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Not an true two player game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 81
Date: October 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This product is sold as being for two players. When in fact the only time two players can play is in battle scenes. The rest of the time the other player has no control over the game at all, other then to sit and wait for the main player to get into a fight. There is no disclaimer on the package stating that the two-player mode is only for battle scenes. This is just away to rip off customers who are looking for true two player games. As most everyone knows when you buy a game and take it home then open it, (IT IS YOUR'S)no money back because you do not like it or because of shady packaging statements. The company that marketed the game gets their money, the store gets their money and the customer gets ripped off. If I could give less then one star I would have!

A Swirling Black Hole of Awful

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 17
Date: May 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

There is in no arguing that Star Ocean: Til the End of time is a large, long game. In playing it from start to finish, you will definitely get your money's worth as you traverse two disks packed full of content. The question is do you really want to spend time on this game? The third is a cult console RPG series, Star Ocean 3 isn't a broken game, but in almost every aspect of the game is suffers from serious flaws that, like a big black hole, sucks whatever enjoyment might be had far away into its mysterious depths. It all builds up to make this one of the most awful games I've played this console generation.

In a fifty+ hour long RPG, story is a major element. Star Ocean's is bad, very bad. It takes about three hours until you really get going. It begins with a whiny young man named Fayt and his irritating friend Sophia on vacation on some resort planet. Suddenly, an intergalatic army of invaders storm the place looking for Fayt and his father, a famous scientist. Fayt escapes to find himself alone on a backwards planet. He is rescued by a group called Quark, but then the space invaders show up again and Fayt and his new allies are marooned on another backwaters planet, this time involved in a war. The plot is not that interesting, but when you get to disk two along comes a plot twist that is so horrible it just sinks the rest of the story. This plot twist is like something M Night Shamalan would come up with while drunk. On top of the bad plot, there are tons of poorly directed cut scenes. The dialogue is circular and meandering. The game is almost entirely voice acted. Only a few of the voices are really bad, but mostly it sounds uninspired. It all comes together to create an atmosphere that watching Star Ocean is like watching a bad community play.

And then we come to the battle system, the other major aspect of Star Ocean 3. The main problem with Star Ocean's system is that the ally AI is abominal. Your two computer controlled allies will be little help to you at all as they almost always attack by uncontrollably kamikazing the enemies. They don't dodge at all, so when the big bad monster gets ready to attack, they rush right into its waiting claws. Also, you have a life bar and a magic bar and if one of them reaches zero, the character will die. You have magic attacks and special physical attacks that deplete these bars. Your allies will use them indiscriminately, so its a constant struggle to keep them alive. When you realize that this is actually the directors cut version of the game, it is inexcusable that the programmers could add in alternate costumes for a fighting mini-game but couldn't fix the deplorable AI. Besides the deadweight allies, the difficulty curve for this game is broken. Instead, of getting just a little harder in each new area, Star Ocean 3 throws out any kind of natural progression. Enemies that are simple to defeat will be replaced with enemies that are about five times harder. You'll need to spend hours leveling to stand a decent chance.

Another really awful of the game is its main side quest: item inventing. This thing is trap. It's an impenatrable, costly system meant to seperate you from your money. I tried desperately to figure this system out. I spent tons of game money only to be able to have success inventing the most useless, low grade items around, and then find myself unable to buy more useful items readily available in stores.

If its an RPG you crave, you can find a much better game out there. Star Ocean: Til the End of Time isn't worth your time.

UGH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 12
Date: June 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I agree with drqshadow(see his review) and more. Battle system is unproportinal. Monster difficulty fluctuate dramatically. One minute you are fighting an easy monster that gives tons of exp and the next, you are fight a tough monster that gives you no exp. Item creation is long and tedios. Dungeons could be a little bit simpler to navigate through. I cant even describe how boring the story is. Battle system is horrible. Never once did i use fury to my advantage. This game was horrible compared to its sequel SO2. I discourage you from buying this game but encourage you to buy number 2

Worst game ever.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 22
Date: December 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Horrible story, combat is waaaaaay too complicated when compared to other games that have real time combat, and THE VOICE ACTING IS THE WORST YOU WILL EVER HEAR IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE!!!!

RPG fan BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: August 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First of all the real reason why they call this game Star Ocean Till The End Of Time is because youll be playing it till the end of time. This game has two fricken discs and I think they could of cut it down about 3 quarters. The storyline sucks I mean I was trying to look past it but its pretty hard when the first 4 hours are you walking around a beach looking for your parents. The stroy line has no effect on you, the characters suck, most of the game youll be talking to these crappy characters. I haven't even gotten started on the combat First of all the combat is ok when you first start it but then it gets complicated its completely real time so they want you to open different menues during the game when your opponents are beating the living s@#* out of you. So by the time you find the spell you want your dead. And plus you don't get a sword until almost halfway through the game

Very offensive

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 26
Date: June 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

***Spoiler warning!***

At first, I thought this game rocked. The graphics were cool, the story was amazing, the battles are good. But then,as the game continued, I started to notice one thing: this game has some allusions that would be offensive to anyone who believes in God.

The main conflict of the game centers around an armageddon-like event, where the creator of the universe decides to annihilate everyone because "we" (people in Star Ocean universe) had delved into forbidden science. Now, here's the part where I find offensive:

Your ultimate goal in this game is to defeat the Creator of the universe, i.e, the one civilizations in this universe would call God. One of the enemies you will face in this game is the angel Gabriel. Need I say more?

Maybe I'm being overtly sensitive... but to me, the idea of killing God is something I would not even want to entertain.

If you believe in God, and are considering purchasing this game for yourself or your kids, don't.

Typical and Stereotypical

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 49 / 81
Date: August 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm a huge fan of RPGs. I grew up playing all different kinds, from Final Fantasy to Fallout, and I'm still always on the lookout for gems. When I heard this was coming out I got my hands on its two prequels (for the Super NES/Famicom and PS1) and tried them out. I never finished either one. Like this latest installment, both were tired and unoriginal, with a far greater emphasis on fantasy than science fiction, despite being set in the supposed "real world".
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time will take most players an exceedingly long time to complete- not because of its difficulty or size, but because of its immensely long cutscenes. This style of game-making is not necessarily a bad thing, but because of the large number of hours the player will spend watching and listening to the action, much of this review will treat it as much like a film as like a game.

First, the game features-
1. Battle:
Like its predecessors, this Star Ocean has a relatively active battle system among the pantheon of RPGs. Players can switch between characters and move them freely and in real-time around the field. The action pauses when a menu is opened, such as for using items or casting magic ("symbology" in the game-world). Three characters can take the field at a time, so the two not directly controlled by the player are automated. I found the AI to be fairly decent, and a certain amount of control can be given through strategy settings in the menu before entering a battle. In fact, this combat system was rather refreshing and different, though veterans of the series will find it familiar. However, there were two very serious problems. One is the absence of any direct camera control. Pans and rotation would be unnecessary provided the player could zoom in and out at will. When the player-controlled character nears an enemy, however, the shot zooms in, cutting off any view of the rest of the field. Even camera control would have been unnecessary if the shot had simply stayed wide and overhead at all times. The second problem is the unintuitive method for switching targets. The player cannot simply cycle through the enemies by pressing the shoulder buttons- s/he instead uses square, a button most games assign to commands, which also means the cycle only goes in one direction. It may sound unimportant, but when many enemies are attacking at once, in can make a big difference.
2. Exploration:
Once upon a time, RPGs were a series of endless, repetetive battles with a few lines of story sprinkled around at distant intervals to try and keep the players' interest. In the past few generations of consoles this trend fortunately came to an end, and most games now have players spending nearly as much time in the cities (or other friendly areas) as in the field, furthering the story or completing non-combat quests. I think this has been a move in the right direction, and Star Ocean is no exception to the trend. The game progresses rather linearly most of the time, without the kind of world map players of Star Ocean: The Second Story (and most other RPGs) might be familiar with. Towns have people to talk to, treasures to find, and occasional side-quests to complete.
3. Difficulty:
The game is somewhat difficult by modern standards. What I mean by this is that a player may actually die once or twice during the course of the game due to carelessness or absent-mindedness. (Think "Destiny of an Emperor"-difficult, not "7th Saga"-difficult). In most of today's RPGs, the player really has to go out of their way to get killed. I found the difficulty balance here to be about right. Some leveling up will probably be required, but not so much that it should turn you off from playing. I want a small challenge, but I also want to make consistent, steady progress. Star Ocean hits the mark on that count.

Now, the movie/story features-
1. Script:
Here's where the problems begin. The script is weak. In fact, it's one of the weakest scripts I've ever read or heard. First of all, it's hokey and stereotypical, even for a Japanese RPG. (The main character's name is FAYT LEINGOD- it always makes me roll my eyes whenever I hear it). The heroine, Sophia, is a typical Japanese anime girl: gushy, cloying, dinner-plate-eyed, and with the maturity of an 8-year-old. She's supposed to be cute, but I found her even more annoying than the whiny and overly-sensitive, pussy-footing Fayt. The rest of the cast isn't much better. As usual, the future of the universe rests on goofy characters like these, plus some even worse (like the 4-foot-tall ultra-cutesy circus performer Peppita, for example). Is it too much to ask that the heroes not always be children who act young even for their ages? Is Square trying to send a message with their perpetual sixteen- and seventeen-year-old heroes that anyone over 25 should just move into a nursing home?
Unfortunately, this is true of many RPGs (and most of those from Japan). What sinks this one to the bottom of the story-telling barrel, however, is the sheer tonnage of wasted time. Many games have lots of long cutscenes. Sometimes the player spends more time watching them than playing. This can be done well. Xenosaga: Episode I is a good example. This can also be done poorly. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is the epitome of the second category. I lost track of how many times the characters sat around talking about nothing or debating their options over and over and over again, usually in the least appropriate circumstances, without putting forth any new information or advancing the story in any way. Any editor or professional writer knows that, much like pieces of a machine, every part of a story or script must have a purpose in the greater picture. One example, without giving away much of the plot, occurs near the beginning of the game. Cliff and Fayt are stuck in a prison cell. They talk about what has happened so far, not adding any new insight. Then they talk about how they're stuck. Then, when someone comes to help them, they talk about whether to accept or not, going back and forth at least half a dozen times. All this takes close to 20 minutes in cutscenes, and is framed by quite a few more on both sides. We (the audience) have learned nothing new about the characters, their world, or our own when it's finished. This kind of conversation may be realistic, but it's not interesting, and it's bad writing.
2. Direction:
This has problems beyond the ones mentioned above, but most modern RPGs suffer from the same ones. There are a lot of unnatural pauses in the dialogue that are not the fault of the voice actors. For reasons I will never understand, many games, including Star Ocean, record the characters' dialogue one line at a time, then splice them all together. This means there's loading time between each line, so interruptions sound unnatural and reaction lines fall flat. (Again, for an example of the right way to record dialogue- all at once or in appropriately-divided chunks, as in a film- look at Xenosaga: Episode I).
3. Character & Location Design:
This is merely a matter of taste, but I didn't like the universe of Star Ocean. It was too close to Star Trek, only with 'magic' thrown in. Humanity lives alongside countless alien species, almost all of which look as much like humans as Mr. Spock, have cultures barely distinguishable from our own, and are progressing along the same lines. At least the writers didn't have the aliens all speaking English (the characters in the game carry portable translators to avoid problems).
Also, for a space opera the story spent a disturbingly large amount of time in Dungeons & Dragons-esque locations, dealing with knights and monsters.
Finally, I'm sick of fan-service. It (and inappropriate comic relief) is the main reason I can't stand anime, and it's becoming a deterrent to my enjoyment of console RPGs as well. Frankly, the female characters don't need to be beautiful or sexy at all. Even if they are, they (and the men, as well) should dress appropriately. This means not exposing shoulders and bellies in arctic weather, or wearing skirts that would get them arrested in Times Square. Sophia even starts the game in low-rider jeans, then neglects to even zip up the fly. Though she's supposed to be 17, when she looks and acts 8, this is a little disturbing. If game designers want to be taken seriously as artists (and most do want to and should be) then this kind of design has got to come to an end. (Plus, I doubt people will still be wearing blue-jeans thousands of years into the future).
4. Acting:
I'd heard bad things about the acting before I bought this game, but I found it to be decent, if not exactly Oscar-worthy. Certainly, it was better than average for a re-dubbed videogame, though Sophia's voice made me want to strangle her. The voices generally fit the characters, and the actors remained true to their roles throughout the game.

Ultimately, the story fell flat for me mostly because I couldn't empathize with the characters. I didn't like them, couldn't understand their decisions or motivations for those decisions, and found their constant, meaningless exposition annoying beyond what I wanted to put up with from a so-called 'game'. In some cases I could have overlooked these negative aspects in the script and story and enjoyed the generally entertaining combat system for what it was, but Star Ocean is 90% dialogue. Unfortunately, less than 10% of THAT is STORY.

PS: For those of you who find my assessment of the dialogue in this game hard to believe, some kind, and possibly insane, individual over at GameFAQs has taken the time to transcribe every spoken line of Star Ocean for your enjoyment.

Frustrating on too many levels

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 23
Date: September 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It is a rare event indeed when I manage to play halfway through a game (20+ hrs) and then have to quit because of the overpowering desire to destroy my PS2, the controller, and my entire living room furniture setup out of sheer rage and frustration. I say rare, because most trash games are lucky to get a few hours out of me before they get flushed down the toilet. I'll admit, reluctantly, that I tolerated the first part of the game. So when did the honeymoon end? Wow, where do I begin?

-Story. To put it simply: it's dull. Aside from the initial medieval planet you start on, the rest of game failed to provide any form of intriguing plot. Once the giant SPACESHIP OF DOOM appeared and starting blasting things with laser beams, I yawned and lost interest. Most of the story is cliched, and that which is not tailors mostly to the Star Trek crowd (of which I am not a fan).

-Characters. The characters you control are lame and annoying, with Fayt being the worst offender by far. "Gee Cliff, I don't see why we can't just give that big dragon a big sloppy kiss and huggity hug so that we can all just live in glorious peace and harmony. Do we have to kill it?" Never mind the fact that you just polished off 5,000 of his brothers and sisters in that cave you just trekked through, Fayt you moron. The other characters aren't as bad personality-wise, but they're just as verbose. Yada yada yada. Be quiet.

-Dialogue. Mind-numbing. Like someone else said in their review, most of this game is dialogue and cut-scenes. You know, if a company is going to make this much of a game dialogue, then why not make it any good? God, I just wanted the characters to shut up already and go eat an blueberry or something. You're not philosophers, you're monster hitmen. Go do your job. Suffice it to say, this part of the game probably accounted for 15 of the 25 hrs I put into the game before ending the trauma altogether. Too much talking about a boring story and not enough action.

-Battles. By far, the most irritating part of this game. Granted, it was unique for a few hours, but it quickly got old and stale. Why? For several reasons. 1) Enemy difficult is woefully inconsistent. You'll be blazing through one dungeon, killing enemies in 3-4 hits, and then in the very next dungeon, enemies take 50 hits before they die. I remember spending 2 hours in one area, raising mad levels with my Triple EXP bonus gauge activated, only to walk into the next dungeon and have the first group of enemies use me for toilet paper! WTF?! Bosses are the same way: ridiculously easy in one battle, and near impossible in the next (without at least 10 attempts). 2)Enemies use a paralysis counteract if you hit them when their fury is full. This wouldn't be a problem if enemy Fury actually DROPPED when they attacked like your players' do. I'll be lucky to get in one hit before CLANG NOW YOU'RE PARALYZED. The enemy would usually follow up with a hit that took 100 hp off my my 2500 hp total, and my bonus gauge would break, citing a Critical Hit. Yeah, that's a critical percentage. Fun. 3)Gone are the days when just losing all your HP would kill you, now you have to friggin' worry about your MP too! If it hits 0, you die! Hooray! My favorite part was in one cave where this one enemy used some vortex blade attack and killed off two of my high-level characters immediately (each had 3000+ hp full up), mainly because the attack removed MP rather than HP. Screw you. 4) Enemy AI is cheap and stupid. They simply use the same powerful attacks over and over again. Same goes for the lame bosses. Your characters are wailing away on some boss, lost in some 30 hit combo, when all of a sudden "FIRE BREATH" happens and all your characters and blown across the screen, with half their health gone, nearly dead from MP loss, and no fury. Probably confused or poisoned too. Rinse and repeat, and you have the general battle experience provided by this game.

-Exploring/treasure. I remember in the good ol' days when exploring was productive and finding treasure chests was actually *GASP* enjoyable! Why? Because actual TREASURE was found. I think out of the 1,000 chests I managed to open before quitting, 950 of them contained some form of freakin' berry (used for healing purposes). Completely sucked the fun out of exploring. Why can't you give me more weapons!?!

-Items. Yay, I can only carry 20 of each. Umm why, considering I use 5 of them after every battle. Nice.

-Inventing. So dumb. Just how complicated must you make this process? It would be nice to have potential inventors clue you in as to which item they are looking for and where they are, rathing than spewing some more SO3 plot-garbage that means nothing anyway. Hooray, Cynthia is available to recruit! So where is she, and what do I need to do to get her? WHO KNOWS, NO ONE IS GOING TO TELL YOU! Why not even a little hint?? Oh I get it, "difficulty". Right.

-Hidden things. This reminds me of the more recent final fantasy games. You have to complete 10 off the wall, ridiculously hard tasks just to get one weapon, or one inventor. Sure, I'll win a bunny race 100 times in a row to get this one inventor. Why on EARTH would you want to do that? How on EARTH would you even know to DO that in the first place? It's like they want you to purchase a strat guide with the game. Thieves.

-Battle trophies. Stupid and not worth collecting, seeing how most of them are earned from completing mindless and outrageous tasks such as "Win 5,000,000,000 battles" or "Win 3,000,000 battles without getting hit", and when you do collect enough of them, the rewards are poor. Costumes for a battle mini-game. Yawn. New difficulty level. Oh wait, do I get to play the game on a NEW, HARDER difficulty level? Oh boy another 40 hrs of absolute frustration and poor design awaits.

-Puzzles. I just love trial and error puzzles. It's a good thing too, since this game is full of them. Sigh. This category also needs to include the "where do i go next" puzzle, where during a cutscene, a character will mention off-hand where you need to go next, and I'll miss it because I sneezed or something, and then I'll have absolutely no idea where to go. And townspeople won't even help me! WTF? How about a world map that indicates your next location or goal. Novel!

I remember 10 years ago when games used to be fun, and not a chore. You know, you can still have difficulty in a video game without making the player suffer through some overly complicated battle system, fighting enemies for hours on end because the stupid things won't die. If only the developers would take a little time to adjust the flow of the game-- start off easy and progressively get more difficult, but never too difficult as long as you're leveling at a reasonable rate. I want my games to move at a brisk pace, only slowing down when I choose to level or complete a sidequest. Don't make me spend 5 hours fighting enemies to gain enough experience to raise another TWO levels so that maybe ONE of my characters can survive a boss battle. Is that too much to ask?

Lastly, let me end on a positive note. Thanks to the glorious idea that is "Playstation greatest hits", this POS was only 19.99. At least I didn't pay twice that for this dog.

FANBOYS, SILENCE!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 20
Date: August 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm going to take a different approach to reviewing for a change, and make a checklist for Star Ocean 3 here. Why? Because I've never seen a more cliched rpg since Final Fantasy 7, and it pains me to know that I've played it, not having any way of removing it from memory any time soon.

Main Characters:
1- Obnoxious teenage hero and heroine, highly adept at being pathetic, annoying, stupid, needlessly brooding, and over-dramatic. CHECK
2- Annoying hyperactive girl: CHECK
3- Annoying boy who pisses everyone else off: CHECK
4- Strong, independant, female magic user: CHECK (x2)
5- Obligatory lone-wolf swordsman who uses a katana: CHECK

Central Plot:
1- Hero from futuristic society, stranded on medival-esque world: CHECK
3- Hero is the son of some important/famous person: CHECK
3- Some sort of Underdeveloped Planet Protection Treaty to worry about: CHECK
4- Plot later winds up in place with ultimate technology: CHECK
5- Some group of people in this place are making sinister plans: CHECK
6- Fate of the universe ultimately at stake: CHECK
7- Your group is the only people who have a prayer of succeeding: CHECK
8- The plot gives you a chance to stop off at an amusement park: CHECK

In Battle:
1- Realtime, free moving battles: CHECK
2- Game has more characters than you are allowed to have in battle: CHECK
3- Characters not in battle DON'T get any experience: CHECK
4- Wide variety of colorful, amusing dialogue: CHECK
5- Wide variety of colorful, annoyingly repetitive dialogue: CHECK
6- Frequently stupid AI actions: CHECK

Private Actions:
1- Often in places that are nowhere near where you're supposed to go: CHECK
2- Few (if any) for some of the main characters: CHECK
3- Romance/friendship ratings that can be influenced: CHECK
4- Have to be a jerk unless you want the hero and heroine to pair up: CHECK
5- Nowhere near enough of them: CHECK

Item Creation:
1- Annoyingly random process: CHECK
2- Can reload your game without having to reset the console: CHECK
3- No way in hell you'll get any of the good stuff w/o the strategy guide: CHECK
4- Still pretty cool, nonetheless: CHECK

Other Details:
1- The game's currency - cheerfully accepted everywhere you are: CHECK

I pity those who feel they have to love the game just becasue of the developer's formerly great track record. Stick with the first two Star Ocean games, and leave it at that.

Promising but irritating

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: August 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I loved Final Fantasy X and X-2. I bought Star Ocean because I wanted something to tide me over until XII.

I'm sorry to say that I couldn't make myself continue to play past the first couple of hours. I enjoyed the introductory visuals (with the ships changing to progressively more advanced ships), but the dialog is tiring and endless. Yes, FFX had that problem at times, but it was still engaging.

Maybe it gets better later on, but for the period of time I played it, it constantly took over and just started talking and talking and talking. That might be nice if the story was engaging, but I was definitely not drawn in. When I played FFX, I was drawn into it from the start. The same is not true of this game.

The combat system is interesting and might well turn out to be fun, but it's not worth it if the story isn't going to improve.

If you enjoy all anime (even the cheesy stuff) then maybe you'll find enjoyment here. I didn't.

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