Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2)

Star Ocean is a classic sci-fi game with everything from a gripping storyline to worthwhile graphics, and appears to be set well into the future, though with some elements from the past thrown in. What I was most impressed by was the battle system used. You have characters that are free to run around a fairly small area and use a single button press to attack. This usually makes the battle intense and is a level above even FFXII. Skills can also be preset to the buttons. Even without the storyline and graphics, this alone makes Star Ocean a game worth playing.

The game begins a little slowly when you are controlling the main character, Fayt Leingod, and his friend Sophia Esteed. All you really do is run around a hotel until it is attacked. Even after this it takes a while for the pace of the game to pick up. One of the most annoying issues in this game is having to complete certain actions, such as talking to certain people, before the storyline can progress.

The plot starts off with Fayt Leingod with his parents and a friend on holiday. After an attack on the hotel where they happen to be staying, Fayt finds himself separated from his parents and not really sure where to go next. After he flees on a spaceship, eventually it gets attacks, and he is separated from everyone else when he boards an escape pod. He pventually crash lands onto an underdeveloped planet and goes from being lost to finding various companions who help him on his way. The storyline itself is fairly unimpressive until nearer the end of the game, but has one of the most remarkable twists to it.

This brings me to another excellent feature of this game, item creation. Unlike most games, you have the opportunity to create superior, or in some cases inferior items, to the ones available in the shops. This system involves many things, such as improving your items and hiring inventors that can make better and different items to the rest of your party. Since item creation takes talent and money (which are lacking when you first encounter it), this gets easier as the enemies and obstacles get harder, and is especially useful for the higher of the four difficulty levels. At first, it is likely to drain all your money, but nearer the end of the game you can use it to make massive amounts of money. Possibly the most important use of item creaion is using it to strengthen your weapons to an incredible degree.

There are four difficulty levels in this game, and all are possible, but giving an improved challenge at the the greater difficulty levels. The difficulty level only affects the power of the monsters (including bosses), but even this makes the game far more challenging. You have to collect battle trophies to unlock the two highest difficulty levels, and to get these, you have to start on the normal difficulty level and you should be able to skip playing the game on easy. The easiest difficulty is only for those who pick things up slowly. The battle trophies mentioned earlier are collected for performing certain feats within the game, some considerably easier than others, and can also be used to unlock different costumes for each of the characters.

In Star Ocean, there are eight different possible endings, affected by private actions that occur throughout the game. Fortunately, you don't have to play the game through eight times, since the highly detailed strategy guide tells you how to get all eight endings by only playing the game through twice. I recommend purchasing the strategy guide if you intend to play this game, otherwise you might get stuck in certain areas, and without it you are bound to miss something out. It also contains full item creation lists and is well worth any money you pay for it. The private actions I mentioned earlier are basically just options you choose in conversation in certain situations, and only affect the endings.

Although the graphics have no hope with matching up to games such as FFXII, they are still impressive- especially during the cinematic sequences. In addition to this, the game is massive. Even after you have completed the game, there are still three extensive bonus dungeons you have the option of running through, and they include people to talk to and conversations between characters, rather than just battling endless enemies. Sadly due to some error on my game, I couldn't access two of the bonus dungeons, but they still looked like they would be worth playing through.

There are also a large number of mini-games available that yield worthwhile rewards, but sadly most of these are only available to you at a late stage in the game. The battle arena allows you to fight on your own or in a group, and gives some decent rewards against the harder opponents. There is also a ranking system which you have the option of working your way up. Another game is called Runic Chess, which is a game of logic, and also has some reasonable rewards, but only so many of these can be won. A final mini-game is known as the Bunny Races, and is basically betting on which bunny will win. This is entirely random, and so takes ages to get anywhere, though one of the rewards recruits you an inventor. The best way to do this due to the time the racse take is to put the turbo on and jam the button down, and do something else for a few hours.

The storyline is certainly way above average for a game of this class, with its fair share of excitements and disappointments as well as one admirable twist. Although most of it is sadly localised to personal relationships, when it involves more than the one planet you happen to be on, it impoves drastically. For a game, it is not lacking in any originality, and only has a couple of "cheesy" areas which should have been avoided by the production team.

The sound is of high quality, and fits the mood of the area or situation well. The only fault I can find is that at times it can be fairly repetitive because it isn't subtle enough in the longer dungeon areas, and some of the areas can be a little too large. A simpler solution would have been to make the areas smaller, but the enemies slightly tougher so there would be more focus on the fighting.

I am disappointed that the characters often lack the facial expressions to show their mood, but this is made up for with gesturing, and good emotion in their voices. The dialogue is suitable for each characters and gives each of the important characters some sort of personality, although many other characters sadly seem to lack this quality.

Overall, I am more than happy with this game as a whole, and would rate it a 9 or a 10 out of ten. It has very few problems in most areas of the game and easily makes up for these with far more important things, especially the battle system. This is a game worth buying, assuming you like this genre of game.