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Good game but

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 22
Date: September 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

There are alot of unhandicap friendly as a person with limited mombility the gme ends for me at about the end of disk one.
There is a puzzle that requires you yo press the circle button at verrying lenths and stretghs i dont know about you but having to spend 5 hours pressing the circle button perfectly or geting killed takes the fun out of a game
but it was fun up until that point

kaka

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 74
Date: July 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

once upon a time i was eating some cornflakes. the next thing i knew tony the tiger jumped off the front of the box and said,"Buy it now!" i started to cry and rhen i watched bonzai. all in all it was good. ive never played the game, but when i played it was good. but when you say it is bad your right. next thing i knew tony was in the game. i pulled his pants down and we did the safety dance with the men without hats. but wait, there was a hat. it was atop that dumb midget from james bond. he threw his hat at me and tony and it bounced off the fan, hit ringo star and then landed on me head. and i dont mean the head on me shoulders. i mean the one in my ear. and thats what happened when i drove my tractor through candy land.

Horrible battle system

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: May 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The latest installment in the Star Ocean series has a battle system that's unreasonably tedious, insulting, badly-planned and frustrating. The concepts of "fury" and the "battle guage" were bad ideas that slow down the story to a crawl, debilitating your characters in any fight.

Here's how it works: After every single action you take in battle, your "fury" (or stamina) decreases. When your fury is low, your character just sits there panting or doubled over in exhaustion, leaving you vulnerable to being critically hit. I can see how that seems realistic with fighting, but how is that the case with short movement and using items?

Being vulnerable to attacks in this way wouldn't be so bad (after all, none of the battles for the first half of the game are challenging at all) if it didn't break down your battle gauge.

The only method of gaining experience (and thus growing more powerful) is bringing the battle gauge to 100% and gaining the experience bonus from it by initiating attacks in the first few moments of battle. But after all the time you put into raising the battle gauge (it can take hours), it breaks when the character is critically hit- when can happen when your fury is low.

So here's the typical scenario: spend a boring, mind-meltingly tedious amount of time raising the battle gauge in hopes of gaining a reasonable amount of experience. Achieve 100%, use an item, pant in exhaustion, get hit, and the gauge breaks. Repeat process.

The battle system takes away a good chunk of enjoyability from gameplay. Maybe next time, Square.

A Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Star Ocean is one of the best rpg games around! when i first heard about it (from a page inside the ffx-2 manual) I thought it would be really cool. It was better than I thought. It is my second favorite game! (it would have been first but kingdom hearts is first and that will never change :D) The graphics are very good in the game. The voice acting is good too. They made it so we could know the characters well, like their perasonalities. Also I LOVED the gameplay.No more making turns battle play, lol. You still run into enemies on the field map but in the battle screen you run around and fight however you want. I reccomend it to anyone!!

Largely Disappointing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: May 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Probably one of the biggest surprises I've ever enjoyed during my years in front of a video game console came when I first tried my hand at an unsuspecting little package dubbed Star Ocean: The Second Story. This old, overlooked two-disc pack for the PSone had been literally gathering dust on my shelf for years before I bothered to even test it out, and I suppose that complete lack of any kind of previous expectation was a big part of why I was so totally impressed and engulfed by what I found within the game itself. Unfortunately, by overwhelming me so effectively in its first American offering, my expectations for the future of the Star Ocean franchise went through the roof. In a way, it's funny; I loved the precursor because I expected nothing of it and received everything I ever could've wanted, and then subconsciously built up the sequel to the point that nothing it could muster would ever be enough to appease me.

To start with, the story is beyond terrible and the characters are even worse. When I first met Fayt and Sophia, the two leads, I couldn't help but grimace. They're so paper-thin, so incredibly dull and intelligence-insultingly bland, I initially mistook them for a heavy-handed satire of the role playing genre in general. This is, honest to god, the most uninspiring cast I've seen since console RPGs were just gaining their footing in Final Fantasy I back on the NES. They'll say and do things that'll just make you stare blankly for a few seconds and then explode into unrelenting laughter. Fayt, in particular, is the very epitome of a stereotype. He has no flaws, and as a result he makes an incredibly boring leader. The characters seem so out of touch with reality that nothing ever seems to carry the kind of magnitude you'd hope for, even when entire worlds are exploding and individual races are being completely wiped from existence. By the time the third act comes around, bringing with it the one really interesting revelation in the storyline, you're forty hours in and have cemented your opinion of the game as a whole. Before that, it's cliche after cliche, with absolutely no originality thrown in to keep things halfway interesting.

Like its predicessor, TtEoT's gameplay is its greatest triumph. The battles have remained every bit as enjoyable and strategically brilliant as I remembered, and the controls are incredibly easy to comprehend. You'll have, at most, three characters in your party at any one time (which is a major gripe I've had with the RPG genre in general for years now... why would six people stand by and watch their three buddies struggle in a fight with monsters, rather than joining in and cleaning house?) and they're all performing individual actions at the same time, to say nothing of the monsters on the other side of the battlefield. At a glance it would appear to be mildly organized chaos, but in action it's really pretty simple. Before, after and during the battle, you can set a specific attack style for the characters you won't be directly controlling, so they aren't wasting all of their strength on a meaningless enemy while a tough boss fight is just around the corner. If you want your weakest character to avoid physical confrontations and concentrate on healing, it's as easy as changing a setting. Usually, two members of your party will be following these instructions at any time, while you'll be directly in control of the third. Yet, despite the seemingly-obvious directions, the computer AI will occasionally find a way to screw up. Whether they're running headfirst into an explosion with low HP or repeatedly casting heal on a teammate who doesn't need it, your comrades will generally leave a lot to be desired. I even ran into a few instances where I'd found myself single-handedly taking on half a dozen enemies while my two teammates stood off in a corner somewhere and cheered me on.

Aside from the cutscenes, this is generally a visually uninspiring game. The characters look about as stale and unexciting as they act, and the environments and spells are nothing that hasn't already been done better by a previous title. To be frank, the Sega Dreamcast could have more than likely produced graphics equal to the ones seen here, and that's a tremendous knock at this stage in the PS2's life cycle. With the PS3 peeking over the horizon, this should be the point in time when game developers are really starting to stretch Sony's aging console to the limits with amazing graphical effects, not leaning back and kicking out weak, flat displays such as this. Occasionally you'll run into an enemy or dungeon that's up to par visually with its contemporaries, but on the large I wasn't impressed. The graphical direction and wardrobe designs are solid enough, but it looks like a lot of the charm was lost in the translation from pen and paper to fully interactive three-dimensionality. As I alluded to earlier, the cutscenes are outstanding, but you'd expect that from a Square-Enix RPG.

This current-gen revisiting of developer tri-Ace's shining star feels like a hollow, emotionless shell more than it does a sequel five and a half years in the making. Rarely have I been more disappointed in a big follow-up title than I was with this one. It's strictly average, with passable graphics, weak voice acting, horrible characters and a mind-numbingly slow story killing any forward progress made by the battle system, which is still quite a blast. I feel dirty for considering this as a contemporary to The Second Story, although I'm beginning to question if even the PSone rendition was actually as good as I remember it. I don't think the ultimate goal of a sequel should be to force its fans to re-evaluate their feelings about the original.

Get it away from me!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game because I loved the cool-looking graphics, plus it looked really deep with all its alternate endings and such. Also, it was by Square Enix, and many of my favorite games of all time have been developed by them. So I picked it up, anticipating another captivating adventure.

The graphics were, indeed all that had been promised. The character models were great, especially in the cutscenes, and the environments were pretty. This was the sole element of the game that I was completely satisfied with.

The story was OK, although I didn't get very far in it. Before long, though, it began to get annoying. The characters had no personality beyond weak sterotypes, and the dialogue had no surprises or hooks to keep you interested. It was all very bland and cliched. Basically, this was the story: Boy meets girl, boy and girl hang out, both kids' parents disappear in tragic accident, boy wakes up in mysterious land and is arrested for a crime he didn't commit, boy meets sexy girl in thigh-high boots and a miniskirt and, without much explanation, is led through a mysterious secret passage. Yawn.

Perhaps if I had stuck with the story longer, it would have improved. But what kept me from progressing in the game was the combat. It has an interesting concept behind it; everything is in real-time, and you can actively dodge an enemy's attacks. Try as I might, though, I couldn't get my character to do anything except rush the monster and wail on it until it died. I learned a few special skills, but the game never explained how to use them. Sometimes, I would manage to pull one off, but it was usually a surprise, as I couldn't figure out what I had done to make it happen. I had heard that the combat was a "joy" to participate in, but it was continually frustrating for me. I couldn't believe that not even the freaking in-game tutorial explained how to use skills.

Finally, the music sucks. I know this doesn't sound like a major issue, but believe me, ten minutes with this stuff and you'll feel like jumping out the nearest window. The hotel where the game starts has an irritating, Japanese-sounding pop song; later, a forest area has the loudest, most banging heavy metal you'll ever hear. The soundtrack never fits the situation, and is always horrible.

I couldn't stand this game, and I doubt you'll be able to either. This is NOT Square-Enix's next masterpiece. If you're looking for an RPG with a fast-paced battle system, try Baten Kaitos or Tales of Symphonia instead. Don't even touch this thing.

The Best Game Ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 19
Date: December 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I am probably the biggest RPG fan in the U.S. and never have I seeen such a great game. In most RPG's they have turn-based battles,a few inteactive things,some stores,and a couple of FMVs(Full Motion Videos). These type of games will keep you occupied for about a day,and thats what I thought was going to happen when I picked up a copy of this game. The first battle I fought in this game was different. Everyone could move around on the battle field their was no wait in between attacks,and probably 2 seconds wait before you could preform another spell.
then I got to the good stuff. I found out that with raw material and a couple of skill levels you could make your own items. I don't mean any old items, you can cook you can make armour you can paint pictures you can even customize your own wepons. For all the people who like trouble heres something new. If you get enough money in your pocket you can buy a pair of bandits gloves, and if you accuire the skill pick pocket you can steal from everyone exept kings. All in all this is now and will ever be the best video game ever.

A tremendous disappointment and the worst Star Ocean ever...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 15
Date: May 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It seems that Till The End of Time has garnered much praise by reviewers. Why? I don't know. Star Ocean: TtEoT is the one of the biggest RPG disappointments I've played for the PS2.
I stumbled upon Star Ocean and fondly remembered the Star Ocean for the SNES, a remarkable adventure, so I picked it up. At the beginning, I was amazed with the game's setting. It takes place in the distant future between federations of planets and insane technology, which you would think would lead to a good story and environments. Unfortunately, I spent 95% of the game in dungeons that seemed to come straight out of Diablo.
Back to the beginning, I noticed one thing immediately: the characters are flat as cardboard. They are complete stereotypes of RPG's, and react the same exact way as their stereotype dictates. Don't expect any character development, you're looking at the wrong game. The game's story and dialogue is altogether amazingly cliche and lame, with the typical selfless teen hero and his girlfriend who hangs with him everywhere who need to save the world from a terrible force. Awfully familiar, isn't it? If you've ever played an RPG, you've played this game.
What people consider the saving grace of Star Ocean is the battle system. In a nutshell, it's real time and you can switch between your characters as you attack the enemy. Unfortunately, you can't even see all the enemies on the map from one viewpoint, and the other is too far with the camera to properly battle. To add to the problem, the Comp controlled characters are iddiots and require almost nonstop attention to keep them from dying, because dying is permanent until you can get to a heal point.
What really kills the game besides the story, the characters, the somewhat glazed graphics, the stupid AI, and the somewhat unpolished feel is the save system. There are not nearly enough save points. Probably about 2 for the entire game. The dungeons in this game are huge and unmapped, as in YOU explore them and YOU map them out. The dungeouns are huge and littered with enemies. Because of the difficult battles, huge dungeons, lack of save and healing points and unmapped dungeons, I had to run back to town often to save my characters from certain death and to get healing products. If they had just approached this like they did FFX, where the map is clear and linear right in front of you, and there are plenty of save points which also act as healing points, this game wouldn't have been nearly as frusturating, but after dying from the umpteenth time due to no save points, I completely lost interest.
What could have and should have been a great game falls completely flat. Unchanging stereotypical characters, a terrible story, frusturatingly large dungeons and lack of saving/healing points, terrible AI and a general lack of polish relegate Star Ocean to a disgrace, a game not fit to carry its series' name similar to Final Fantasy 8 or Sword of Mana. I guess I'll have to wait Till the End of Time to play a good RPG.

Great graphics...... could shorten the events though.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: November 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Start ocean is a good game really, but a majority of it is cutscenes. Oh yah... Some one asked for nortons code, its a combination of these three numbers: 6,2,5. The graphics are nice, could do better for the running and walking graphic. The dungeons are heck long.. So prepare to be in there for a while! Yes, the game can get frustrating sometimes.... okay i lied.. alot.

Good things about Star Ocean
*Nice graphics
*Great Story Line
*Vast dungeons and fields
*based on your PS2 time sys v3.

Downs
*poor running graphics
*Cutscenes take forever
*Dungeons way to big!
*Storyline very confusing
*Does not have very good level capatibility, as someone said, you can 1 monster in 5 hits, and when you go into the next room. You could be faced with a monster that will smuther your face in the dirt in one hit.

The overal game is good. They could take of Peppitas "autograph" off of Fayts Shirt, and while leaving Whipple, and crashlanding, being caprtured going to Kirlsa yadadada, what happened to Mirage the navigator?

Great Battle System, Horrible Story, a little Easy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I played both the original Star Ocean, and Star Ocean The Second Story. The latter of those is one of my favorite games of all time. So when this game came out I was very excited. I bought it the day it came out and played through it very quickly after getting it.

The thing that I like about this game is the battle system, which if fast paced and very fun. You can chain your moves together to make them more powerful and unlock awards for your different achievements in battle. The moves are also very cool.

The story of this game is sadly lacking. It does have multiple possibilities for endings, but you don't really care once you've beat the game. There is a bonus dungeon like there was on Star Ocean the Second Story but it is much easier and I found it quite disappointing. If you can figure out the weapon customization in this game then you can beat it. That is all there is to it.

Overall if you're really want to you could try it, but don't say I didn't warn you. The better thing to do would be to find the old Star Ocean The Second Story for the old playstation and play through it.

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