Luckily there is more to the game than just a fairly standard battle system. You will trigger battle after battle that serve little point other than to slow you down, because by the point you start revisiting locations you will be so over levelled that the amount of XP you receive from enemies is pathetic. Battles are still triggered randomly on the world map and throughout dungeons, and I’m afraid to say that they can be infuriatingly frequent.Īnother problem I have with the game is that eventually you will have to backtrack halfway across the world map to places you’ve been before, yet the same old enemies remain. The majority of the game is pretty easy if you keep pace with levelling up however, so most encounters will consist of you mindless spamming the X button until everything dies. The Star Ocean games are action RPG’s as such they do fall into the trap of degenerating into button mashers fairly easily, unless you happen to face a group of monsters that can inflict status ailments on your party or a powerful boss that keeps you on your toes. While the Star Trek influences at the start of the game are cool, they are not developed nearly enough and most of the game plays like a standard fantasy RPG. That’s not to say his stuff is bad – it’s just… samey. Still, when you have to come up with music for as many games as Sakuraba does, I suppose it would be inevitable that similar themes would emerge. There are a few stand out tracks in the game, but most of it sounds like it could have been transplanted directly from something like Tales of Eternia. My only problem with his work is that often one piece of his music can sound very much like another, and this problem also applies here.
The soundtrack was put together by Motoi Sakuraba, an incredibly prolific composer whose distinctive sound can be heard throughout the Tales and Golden Sun series as well as many other RPG’s. He does the job of starship captain well, being both serious in tone yet kindly in nature. My favourite has to be Ronyx J Kenny, performed by Sam Gold. The cast includes some industry veterans such as Yuri Lowenthal in the lead role, but also plenty of names that I’m not familiar with. All of this is backed up by some excellent animated video by acclaimed animation house Production I.G.įirst things first – the voice work in Star Ocean: First Departure is extremely high quality stuff. The 3D that is in the game is saved for the world map and the battles, and is not great looking but is serviceable. What you have for the most part is a combination of highly detailed painted backgrounds and well animated character sprites.
While Star Ocean won’t blow anyone away with amazing looking 3D graphics, the 2D work displayed here is really pretty. After informing Roddick and Millie that the herb will not cure their loved ones, they end up beaming about the Calnus and set off on a journey through space and time to set things right.
They are Ronyx J Kenny and Ilia Silvestri of the starship Calnus, also here to try and save the population of Roak. Roddick and Millie then travel to Mount Metorx to try and find a herb that will cure everyone, when they encounter two tail less strangers who appear from out of thin air. While trying to figure out what is going on, Millie’s father and then Dorne both contract the disease. After taking care of a few bandits that are causing trouble for the residents, word arrives of a disease that is turning residents of a neighbouring town to stone.
This begins fairly slowly as Roddick patrols the sleepy town of Kratus with his two friends, the pink haired girl Millie and best friend Dorne. The game sees you take control of Roddick Farrence, a young denizen of the planet Roak and member of the Fellpool race (humanoids who have tails).