Star Ocean 4 - What went wrong with its sales?

[alekth]

Cactus said:

All I want to say about Star Ocean is that it suffers from "The Last Remnant Syndrome" where certain aspects of the game are amazing, but others make you want to rip your eyeballs out. I don't want to say that I'm happy that the game didn't sell well, but I will say that it deserves to sell less than Star Ocean 2 and Star Ocean 3.

 

Riachu said:
I think it might have something to do with the art style. The characters just look too much like dolls. It doesn't help the game seems(still haven't played it yet) to have a poorly written script and terrible voice acting. Another problem is that JRPGs in general are being shunned due to their overused stories, character stereotypes, poor dialogue, art style that doesn't appeal to Western audiences, etc.

 

This is purely subjective, but I want to make it clear that Star Ocean had all of these problems, and they did likely contribute to less then stellar sales.

The terrible voice acting did it for me. If they would have left original voices option, it would have been one more US copy sold. Without that, if it were region free it would have been one more Japanese copy. As it is now I'll wait for a PS3 release where worse case scenario I'll import a Japanese copy.