*I have not officially beat the game. I am at the final dungeon with more than 80% of quest completed. I have seen all the main game has to offer and I highly doubt that the anything significant will change my opinion, but if it happens I will update. Excuse any typos. I will be reviewing the game now.
1. STORY/CHARACTERS
Star Ocean 5 introduces us to Faycreed IV, who's s countries of Resulia and Trei'ker, are in the middle of a war that has been waging on for 15 years. On top of that sinister monsters named the currupt prowl the land making life out of town even more difficult. You play as Fidel Camuze, who along with his childhood friends Miki and Ted, defends their hometown of Stahl deligently while also taking role of swordmanship instructor while his father is away. While Stahl is far away from the bloodshed of the ongoing war it faces a different problem. Bandits have been routinely spotted outside of and around areas of the town. Sure enough they strike and though Fidel, with the help of the village warriors, fend them off they wont be able to keep this up. Fidel along with Miki travel to Resulia to ask for aid from the Resulia Military. What begins as a simple goal of relieving Stahl of a bandit threat becomes much more when its revealed the bandit leader is wielding a long range projectile weapon not see before, and to make matters worse that same weapon has been spotted in the hands of Trei'ker military turning the tide in their favor even though Resulia is the stronger nation. Things get even suspicious when Fidel and Miki encounter a young girl with strange powers who along with unfamiliarly dressed people come out of a crashlanded spaceship. The girl only remebers her and now starts the journey to reunite this girl with her parents and ultimately reveal how this all ties toghether.
Lets get this out the way right now: Star Ocean 5 has a engaging storyline. I will admit towards the end of the game where the pacing picks up I was interested in where it was going.. to degree. Star Ocean 5 plants alot of seeds but none of them really sprout. What I was most disappointed with in Star Ocean 5 story is that it does nothing with the UP3 breakage. Just in case you are unaware, the UP3 is galaxy wide law that prohibits advanced civilizations from interfering in underdeveloped planet issues or interacting with them in a way that it creates unnatural progression. We have read about planets who have destroyed themselves because they were introduced to tech they didnt truly understand in previous Star Ocean's but never been in the moment of it and this could have been the perfect game to dive into that and .... it doesnt. What we get instead is lets find Relia's parents...who said she even had parents? Her plot isnt bad but if you have played Star Ocean 3, you know exactly what is up with her and her mysterious unmagic related power. So for those people, shes not that interesting. The 3rd act of the game is directly tied to Star Ocean 3 and is a fun fanservice way I will say. Speaking of fan service this game is in love with Star Ocean 3, but it also spreads the love to other Star Oceans as well. Lots of omages to past games right down to characters playing indentical roles. One nitpicky thing is that this is the first Star Ocean not to introduce us to any new species. Faycreedians are human 100%, no native features, what the hell!? To take this further alot of Earth sayings and slang ..whatever are used alot on this planet when it shouldnt. This is different planet, why would they know something like "she sells seashells by the seashore"? Now we cant forget SO3 revelation, but that shouldnt stop them from trying to give the planet its own unique culture...not just Earth 2.
Lets talk about that characters. These guys are my favorite cast of Star Ocean characters behind Star Ocean 2 With Emmerson being my number one favorite. They're great, but unfortunately you wont know that unless you engage in the private actions, otherwise there just generic anime tropes. What makes them so good is the fact that on first glance you think you already know who they're going to be but we get surprisingly different twist. This is especially the case with Victor and Fiore. I wont spoil Victor but I'll talk about Fiore as an example. Fiore has a rediculous outfit on, and dont worry the game knows it as well. You think shes going to be the flirt, sex appeal trope..nope. Not one time throughout the entire game does she flaunt her sex appeal. She is researcher first and foremost thats what interest her the most. The most boring character is actual Fidel. I think the negeative reaction to Edge had them be ultra conservative with him. He has no interesting values. The Villians on the other hand are the worst in the series. Due to little screen time to develop them they feel like they're just there. The only notbale one is Del Sol because of his hilarious VA. He sounds like Hulk Hogan or the Macho Man Randy Savage giving a promo for an upcoming match. His voice is too damn deep for his character design.
2.PRESENTATION
The Presentation is mixed bag. The character models look good and animate well during battle along with the special effects for skills and magic. The environments are just plain, not just because of the flat textures all over the place, but just the concept for them as well. The monster designs are just as lackluster. Not only are there so few of them, but they are constantly reused and reskinned all over the place and they're just all taken from past Star Ocean games. Presentation also effects the way the story is told. Very few traditional cutscences are used and instead most of the story is told right on the field. On one hand the game doesnt just halt for ever story tibit; Its possible to start a battle while listening to story info. On the other hand some story elements feel less intense this way. Presentation is inconsistent.
3.SOUND
Where the game feels the most budgeted. Half the music are remixes of previous Star Ocean music and the other half is just ok Star Ocean 3ish sounding music. The voice acting is good, but nothing amazing. The worst cases are the villians who have really deep voices for their character designs with Del Sol being the worst/most hilarious. They sound sooo stupid.
4.THE GAME
The battle system has completely lifted and upgraded from Star Ocean 3. Each character has a light/strong attack botton that skills can be mapped to and a gaurd button. There is a rock paper scissor element involved - light beats strong attack, strong attack beats gaurd, and gaurd beats light attack. You want to remeber this because this how you rack up the bonouses.. because the bonus gauge is also back, renamed and reconfigured as the Rush Reserve gauge. It serves 2 purposes: By winning the rock paper scissors element you add bonuses to you EXP,FOL, and most important SKILL points. By losing the rock paper scissor element the bonuses detract from it. If you build up enough stock, up to 5, you can use a special move that gets stronger the more stock you have but completely drains all he bonuses..yeaa no. By switching between light and stong attacks you can build up extra damege up to 200%. Battle trophies are also reporting for duty 100% less retarded (sorry, but score 66'666 damge on Ethereal Queen with Lymle equipped with first weapon!? What pinhead thought that shit up). New to Star Ocean and JRPG's in general, Your entire team takes part in battle. Sometime NPC's will join you creating a party of 10 plus members! You manage your team by equipping roles on them. Roles do 2 things: Alter character A.I and add extra perks. Reviewers had problems with this? Im going to assume they werent stacking Roles correctly or didnt get any of the advance Roles. I had no Problem creating a Miki that did nothing but stay back,revive and heals..*shrugs*. By the way those protect character task are nowhere near difficult as the the reviewers made them out to be.There are a shit ton of role divided into attack,defend,stat buff and special based and you level them through use or better, skill points. Thats why I say focus on skill points on the bonus gauge over Fol and Exp, because you dont learn anything form leveling. Leveling/Learning Roles/party skills/ and battle skills are done exclusively with skill points and skill books.
I love the battle system. Its fun, fast paced and frantic and the seemlessness of it all makes grinding not so broing. It does have a few issues though; The action can get so frantic that its hard to remeber to keep up the RPS element and it just degrades to spaming battle skills. The battle system is not quite geared for its own strategic element. Also getting lost in a barrage of attacks is common. Once Miki cast a Volcanic Blast, a fire nuke move, and I was like, "oooooh buuuuuuurn",and next thing I know MY characters were burning. I guess it wasnst her attack..oops. I will say also that Star Ocean 4 made some awesome advancements to series battle system and to see them throw it entirely out the window just to be more like Star Ocean 3 sucks.
When your not fighting you will be questing...which returns you to fighting. Lets get straight to the point - Questing blows. Not only are the task mundane like go kill a recolor of an enemy or go kill multiple recolors of enemies, they resend you to those old boring areas you been to over and over and over again. The only quest I kind of like are the ones in which you must deliver an item because most of time I already had the item or had the means to make it making the quest auto complete. To the games credit it tries make it so you can get multiple quest done going one way. Most of the areas connect to each other so piking a route that gets everything done in one go is doable. Also, rewards you get are more than worth it as like 95% of your party skills: crafting,cooking,smithery ext are gotten from quest. So are early access to battle skills and magic. Questing woul have been much better if it was all tied to Welch who is trying to build her fame. Focus more on creatings that just killing monsters.
Speaking of Party skills, they are back Star Ocean 2 style but without the randomness. They are alot easier as though you may not know the specific item you are making,but you will know what items are needed to make it and the class - weapon,armor,food ext. Field skills from Star Ocean 4 are back as well.
When your not doing any of the above you will be engaing in Private Actions! They're great but the system for them sucks. All the towns will have an whistle icon next to inns. stepping on it sends every character to do its own thing and you to meet up with them. A second whistle will appear on screen to end the PA mode when your finish. There will be diamonds at the bottom right that will let you know how many PA's are active during the session. Once completed, they light up letting you know your done. Here is the problem - Multiple people can have a PA open to them each session but each person can only have one at a time.. so if there is a person that has multiple PA's in that area you have to disperse characters, find PA characters, regroup, enter inn, exit and repeat till whistle Icon no longer show up indicating no more PA's for now. There are multiple times when I spent 30mins plus just doing PA's. Too many of them. I said above they're great for fleshing characters but the system around them sucks. You cant just skip them either because thats how you raise effection level to unlock endings. Also, sometimes roles and skills are unlocked for certain PA's. Go back to Star Ocean 3 where it was automatic or do something new. Something like the Grandia series would be cool.
5.THE VERDICT
I am at the final dungeon with a clock time of 35 hours. This is just playing the game at a systematic pace - Do all possible quest, do all possible PA's, progress story, repeat. I still have like...another 30-50 hours of post game grinding to do. I look back on my time with Star Ocean 5 favorably and that isnt just because I'm a fan of tri-Ace. Before this game hit shelves I was not excited for it or any JRPG not FF15. I didnt even have any plans to get I am Setsuna. Now, I feel like I been refueled by Star Ocean 5 and reversed that choice. Star Ocean 5 is defintely lack luster in alot of ways but thats all due to being low budget. They just took already working concepts from previous SO's and cleaned them up, but at the end of the day SO5 does nothing interesting for the genre or nothing for the series itself. Its just average and in the next go I hope tri-Ace takes a new leap with series, but for what is here..I'll take it
Solid 7 no more no less.
