>play Star Ocean III, think: "Not bad.">people on v: "LMAO DUUUUDE! That's, like, the poor man's SO, lmao! Try Star Ocean: The Second Story, dude! That's, like, le thinking man's SO! I mean, dude if ya think 3 is good, prepare to be totally blown the fuck away by 2, I mean, like, DUUUDE!">try SO2......and I must say, I was blown away indeed:- The ugliest pre-rendered environments I've EVER seen; doesn't hold a candle to fucking Digimon World, let alone Final Fantasy.- non-existent artistic direction; all locations are the very definition of "generic", none of the visited places has any definite identity to them; the so-called "primitive planet" has random research laboratories with scientists in modern lab coats and kids who can build robots and weapons of mass destruction; the so-called "advanced planet" has random medieval villages, magic and dragons- for a game called "Star Ocean", the space element is nearly non-existent; you're shown this cool af spaceship that you never get to use nor visit- completely underdeveloped characters; in less than a couple hours since your arrival on the main planet, characters in SO3 have better chemistry and reasons to care about them than SO2's mains after the entirety of CD1; the few interesting characters are suddenly thrown away with no resolution and completely forgotten by the plot; ALL antagonists are comically evil moustache-twirling villains with zero depth or reasons behind them- slow af story that only starts getting interesting toward the end of CD1... and immediately stops- decent combat system on paper, ruined by bad programming such as: every continuous enemy attack (even from low-level enemies) being basically 1-shot kill because of continuously repeated unavoidable hits, characters randomly piling upon each other when trying to hit the same enemy, and more...- aggressively bad voice actingOnly good thing is the music; such a shallow game really has no right having such an epic soundtrack.
BTFO by game, you know nothing.
>>3844880>ugliest pre-rendered environmentsthis shit is subjective without any proper comparison>non-existent artistic directionsubjective, it's just your opinion, mah dude>for a game called "Star Ocean", the space element is nearly non-existentNever was it implied it's a space game from the title, this is a sad attempt of a gotcha>completely underdeveloped charactersit's a plot driven story not character driven, if you want character related stuff PAs exists>bad voice actingsubjectiveI do agree the game felt lacking of content overall. Thanks to the remake's fast travel and QoL showing the way
>>3844880>for a game called "Star Ocean", the space element is nearly non-existent;how come every single criticism of the series regurgitates this same point? The series never claimed to be about space exploration or anything of the sort. This misunderstanding lies entirely with you.
>>3844991>The series never claimed to be about space exploration or anything of the sort.It's literally called STAR OCEAN. That's like say Star Trek never claimed to be about space.
>>3844991I don't know what people wanted. It's an RPG, not a shooter or anything. If you pick Claude, you get he's from Earth, on an alien world, gets sucked into another one and then travels to a 3rd by the end of the game, his main ship getting used in the story as well. The original Star Wars had, Spaceship, Planet, Spaceship, Death Star, Planet, Spaceships. It literally features only 2 planets in the whole movie, Star Ocean 2 has more.
>>3845161This.>Claude starts on a space ship>activates a device on a planet he is investigating>acts like a space explorer on a foreign world when he meets Rena and interacts with folks>see how his gun causes reactions when alien people see him use it>meets Opera and Ernest who are from another planet>deals with the sorcery globe which has been hurtling through space>gets back on the ship>watch planets collide and a ship get destroyed>land on another world>learn how that world almost conquered the galaxy>fighting against war machines who want to rule/destroy the universeThe space theme is baked into the game from start to finish. But I know what people think they wanted. They wanted a Ps1 game that stretched all that content across a dozen planets so that none of the planets felt good.
>>3845210Lets not give SO2 too much credit though. Both worlds are great, but you never really get to fully appreciate Expel on your first visit. Only after you get to the final save and do the "virtual expel" do you get to fly around and freely see this planet. Terrible story reason to go back, dev team and scenario writers didn't sync up. Also it's essentially a hidden secret. Then. Energy Nede has this force field and you fly around to navigate it, but it feels small and so much is optional it can be forgettable. I think people might not realize, every RPG was Fantasy or post-modern. It was all things like Grandia, Persona, Lunar, Final Fantasy ect. Star Ocean named itself that to really let you know, it's going to have space and sci-fi elements to it. Now sci-fi/fantasy/space RPGS are very common, but at the time, it was this and Phantasy Star.
>NBA all STARS>Nothing to do with space What were they thinking
anyone who calls the games "CD1" are either from Africa or AI. filtered either way
>>3845210>They wanted a Ps1 game that stretched all that content across a dozen planets so that none of the planets felt good.No, the problem is that Expel feels like any typical fantasy JRPG world, featuring typical fantasy JRPG characters, with typical fantasy JRPG problems, instead of having anything actually alien-like.
>>3846421Yeah, we basically just want a bit more variety. Deep dive more into the sci fi angle. As much as I kind of really don't like it at all 4 actually does kind of this. You see a lot of the fantasy planet sure bout you also wind up on a borg cube, you cruise in your space ship between planets. And I don't see why just being on the playstation 1 means we can't have something like this, for all intents, Chrono Trigger kind of does something similar. You don't need to make ONE larger world when you can just make several smaller but more thematic one. Have us go to fantasy planet, modern planet, alien jungle planet, ocean, desert whatever. This shouldn't be super hard.
My biggest issue with 2 was the combat, mainly spell pause. It gets worse and worse as the game goes on and more enemies get giant screen magic that makes it obnoxious to play.
>game has xeno on the titlethere are no aliens
>>3844991SO3's opening cockteases you with a cinematic of future Earth. Otherwise I agree.
>>3846533God is an alien.
>>3844880Star Ocean 2 is really simple. It’s one of those games where you had to play it as a kid to really get it. First Departure and Second Evolution were two of the earliest JRPGs I’d ever played. The simple, button mashy combat was enough to entertain me, especially with how cluttered it could get with numbers and effects. And the optional party member system and private actions kept me hooked. The remake is a better way to play the game, and makes it easier to see what’s so good about it.More than that, I’d recommend The Divine Force. It’s like a better version of 2.
>>3846575I ended up liking 6 a lot. Didn't have high expectations after the last two and a half but it was enjoyable. Ray was a good lead and you get a sexy robot.
>>38465866 feels like they ignored the existence of 4 and 5 as they were making it. Aside from 4’s blindside mechanic.
>>3844880>"primitive planet"Underdeveloped planet. Expel does not have free access to space travel and so on, meaning that societies such as Claude's are to keep their contact as limited as possible. It's literally a law in-universe that all intelligent races have the right to independent development free from outside influence.It's like the prime directive in Star Trek, it's a common sci-fi trope.
>>3846742It's a common trope because we hope any aliens who might be monitoring us will watch our sci-fi and think it's a good idea and leave us alone.
>>3846742>letting under developed worlds suffer so you can sit around and gloat about how enlightened you areNah, fuck the UP3, fuck the federation and fuck you
