Man. This game is a lot of things, including being a mouthful. Probably the game with the longest title I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing on this blog. Can't search for gameplay tips without giving up at the search bar. At least give the main title a number! (Hint: it's SO5)
This will have to be my first introduction into the series since nobody is selling PS3 games anymore, and I know there are Star Ocean games in last gen. I'm not so desperate as to mass buy 100 games at once yet. Bought this years ago when the PS4 was still fresh in the house but never got around to playing it because I'm easily distracted by new, shiny things. Burnout sucks balls but at least I am clearing the backlog now.
This long-ass title game was released in 2016, 5th in the series, which was the latest until the release of the 6th this year (2022). Do I gotta get that now????
I like rounds of 'guess that character' because it forces me to think of creative ways to describe characters. Party members are conveniently colour-coded for our purposes today. Fidel, out main mans is blue, anime-standard handsome, and a hero-standard sword user. Miki the white magician girl is pink (3D model looks different from character art). My beautiful man Victor, knight dressed in some red; resident fanservice character Fiore in purple (despite her hair being the brightest green); skirt-chaser Emmerson in green(ish) hues (but his hair is blue); his second, Anne in orange (or red, with green hair); and finally non-participant Relia in yellow.
The story starts in a small town of Stahl with our hero Fidel training with Ted, his childhood friend. Fidel is the successor/instructor of the Camuze training hall, with his dad away in the capital training knights. Miki is Fidel's adoptive sister (kind of) which makes Ted's comment about "Miki turning 18" really weird in hindsight. Like, what's the point. What are you trying to suggest? And Fidel replies that he sees her like a sister... (but it didn't stay that way)
Anyways, what started off as a journey to stop bandits from attacking their town became a space conspiracy when Fidel leaves Stahl to petition the king for aid, helps a mysterious waif with amnesia when the king says no, then gets roped into war between Resulia and Trei'kur. The mysterious amnesiac waif is Relia, who has equally mysterious powers and is wanted by strange people with laser guns.
While Fidel and Miki are struggling against laser guns from Trei'kur with Victor (Resulian knight) and Fiore (magic user from the neighboring country Langdauq), two rangers FROM SPACE- Emmerson and Anne- descend from their ship to observe the conflict. It didn't take long for Miki to get fucking shot by one of the laser guns in a battle and with no technology to save her presently, the rangers FROM SPACE had to zap everyone onto their ship to use their sick bay for Miki, breaking some space laws by doing so.
Rangers FROM SPACE as implied, are from a space federation, investigating suspicious activity on Fidel's home planet designated Faykreed IV. Emmerson is the captain of the ship and Anne his lieutenant. Trei'kur got their laser guns from Kronos, which is against non-interference space law since Faykreed IV is an underdeveloped planet. They would have let the war play out by itself if not for the laser guns.
Apparently Kronos themselves are having a civil situation going on, and the big bad who wants Relia is leading the coup d'etat. Kronos works with the Federation to bring down the big bad, Relia can now live freely and our Faykreed party members all leave for space, abandoning their old lives. Such a cop out.
Gameplay: Exploration is a fucking chore but at least it's better than Xillia so I'm not complaining. The Resulian Plains is *chef kiss* and some of the coastal areas look very pretty. Battle system is meh, standard action jrpg with the added bonus of having all your party members participate in battle! That means all 6 playable characters + 1 NPC + other NPCs that join in during event battles. Chaos in the battlefield!!!! The game provides some customization with its role (like job and classes) and skill learning systems, otherwise there are no fancy combos... unless you count the attack cancels, which sometimes stunlock enemies, but doesn't work all the time. My greatest gripe about this game has to be the healers. Miki can't cast restorative spells on the fly when she is player controlled, to do that you have to go into the battle menu and select the spell you want to cast. So you leave the healing to the AI, which does a pretty good job with the correct roles equipped. I beat the final boss six times by controlling Miki and going into the menu for every healing spell. Needless to say... it was boring.
Story: Another space opera! How fitting. This is an actual space opera though, with spaceships and space battles and laser guns and whatnot. Don't really spend a lot of time in space, despite the name of the game and the core setting being in space. The game has private actions, which are essentially character side stories where you learn more about them and raise their affinity with Fidel. It's one of the factors that influence the ending, and speaking of endings - there ar multiple epilogues! It's a Star Ocean staple to have character endings, but even without doing anything extra one can most likely score one with the heroine. Miki's ending is pretty cute... then you get to Anne and Fiore's, which are so much more suggestive, what with Emmerson saying Fidel 'laid his hands' on Anne and Fiore just outright saying that she could tutor Fidel at night. The guy endings get nothing. Emmerson at least has a "hurry up and catch up to me" vibe but Victor just asks for a duel, not even the sexy kind because you actually get to beat his ass during the epilogue.
Music: Motoi Sakuraba did the music and I can practically hear his signature style while playing. Not saying it's bad though, I quite enjoy the atmosphere he's created for the game. Standard fare for medieval-esque jrpg settings.
Overall rating: It's different I'll give them that. Not as fun as I expected for an action-jrpg but it's fine. Negatives- no traditional cutscenes, clunky character controls, no actual healer gameplay, boring world navigation. Positives- emotes! In real-time cutscenes! Very pretty lighting, expressive eyes, (I can't believe I'm saying this) jiggle physics. 6 just for the really impressive backgrounds.
Character impressions:
All the characters look like typical jrpg archetypes but the game subverts them in PAs with interesting quirks.
Really not much to say about Fidel. He's the main character, semi-blank state, you get to choose who he ends up with (to an extent), a competent and likeable protagonist overall. He's got nothing to dislike and it kinna makes him boring. Not really a pervert, not really into bitches (of any gender or sex), can't say he's a blood knight, or maybe I'm just not paying attention. Has some daddy issues but it's not really a big thing. I do recall that he has PTSD when it comes to consuming fish.
Miki is fine, I guess. I would have liked her more if the 3D model looked anything like the character art. Her hair should be almost the same shade has her dress but instead is an ugly combo of pink and purple. Her eyes are all the wrong shades of blue and the wrong shape. At first glance she seems like a typical heroine - pink and cute, is traditionally feminine (whatever that means); the subvertion being that not only does she like to cook, she loves to eat as well, and the whole reason for her hobby is to eat more. She never mentions anything about gaining weight or going on a diet. She's also not against the idea of gaining more muscle, even though she notes that her arms look like a man's. Apparently, despite being a white magician girl adjacent, Miki can and will beat your ass.
Victor!!!! He's my blorbo in this game. There's something about the way he carries himself that has me absolutely smitten. Fangirling aside, he's the typical jrpg knight; duty-bound, loyal, and maybe a tad bit serious... but he's also extremely superstitious. He reads his fortune everyday, believes black cats bring bad luck, can't start his day right without putting down his best foot forward (literally). Even the girls think it's too much. He has a childish dislike for spinach and acts like a closet gay/bi. Victor accidentally lets it slip that he likes older me-WOMEN. Women. His admiration for Fidel's dad (his master/mentor) can be interpreted as infatuation and some of his comments for Fidel can be eyebrow-raising. I want to see this man wrecked.
Sometimes I want to choke the person who approved Fiore's design. It's not bad for a fanservice-y character, I can appreciate a good pair of bosoms and ass like any other guy, but this is not it. My rule for fanservice designs - it's either the top or bottom, not both else it becomes bikini armor. Fiore is the older female character who "ara-ara"s and hits on the guys with her sex appeal... but she does not actually do that, not actively at least. Men? Pah! She's a researcher first and foremost and nothing is sexier to her than science. She's got the brains of a mad scientist, with her 'cute' pet lizards that were larger than alligators, prompting Fidel to fucking lose it. She also thinks frogs are good gifts for its uses as medicine and for dissections.
Emmerson is the sharpshooter of the party, but he's not a bard. He definitely acts like one though. He skirt-chases and drinks, gets reprimanded by his subordinate Anne, and is generally a laid-back guy. This character archetype hides another - he has to burden a family legacy that he didn't want. Emmerson comes from a famous bloodline of heroes and has had his life laid out for him. A single misstep and he would dishonor the family name, as if being a womanizer wasn't enough. Despite it all, he is no less a competent captain and has showed that he has the chops. Buuuut he's also an unreliable adult who feeds blatant lies to children (and other adults even) then gets told off by the girls (mostly Miki and Anne, as Fiore is a brutal mistress with her words).
Anne is the big girl, being the only female character to brawl. She's got the curves and some muscle, but she's not all brawns no brains, as Anne is the tech counterpart to Fiore. She handles all the space tech stuff and knows a bit about the science of Faykreed as well. She plays the archetype straight by being comically bad at housework, but also likes cats... then the game subverts this again in one PA where it's revealed that the 'kitty' that she was taking care of is actually a wild monster. Fidel loses his shit again.
The Star Ocean series was first started by the original developers of Tales, so I would expect to get a taste of an 'alternate version' of the Tales games... It is still an action jrpg but it's so different from what I had in mind. Maybe it's just this one game, maybe the others are less chaotic, but I'm not going to get the latest one to find out how it is. Not yet at least. I'll still get it if I finished everything else. For now, I'll try to finish the side quests and bonus dungeons and grind to level 255 (hoooo boy), get most of the trophies and move on to God Eater 2 or something.
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