Setzer

Anyone pick this game up? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Reviews coming in have been good....not great. Game Rankings average review score is just a little over 80%. I read somewhere that the battles are similar to that of Tales of Symphonia, real-time instead of turn based so I'm a little hesitant about getting it. I'm partial to turn based games. I've also heard that this game has a ton of CG(Typical Square), like Xenosaga, the story is 'so-so' and the voice acting is horrid but the battle system and playability make the game fun.

I'm looking for a good RPG to play and was going to pick up this or Phantom Brave. Also have a craving for a good tactical RPG . If you have/played either, your thoughts are appreciated.

Thunderball

toogood

Bought both Star Ocean and Phantom Brave a few days ago. I'm a few hours in Star Ocean and it seem pretty good. If you enjoyed part 2 on the psx, you'll like this. As for Phantom Brave, it's sort of like Disgaea. A really solid tactic RPG. Either way, you can't go wrong with either game. By the way, both can be picked up at Frys for $39.99 each till Sept 7.

Outlaw

I picked this up but haven't gotten very far in it because I'm still playing Pikmin 2. Its really really really really really really sloooooooooowwww right now but i'll give it some more time. Some cinema's seem to be long. Voice acting is actually really good, as are the music (same guy from SO2, ToS, and the upcoming Baten Kaitos) and graphics too (anime 3d models like Xenosaga, though not as detailed) I haven't gotten the hang of the battles but it is most definitely real-time. You can get slaughtered very quickly and easily. I've been reading comments from people who are a lot farther than me saying the battle system has a lot of problems and doesn't even come close to Tales of Symphonia's real-time battle system, which is one of the best I've ever played. I'd agree so far I'm not liking the game as much as ToS but I'll wait until I get further as is usually the case with these kinds of games. If you liked Star Ocean 2 you'll probably like this one though, its very sci-fi like. (btw, this game isn't made by Square, its made by Tri-Ace and comes from the Enix side of Square-Enix)

If you like turn based games, get Phantom Brave.

nickdawgy

I liked the PS version, so I plan on picking this up. It's $39.99 this week at Circuit City, and they will take the Best Buy GGC, so $34.99 isn't bad at all.

nickdawgy

Wow, it's been awhile since I haven't laughed so hard. Thanks Penny Arcade for coming through again

Setzer

Well I picked up Phantom Brave and after a couple of nights playing it this game is not for me. I love tactical RPG's but I don't like how PB is designed. Some people may be able to appreciate this game but I'm just not having any fun with it. I'll be returning it today for Star Ocean and we'll see how bad that game is.

Feneant

I stopped Star Ocean after a few hours (I did not buy it mind you, my brother did) because it is gawd awful if you ask me. The fighting makes no sense, if you dont take control of the healer, she will die every battle and even then you end every fight with all your guys with maybe 33% hp remaining. The funny part is if I fight alone, I didnt lose any hp by using the same move over and over. The map is also very hard to use with the wonky camera so you constantly have to turn it around so I keep going in and out of the same area. And speaking of the different areas in the map, most seem badly made so that you can jump over a foot long drop so you take a minute to find a path to a chest inches from you because you have to find the correct path since the obvious one stops you.

I could not give Star Ocean over a 5/10 if I was to rate it, the game is nothing like the original.

Setzer

From what I read in IGN's review they said you can assign two of your characters pre-defined scripts and there are 8 to choose from. Did you assign a script to your healer that told him/her to heal? Heck, maybe they didn't have a script that does that . Point is, that may be why your healer didn't do anything.

Outlaw

I wouldn't say that its a bad game, what i meant that of the two action-battle rpg's released this year, Tales of Symphonia is the better game.

But yeah, the AI in SO is kinda wonky. But I'm finally getting into the game now, the intro is so long. They should made a fixed moving camera like FFX or ToS. Feneant covered a lot of the other complaints I also have, but so far I haven't stopped playing, I'm probably gonna see this one to the end.

nickdawgy

I picked it up the other day, and after playing for an hour, I like it alot. I'd give it a 8/10. Definitely worth it if you liked the last one.

milo bloom

Can anyone tell me why this is in a cardboard box? Is there some nifty swag or other booty inside?

tks

Joe Molotov

Nope, no purpose for the cardboard box at all. I guess they just wanted to make it stand out on the shelf.

Anyway, I've beat Tales of Symphonia and I've played about 8 1/2 hours of Star Ocean III, and so far Star Ocean III doesn't come anywhere close to Tales of Symphonia. I chuckled at ToS's cliché filled plot, but at least it friggin' made sense. Almost 9 hours into Star Ocean III and I still don't even know what's going on. One minute I'm on one planet, then that planet gets attacked and I go to another planet, then I get rescued from that planet and then crash land on another planet, and I have to help some people do some stuff that seems totally unrelated to what I was doing on the first two planets and I don't really see how any of it fits into the overall plot. I'm not asking for much here, just some degree of continuity, maybe?

I realize I'm making judgements based on my experiences fairly early on in the game, but an RPG needs to be able to hook me within the first few hours, otherwise I have a really hard time making it through. I'm still playing it sporatically, but something needs to take a change for the better or I may just give it up and wait for Paper Mario 2. All the time I've spent on SO3, I feel like I've just been playing an extended prologue and I'm still waiting for the actual game to start. Not a good feeling.

nickdawgy

Funny, I actually like Star Ocean better then Tales

PixyJunket

Quoted for truth.

nickdawgy

Well granted I'm only in about an hour in both games.

Setzer

Ditto.

Breakfast with Girls

Bump!

So, I got the greatest hits version of this for Christmas '05 (it was $9.95), but I only got around to playing it just recently.

Well, I'm 40 hours in and on the second disc, and I've got to say, the game is notable for achieving Most Hated Protagonist status, which is a unique achievement since I've played approximately one zillion RPGs over the course of my life.* I mean, it seems like in a lot of these Japanese RPGs the protagonist hates war and can't we all just stop fighting, bla bla bla, but Fayt is just such a whiney dipshit. I mean, the dialogue is awful, but he in particular just annoys me for some reason. Plus, whenever I'm not controlling him (as much as possible), he is probably the worst fighter in the team. He has this sword and a low but not humiliatingly-so attack, but then he goes and does something stupid like repeatedly shoot lightning at a lava beast, when he has a frickin' ice sword ability. Ugh.

The gameplay itself is not bad--average, like the reviews say. About Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter in its averageness. And the story is understandable, not complete and total nonsense a la Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 or something. It's just tedious, meandering, and slow. I finally left Elicoor (the main planet) and I was so happy, thinking something might happen, but surprise! Now I'm back on the same planet.

Dragon Quest VIII has really ruined me. Even though it had a prototypical old-school RPG storyline (rescue the princess, save the kingdom), it was such a great game. It's like craving a really good grilled hamburger and settling for Jack-in-the-Box instead.

And the map sucks. Whoever made the decision to not have a rotating map should be thrown into a ravine.

* However, I reserve the right to demote him to 2nd or 3rd place if I remember someone even worse from a previous game.

darkside

This may be my most hated RPG ever from Square or Enix. I really, really tried to like it, but it combined a terrible story with mediocre characters and a pitiful battle system and mad me angry at myself for even playing it. I really hope this franchise is never heard from again.

Joe Molotov

Almost two years later, and I still haven't beaten SO3. I played it for about 12 hours, and then gave up on it. Then I came back to it a few months later, played about another 20 hours and then gave up again. Maybe one day when I run out of other RPGs, I'll come back and beat it.

Outlaw

lol, another blast from the past thread bump. I made good on my word above and beat the game last summer. I thought it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the best either, it was all Albel and Nel that kept me playing, I did almost stop playing the game at the "twist." I got an ok ending, it was the ending where There are over 30 or so endings I believe, no way I have time or interest for that. However I was having some major problems in battle later in the game so I ended up having to abuse the forging/synth system to create insane weapons which ended up making the game too easy, I killed most bosses so fast I always got the < 1 minute bonus trophy, it was kind of fun though.

I agree though, Dragon Quest VIII is going to be a tough one to top, it was so fundamental but epic and engaging at the same time, I'm thinking of going back and playing it again.

Breakfast with Girls

At any given time while I'm in a battle in this game, my face is exactly like Gabe's in panel one or two. I frequently tell the characters I'm not controlling that I hate them. It's not a healthy relationship.

So I'm 60 hours into this thing, and just about to beat the fucker. I only did one extra dungeon--by accident--and I'm obligated by RPG law to finish the battle arena. I won't permit myself give up on an RPG, which is good in that I finish all of them that I start, but bad because I often end up hating certain ones more than most normal people would who just give up like any sane person should. You can tell I don't like a game when I don't do every last little thing in it--for instance, I always do the 100 Levels of Pain dungeon. I enjoy making a game my bitch. But I'm skipping the 211-floor extra dungeon this time.

Can we talk about the fighting system? My opinion has gotten much harsher since my last post. Here's me doing my best Martin Luther impression:

1. Attack magic is pretty much worthless in this game. I will forgive most battle systems' quirks if I can get some decent area attack spells that take out five enemies at once with enough levels on my mage. Nope--the best I can hope for is something to slightly pester more powerful enemies. The gravity spell is nice--slow every enemy in the area for just slightly longer than it takes to cast the spell itself.

2. Two life bars (HP and MP). Hit 0 on either one and you die. Having a life bar that is impossible to refill without items is just bad design. Using HP to execute battle skills is so goofy--almost as bad as Lunar: Dragon Song slowly killing your characters for running on the overworld.

3. Oops, did you hit X when you meant to hit Triangle? Too bad, you're executing that action whether you feel like it or not, even if you frantically motion away, even if you're the healer and you have to run across the entire freaking board to do it while your party gets gang-raped by demon lords or whatever.

4. You want to attack, but you stupidly assumed the character would attack the nearest enemy, instead of running by the nearest enemy to attack the one at the opposite end, or worse, standing right next to the nearest enemy while attacking, opening you up to an area attack because you were foolish enough to not manually select the nearest enemy.

5. The enemy is quite clearly gearing up to do a major area attack that will devastate the characters, and they stupidly don't even attempt to move out of the way.

6. Crappy tactical options. Not refined enough, and don't seem to affect much at all.

7. Healers heal whenever they damn well please, even if you set their tactics to "Concentrate on healing/recovery," even if characters are on the verge of death.

8. In the later stages of the game, good luck playing as anyone other than the healer. Support is, of course, the most fun position you can play as. For example, I like to be as far away from the action as possible, off in a corner, healing people and boosting their stats instead of directly attacking the bad guy.

Okay, so not quite 95, but...

GreenMonkey

I enjoyed this a lot. I'm at about 70 hours on it, since baby was born I haven't gotten the chance to play it more.

Voice acting is good (well known anime voice actors, a few from Cowbop Bebop if you recognize them), story is pretty decent for a sci-fi RPG.

The battle system can be irritating, but remember if you play the character for a while they play quite a bit like you and utilize some of your combos. Spend some time healing folks as your healer...I used Nell mostly and set her to "Balanced", and had little problem with her healing. Once in a while I had to stop the game and do a manual heal...but I wasn't playing on Active mode, but the mode where it stops while you're selecting spells.

You can tune their AI options in the menus, turning off certain spells, to prevent them from tossing pointless crap (Like Fayt and his strange obsession with Lightning Blast).

I've never been a big fan of action RPGs where you can't control the other characters, but I enjoyed SO3. I didn't have to play the healer after a while...tuning the AI settings a bit generally solves most of the AI problems.

As far as running out of MP/HP...There's a few equippable items that give you MP during fights...forget the names...I basically had infinite MP with my spellcaster-types. And remember that you can MP kill the enemy as well. I used Nell for my healer most of the time in the earlier game and she never ran out of MP.

Attack magic has to be chained - the 2 spellcasters that can chain attack magic do decent with it. But I agree that it isn't that great.

This game is more about the attack combos than anything else. I spent most of the game playing either Fayt or the blonde dude and smooshing enemies with their insane attack combos and juggles. I agree the targeting is annoying - I never got the hang of the manual targeting and left it on auto most of the time.


Is it DQ8? Hell no. But unfortunately a lot of the recent RPGs have moved to this control-one-character action-RPG format. Give me a good turn-based strategic RPG any day.

Breakfast with Girls

I ended the game at level 75-80 for my characters and about 70 hours of game time.

My main team was Maria/Fayt/Cliff, Maria for Angelic something-or-other (the spell that boosts all stats and resistances, most importantly HIT) and the fact that her healing spell refilled about 1/2 to one person versus Sophia's fairy one that did 1/3 to everyone (which, in the last battles of the arena 1/2 vs 1/3 is a huge deal). Also, she cast much faster, even when Sophia had the 1/2 cast item. Maria and Sophia would almost NEVER heal--they would be too busy trying to attack. It was impossible to completely turn off certain spells altogether (unlike many other RPGs), so if I wanted to limit her to ONLY casting heal and buffing, there's no way for me to do that.

You're right, the MP auto-refill items work great, but you get them relatively late in the game. That was a more a mid-game complaint. MP killing the enemies is fine except that most MP attacks simply deal too little MP damage even with the bonuses equipped--try MP killing the last three bosses in the arena to see what I mean.

By the way, I will admit that I was pretty proud of myself when I beat the final arena challenge at 300% experience (for 240,000 total) and instantly raised my main party from level 65 to 70.