A honest impression/review from me
Its a great game, but you defeniatley feel that there was more potential but Square Enix probably didnt want to put money further into the budget. But neverless its still a high quality JRPG with 30GB in size, for example Tokio Mirrage Session which got a much higher score is only 16 GB, Odin Sphere is 4GB, Atelier Sophie 5.5 GB and Overwatch 7.2 GB.
For example you have lot of Voice acting in this game, in a lot of JRPGs these days there are even cutscenes where the game is lacking voice acting now all of the sudden like in Atelier Sophie unfortainly. But there is not one cutscene where you havent seen voice acting in Star Ocean.
The graphics are fantastic and it feels so nice to play a JRPG again that isnt just an Anime with slim shading models and textures etc. I wish more JRPGs would try to aim this. The world feels a bit unfinished, there are some doors who are closed even if they look similiar to other doors which are opened right next to them. But still the game looks great much better than XCX (another Spcae JRPG) imo and its more than just resolution and framerate, the depth of field effects and textures are much better and high quality.
The interface sometimes can be annoying, for example you got at the end of the road and it immdeatley stops and gets you into the next world map or room. There is not a giant X button popping up to tell you to press X to get there it just does.
And there are extra conversations which have to be triggered by getting into a special location in a town, then after that you need to search for your teammates in order to listen to this conversiation which are revealing more about their personalities. Its very annoying and could have been streamlined by having just random cutscenes popping up if you are in the town. I think this was another budget constrain that they speed up at the end, but again all voice acting no text messaging.
But everything else looks good and is understandble. The next goal in order to progress the story is also listed in the Glossary i think, thats another thing that isnt clear at the start so people maybe overlook at it and bash the game. The text size despite small is still very understandable unlike with XCXs horrible tiny text size (84 on Metacritic).
The the soundtrack is amazing, very classic JRPG from PS2 era.
The Gameplay, so far its true you can just use the same attack in order to progress but this is true for any Action RPG, its true for Diablo, Witcher 3 and even Bloodborne. Hence in Bloodborne the Saw Cleaver is by far the strongest weapon and its one of the first one in the game, and its also displayed at the cover art of Bloodborne. So again i dont undertsand what people are bitching about? And in any classical JRPG i cant remember having much thinking either, they ussually were all about brute force and leveling up unless it was a Strategy/Sectors based RPG.
But i do agree the game should be a little harder. How ever, if you think you just need to press one button in order to beat the game you are wrong. There are various moments you have to revive other characters or heal them so you need to click the menu and constaley use healing items in these moments again where is it different to classical RPGs? It can be also smart to freeze-attack bigger enemies with Fiore to slow them down. And then there is a super attack that is charging up. I am still playing and figuring out the game and its entire machanics, but i dont get the impression its somehow bad.
The story is very interesting the game is called Star Ocean but you actually start out in a backwards universe where the people live in the middle age and you are kinda confused about the title: ''heh where are the spaceships?''. Only later on you realize the politics of the story and see more advanced civilisations. The characters are very cute and the art style fits them very well its just sad they were handled like previously said.
And its very important that you also meet Welch Vineyard in the game which is kinda a spoiler but its important. Because here storyline gives you special abbillities to find more items in the world and craft items including weapons. She can easily be skipped in the game as shes completley optional. Another reason these noob reviwers gave such a low score because they except them that the game holds their hand all the time.
8/10
