Star Ocean: Till The End of Time (PS2)

To begin, I loved the story. The plot is slow to show it's true outcomings, and there are so many twists and turns. I wont spoil anything by revealing details, but for me it was a little different to most rpg fare and all the better for it. This kind of game experience needs story more than most, and in this area I was hugely impressed. The characters are all decent enough. A fairly common bunch of Japanese inspired personalities, but they all remain likeable!

The graphics in the game are good, but these days, the old PS2 is showing its age. It's definately up there with PS2 Final Fantasy's though, especially during the highly impressive CGI scenes. The musical score, however, is fantastic! I was really impressed with how well the tempo of the music matched on screen action (apart from one boss battle that actually had a rap song playing in the background! RPG + RAP = Wrong!!).

One of the highlights of the game, and this is a huge plus considering how much time you will spend doing it, are the battles. Battles play out in real time; you take control of one character and are free to attack as you would be in a beat-em up. You can also set up different moves to each button as you learn new skills and swap character at any time should you need a healer etc... This is a much more fun and imersive method than standard turn based fare and means low level characters CAN beat high level enemies if you are good enough, of which I approve greatly! Battles also feature a bar to the side of the screen wich slowly fills up as you score hits, and shoots up when you strike with a combo. Once it is full, you get rewards such as experience multipliers, wich makes leveling up much less of a torture. The battle gauge only breaks if the lead player gets knocked over, so this makes level up battles incredibly tense and tactical!

The previous Star Ocean game, 'Second Story' on PS1, was hugely overlooked upon release in Europe, hence its huge collectability (and high price! - it's worth every penny though!). I only hope more gamers take a chance on the third in the series. It truly is a great example of the genre. I can't recommend it highly enough to everyone who likes a good story and has the patience to invest time into a game, not just RPG nuts like my sad old self!

Then this little beauty came along. A 2 DVD sci-fi RPG epic that spans light years of planets. You play the part of Fayt Leingod who is on holiday at a luxurious resort planet. The planet suddenly finds itself under attack by an unknown force and while escaping Fayt becomes seperated from his family and childhood friend, after drifting through space in an escape pod he finds himself crash landing on an Underdeveloped Planed (which, according to the pangalatic UP3 treaty, he is not allowed to interfere in the development of ... akin to the Prime Directive ideal of Star Trek). Soon Fayt finds himself in the middle of an intergalatic mystery to which he is the key.

The sci-fi setting of Star Ocean is a nice breath of air away from the FF series. The graphics are bold and very Manga-ised, it all is a throwback to how FFVII used to be. In fact playing this game brings back many a nostalgic feeling about playing through FFVII for the first time. The bold characters, the cyberpunky setting, the way the NPCs inanely chatter away. No doubt many a Final Fantasy developer has put their skills into this game and the script does feel like it came from the same hands behind FFVII.

Characters and cut scenes are handled well, the voice acting is solid enough and I actually prefer the direction of our CG characters in this than to the recent FFX series. It seems more natural, more flowing.

The fighting system is completely new kettle of fish. You can see and encounter bad guys on the actual gameplay screen. No randomly generated fights here. Wonderful if you're trying to get somewhere with a purpose and don't really want to run into any fights. When you're in a fight, its like a free roaming 3D battle game! No turn based scrapping here ... you take control of a character and get stuck in, chaining combos of moves together in a most satisfying manner.

The music and sound (presented in gorgeous Dobly Pro-Logic II) is excellent, some genuinely wonderful orchestrated sections ... although there has been the odd bizarre occasion where the musics volume overtakes the speech on the game. Luckily this is a rare occasion, remedied in my case by having text boxes popping up with speech and a few tweaks to my surround system.

I really like this game, of course FFVII would beat it in a fight hands down, but its so good to see something come from the Square-Enix stable that has a bit of spark about it. I hope this series continues to expand and we see more from it. Either that or I hope that the soon to appear Xenosaga and Shadow Hearts sequels live up to the hype I've been hearing about them.