyone to question that if I were to have that type of a character in my story. It's just unrealistic to expect no tragedies from such a character's creation, not when diseases in humans already mutate in order to survive. And to have the main character be clueless about this, despite being childhood friends, is also unrealistic. Edge's trust in Reimi remains strong, and she's happy for it. She's not feeling the least bit guilty for her lack of trust in him. I just don't understand how he could keep trusting her when her big secret is more bane than boon in the long run of human exploration. It might be the Japanese sensibility here that's coming out in these characters. I don't know. I do believe that many North American and European fans might find this more unbelievable than that. (Reimi fans, if you read this, and you say that trust is earned, you're right, but Edge should have had her trust a long ass time ago. He was practically raised by her parents after his dad died. The only way I would buy her silence on this matter is if her parents had told her to keep her mouth shut, even to Edge, because of the trauma she endured. And, in that vein, trust is earned and trust can be broken. That's a huge secret, one that impacts more than just a friendship. This part of Reimi's development was a huge and gross misstep on the designers' parts. Her powers of adaptation become a wild card no one wants on their team.) Again, if we had maybe just a tad bit of explanation on some of this instead of having to weave our own, this could have been more understandable. Sadly, all of what I've mentioned is more speculation on my part and definitely fanfiction fodder. (I still write SO fanfiction. I recently updated a story called Destinies Intertwined by Fate. I have definitely used Reimi's adaptation skills for sickness at their worst so yes. I did go there. LOL)
I'm almost done with SO4 here, my friends. Just bear with me a tad bit longer. I just have SO5 and Anamnesis left.
There is some stupidity that abounds in this game. The director makes a comment that he has plenty of people to man the remaining two ships, but they're all on Earth (which doesn't do any good if the crew of the one is dead). I know we need a person to hate in this game, but, again, we gotta go to fanfiction to make any sense of why a character is doing what a character is doing. I'm going to add into this the absurd notion that a single ship could protect an entire fleet of refugees with no assistance. There's a scene in this game where you watch as Crowe tries to desperately protect the Eldarian refugees without any kind of military backup. And no one thought to contact the one friendly alien species out there that could help, so we have hundreds of dead refugees for no apparent reason other than one man's apparent vanity in trying to get things done. Again, this is just more fanfiction fodder for the fandom in an effort to try and repair this kind of story damage. And this is already a slightly obscure fandom when it comes to writers. If others aren't taking that time to do any of this, it's because they don't want to, they're not necessarily inspired to do any of this, and I certainly don't blame them because we were let down when it came to story. It's a lot nicer to get those hints from the writers themselves during the game play than it is to scratch your head throughout and say, "WTF? That was stupid. Why did they do that? Why am I still playing this? I'm just going to trade it in for a new game that's better." And based on the drop in sales from Till the End of Time to The Last Hope, I'm presuming that a lot of the North American and European fans were saying exactly that. They shouldn't be the ones fixing these story errors.
Add into this the preachiness and poetic waxings of evolution, and we get a failed attempt at a cash cow. One would think that, after some of the failed attempts of doing the same thing with some of the Final Fantasy games, tri-Ace and Square Enix would have learned to do more with the series than what it has. Sadly, because this isn't Final Fantasy, the drop in sales translated into: It isn't doing well, we really shouldn't bother that much.
SO4 was almost the last game in the series. Fortunately, a fan in the company decided to try and revive the series with the final of the console games, Integrity and Faithlessness. We got a better story with this one, but it didn't work as well as it could have. We don't do any planet-hopping. We don't get a lot of game play. In fact, that started to go down with SO4. I put in a little over 60s on my first play-through for SO3, and that includes some of the post-game content. After I got my own copy of SO3 and we had a PS2, I put in over 100 hours into my game play on that first play-through alone, including post-game content, and I still haven't defeated that final post-game boss yet! I can't tell you how many hours I put into SO5 - my original play-through vanished at some point - but it wasn't anywhere near 60 hours. The game play and story were pretty straightforward, and I defeated the game.
For one of my friends, SO5 felt like a half-baked story, like it was only half a story, and I can understand why she feels that way. For the amount of story we had, though, in my personal opinion, we didn't have as many plot holes, and it filled a gap between games 2 and 3. It offered us new characters, which is actually part of the series' charm.
Finally, we get to Anamnesis, which is not a console game but a mobile phone game. It was released to North America last summer. Free to play, got plenty of gems for trying to summon characters, including favorites spanning all five games. From some of the games, you even got characters that weren't playable, like Clair, Tynave, and Farleen from SO3.
Anamnesis is currently enjoying a great deal of popularity in Japan. In North America, it isn't quite so true. We've had to wait for more story to come out - I attribute this to the amount of time it takes to translate the story itself from Japanese into English (primarily) and to possibly translating the programming itself. I'm going to be the first to admit that programming is a massively grey area for me. I'm also saying possibly on translating the actual programming because I know people who have the Japanese version of the game on their phones, something I'm considering doing even though I really can't read kanji. Like. At all. (But great motivation to learn, yeah?) I'm just trying to consider all of the possibilities in why it took so long to have the story updated. The same friend of mine who plays the Japanese version has noted that it takes up to a year or two for the new stuff to make its way to North America. That ultimately leaves the rest of the world in the lurch when it comes to the new content. We can either grind away for ranking or just stop playing. Many stopped playing, which plummeted the game's potential.
I'm actually forgiving on the amount of time for the events and story to make its way to North America. The original Dragon Quest game appeared in Japan in 1986, hitting the U.S. in 1989. Some amount of delay is bound to be inevitable. I'm also willing to grind away for ranks and levels. It's something that's part of every fantasy RPG ever, in some form or another. Even the first Dragon Quest Builders game had some form of leveling up. Anamnesis became an MMORPG, and, well, the only fantasy MMORPGs that have had any success have been Dungeons and Dragons Online and World of Warcraft, along with its predecessor. Final Fantasy barely survived its first MMORPG attempt. I believe they're trying a second and a third time with that series, one more for PC than mobile phone and the other for mobile phone (there was a crossover with Anamnesis and the Final Fantasy game - I got at least two of those characters), and I'd have to poke around to find out if the newer attempts are more successful than the first time around, or if they're just as doomed as the first. What I'm noticing with Anamnesis is most fans in North America don't want to wait a year for new content, not when other games are coming out with content much faster. I don't blame them, either.
What I'm not so forgiving of, like many other fans, is the ridiculousness over getting the established characters. When a special event came out, some of the main cast got new costumes, and trying to get those variants was a major pain in the ass. A ten character draw cost 5000 gems, and there were times when I didn't get a 5 star character (ie, Edge or Fayt). I'd get three stars and maybe a four star or two. I could spend money on more gems (how they were making money on the game because it's actually free to download and play) to do another draw like that and still come out the same way. And now, I'm waiting to hear back on why I can't keep playing because the drop in player participation is causing Square Enix to conclude service in November. I can't update the game. My choice to keep playing right now has been taken out of my hands, and that, right now, is one of the biggest missteps of all on Enix's part. The other, of course, is their lack of support for people who have experienced problems with the game. I'm not sure what happened, but, at some point, when players reached out to support, they never heard back. They reported glitches in the game, and the maintenance never fixed those problems.
(Note: As I finished this entry up, I got a reply back from Enix on the issue regarding the game. Before they performed the last maintenance, the developer sent out an OS compatibility change notice. This took many players by surprise, and it's definitely not helping the Star Ocean franchise maintain any type of viability outside of Japan. I came back up this way to post the news. To say I'm hurt and disappointed is an understatement. It took almost a week to get an answer and then I had to reach out and ask what was going on. They could have told me that last week when I sent the initial inquiry. Again, this came pretty much out of the blue for many of us, and I daresay it's more the North American division pulling some of this shitty behavior and not the company as a whole. I'm certainly going to push for better from this company because they do have other games that I enjoy.)
I'm still waiting to hear back on why this has happened. It's been a week now. And I've fired off a response to find out what's going on. This has not been good for the series in the least, but it's also not insurmountable. We could have gotten more console games if sales were up, but sales have been low since The Last Hope. Whether it's for the reasons I've stated, I don't know. I'm speaking on what has personally disappointed me with the story and game play treatment, and it's baffling that Enix wasn't paying attention because SO2 and SO3 were the most popular games out of the franchise.
And here I am at last, finally concluding on where I feel tri-Ace and Square Enix went wrong with the Star Ocean series. My final analysis is this: they dropped the ball on a unique story idea that could have been marketed to both Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons fans alike. I know of no other series that combines space travel with fantasy settings quite the way this franchise has. (Though if anyone knows of another, I'm glad to hear about it. My RPG games knowledge is quite limited due to personal interest, time, and money. Everything else I've seen in GameStop has been more fantasy-style settings, and my trips there have been just as limited.) This has the potential to be quite the gold mine, but they gotta take the time for the story. They gotta take the time to enhance the game play. Most RPGs last for hours. I'd love to see Star Ocean take some cues from Dragon Quest and actually show when nightfall occurs on the planet and thus have a different range of enemies to fight. (This might be true for Integrity and Faithlessness. It's been a couple of years since I've played. I would love to reacquaint myself.)
Most RPGers are willing to put in the hours for the gaming. I know this. There are D&D groups out there with teenagers, kids in the 13-16 age range. They're putting who knows how many hours into completing quests. Hell, people are putting hours and hours into shooter-style games. It isn't the amount of time being asked to play. It's the overall driving story to get to that final boss.
I'm going to conclude with a number of things. First, I would love to see Till the End of Time get the same treatment as Final Fantasy VII, and with the same VAs. Steve Staley is Fayt Leingod for me. The guy they got for Anamnesis is okay, but he's no Steve. (Just like Crispin Freeman is Albel Nox.) I would love, love, love to play that updated version as much as I'm drooling over the updated Final Fantasy VII coming out in March. I'm not entirely sure how I would rework this story to make it better. I'd probably take elements from the manga and put them in as cut-scenes, but I'd certainly make it so traveling from one point to another on Elicoor II didn't seem like such a breeze. Travel time would become very realistic.
The Last Hope is the one that has the most potential for a rewrite and really could have been gaming gold. There was a missed opportunity with Crowe. They could have done like they did with Second Story/Second Evolution. Choose your character - Edge Maverick or Crowe F. Almedio. That totally would change how that game is played and who you could recruit. (It's actually a dream of mine to rewrite this game into a novel. This may be something I do for 2020 because I'm doing my best to stick with the projects that need finishing at this point. I'm considering allowing myself at least two new projects for 2020, and it's turning into three. Stay tuned on that one!) The main problem is fixing the unbelievable parts, which I feel I can do.
I can't say much about Integrity and Faithlessness. I enjoyed the story, what I can remember of it. While I can watch the cut-scenes on YouTube, I'd prefer to play it again because I've noticed where the cut-scenes have left out important bits because they were game play. I need those bits to make a better call on what I would do differently for this game.
Finally, I reach Anamnesis. Ultimately, I'd love to see this turned into a console game for North American and European players. I'd have the events, like the Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day specials (to name a few of the events), along with select characters be locked until certain levels and goals were reached. Just like learning new skills and spells throughout any RPG. But the story would have to be complete first, and that's kind of hard to do with an MMORPG like that. Add into this the bonus of being able to create your own character, and tri-Ace and Square Enix would definitely have a gaming experience unlike any other for the console. I would avoid making the events and limited-time characters as downloadable content. The gacha system has already burned many of the players here when it comes to Anamnesis. We want those characters, and we want them now, without needing an online connection!
That pretty much covers it. Yeah, this was a long entry. Probably be about an hour on YouTube or Facebook. ^_^ At any rate, it's time for me to wind this down and mosey on to other things for the evening.
I definitely want to see Star Ocean continue. I want to see tri-Ace and Square Enix learning from their missteps with this franchise. Part of why sales are low, as I've said is my opinion, is because the story and game play aren't getting the same treatment as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. (And I'm hearing that a lot of people haven't heard of Dragon Quest, which is kind of weird for me because that series has been around for 33 years. I know of only a few of the games not making it out of Japan initially. But I digress.) I've played almost every Dragon Quest game that I've could over the years, and the consistency with it has been awesome. I've played a few of the Final Fantasy games as well, and, even though some of the characters I've encountered there have annoyed me greatly, the story continued to drive me forward. I can say the same thing about Shining Force, and that has experienced way less popularity than Star Ocean since Sony developed the PlayStation system. I know the developers can do better with this franchise. I've seen fanfic that has done far better by this franchise than what the developers have done.
Whether this happens or not does remain to be seen. I'm forever hopeful. Besides, I love to write, and the fanfiction I can come up with will be awesome, no matter what.
And that's it for today. In the next entry, I'm going to the granddaddy of all RPGs, Dragon Quest! Woohoo! I might round everything out with published works that revolve around gaming. We'll see!
Until the next time!
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