Review - Star Ocean: First Departure

(I'm going to try and have the Theme Song or Opening for every Review.)

So, I know it's a bit 'late' to be doing a proper review of Star Ocean:  First Departure, considering it's been out since October of 2008 (In the States, at least), but this is a game that I want to review, because of the fact that Star Ocean, as a series (I say that a lot) will probably always have a little place of importance in my gaming heart.  They're not great games by any measure, but they are really good at quite a few things and have laid a great groundwork for some other developer to crib off of; if any of them will do it already.  It helps that the first two games in the series were quite fun on their own merits, even if the stories are fairly.....forgettable is the nice term, but I'll get into that later on in this.

The important thing to note about Star Ocean:  First Departure (henceforth referred to as Star Ocean) is that, if nothing else, the gameplay is fairly solid and allows you to do quite a few things that are fairly unheard of in other RPGs, at least with the frequency that StarOcean allows.  As you may have noticed when I was speaking of the skill system in the other recent Star Ocean post, the system, with it's three-tiered approach is very rich and very varied, and while it basically serves to really empower the strengths of your characters and it can't make your characters do other things (I can teach Roddick the Symbology Skills that increase damage, reduce casting time, etc. but he's not going to learn Symbology) at its base, the evolution into Specialties and then Super Specialties is where it really shines.

As you may have noticed in the above-linked post, or if not, I'll explain here anyway, the Specialties offer you so much that the game itself honestly can't take it.  Or, rather, it can and was possibly planned out that way, since it technically does take quite a lot of work to get to the degree of power that I described as "Breaking the game" and it was from an era where your efforts were rewarded with ultimate power.  See:  Ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy Games, unlockable hidden characters, etc.  Whether you're for or against this practice, it lives strong in Star Ocean if you delve enough for it.  But at its base, it's not inherently broken and just sits comfortably on the level of 'useful'.

At modest levels, you can use Alchemy to make precious ores that you can then turn into accessories via Crafting to assist you in battle, as some accessories do quite well in that department.  Music can make your life easier with certain songs that refill your HP and MP while walking, prevents random encounters and raises your chance of success via Item Creation, while others you can use to help grow by summoning enemies, making random encounters more likely or similar things.  Of course, there's also Train that I mentioned that will give you more experience per battle in exchange for just a little cut-off access to your full potential.  Several other specialties are abound and the good portion of them are useful in -someway- if even just to create something for the explicit purpose of selling it.

The downfall or benefit to this is that Specialties all but require your character to have the required talent (or in some cases Talents, plural) to produce anything but the 'joke' item (pebbles for Alchemy, doodles for art, Books of 'Prophecy' for writing) with anything approaching normalcy.  The benefit being in that Talents can be learned through a few failings of the specialty that requires it.  After cooking so many burnt meals, you'll learn Taste and your meals will suddenly not turn out terrible, through careful composition of music and playing it, you'll get Rhythm Sense and Listening, and so forth.  The drawback to this is that some characters simply cannot learn all the talents, so some are doomed to fail at something no matter what.

That does lend to every character approaching unique, however, which is another strength of Star Ocean.  While most every character can likely be linked easily to any number of tropes and archetypes, they are also characterized and really developed as well.  Often, they don't 'evolve', but at least you get to know them better and you get to see why they are how they are and the like.  Characterization in Star Ocean is very, very important and this is made clear quite early.  This is done through the use of the Private Action system.

The Private Action system is....well, it's one of the elements I haven't really seen in a lot of other games and would like to, quite a bit.  Star Ocean recognizes simultaneously that your characters usually travel together so tightly that they use the "(Character) emerges from (Main Character)" approach seen in so many early RPGs, but they also allow everyone to have a little freedom; provided you do as well.  Upon moving towards a friendly town on the world map, a box in the upper right corner pops up that says "Private Action" and then displays a symbol indicating you should press square to activate it.  On doing so, you'll walk into town and split up to relax.  With only the main character in the party now, you can walk around and find other party members scattered around the town doing whatever they please.

Occasionally, you'll enter events with characters doing this, which will help build relationships, both good and bad between the many characters in your party.  And those events could even trigger other events later on when you gain more party members.  My stand-by example is, early on Roddick and Ilia are alone and Ilia can be found in an item shop that sells accessories.  She's eying one of the pairs of earrings and Roddick then has the opportunity to buy them, tell her she doesn't need them or simply act oblivious (I believe these are the options anyway).  I, wanting Roddick to be fairly smooth with the ladies, chose to have him buy them for her.  She then goes on to wear them for the rest of the game (they're not really an item, it's just flavor) which opens up two more events later on when you have more characters.

These types of little touches are the really, really important things to the characterization of everyone.  While they're superfluous technically, they really draw you in, really make you like these characters you have to use, when otherwise you may not.  Talking with this character and finding out more about the circumstances of losing his sister, or this character and learning just how he lost his arm makes them less a 'character in a video game that uses magic or stabs things' and more 'a character'.  Not even necessarily a character you can empathize with or anything, just something to appreciate as having a little thought put into them.  Maybe I'm a sucker for really caring that much for little details, but I really, really do because they're important to me.

There's quite a lot of downfall to the game unfortunately, which I've sort of alluded to a few times already and they vary from little irks to really big issues.  The above picture shows my first complaint which comes into play pretty much in the first hour of play and this is one of the little complaints, but it's one of those things in a game that really just grates on me.  If you'll notice the portrait shown, it's of a blonde woman in all black who is, quite apparently, not one of the sprites.  Except she is, unfortunately; she's the blonde on the left in the bright orange adventure clothes.  It ruins any sort of illusion of surprise to the knowledge that Ilia (and Ronyx, the guy with a friggin' quiver of arrows on his back) will eventually become part of your party and generally just indicates a lack of desire to go the little extra mile for seamless transition.

It's worse because it's not like she (and Ronyx) only spends a few minutes in their uniforms before switching clothes; it's closer to an hour or so of gameplay before they change.  There's even a private action that centers around getting Ilia new clothes!  And when I did it, I did it wrong on accident, so she didn't even take the clothes and decided she was going to keep her uniform 'for just a little longer'.  And then when we left, she had switched her portrait to her 'Adventure Gear' portrait for reasons that I can't discern.  It's every shade of silly and just seemed really, really sloppy.  The point I'm trying to drive at here is that they should have made alternate sprites considering how long those characters needed them.

The other problem is that, in general, the story is fairly weak and the driving narrative is weaker still; you'll always know what you have to do, but it's never driven in particularly hard and you'll be passively reminded if you activate Private actions when you show up and leave the town.  One of your characters will say "Aren't we supposed to go meet with the King of Astral?" or something to that sort, but there's absolutely no urgency.  Even towards the end of the game when the end-goals are clear and you know exactly where you have to go and why, the desire to do so is only driven by your own desire to beat the game.  Which, now that I say it, might have been why it took me so long to beat Star Ocean 2 in the first place; it only gives you the base reason as to why you should.

The other big thing that really drove into my side, and this might be a mild spoiler, was the fact that some enemies, especially late-game enemies were either resistant or absorbed damage from the strongest weapons in the game, rendering two of my characters, my main two at that, completely and utterly useless.  There's absolutely no way to change equipment once in a battle, so if you slash an enemy and green numbers pop up, you are screwed.  In both occasions, my only saving grace was the fact that my third damage-dealer didn't have a weapon with the same attribute as the other two, so she could take out the enemies with no real danger, though her damage wasn't that great.  So I ended up downgrading to weapons with 700 less attack overall just so I could reliably deal damage to every and any enemy to come my way.

Overall, there could have been a few more things and a little more effort put into the port, but considering it was done by TOSE, Squeenix's in-house Port Factory, there's not a lot one could expect.  I imagine if the situation was different and it was a NISA product (wholly), they would've taken a page from Star Ocean 2 and made a new story from Millie's perspective (as the second game does with Rena) which would have been really, really appreciated in the game.  What we got, despite my few complaints with parts here and there, was well enough, however.

The Good

• Thanks to the Private Action system, the Characters are very well-defined and thought-out.
• The Skill System and by extension, Specialty System, gives you quite a lot of variety in actions you can perform.
• It's quite a pretty game and the spritework (what's done of it at least) is very nice.
• There's a decidedly large amount of freedom in the game.
• The combat system is fun.

The Bad

• The story is almost an afterthought, filled with nonsensical religious connotations and cliche'.
• Poor enemy design makes the game impossible to win with the best equipment. 
• A few key oversights make for some really silly moments.
• Getting to know all the characters requires several playthroughs.
• Besides "Beating the Game" there's little other reason to want to...well, beat the game.

Mogs Says

Star Ocean:  First Departure does a lot right and offers an adventure worth getting into.  While you're not going to find anything inherently great, you'll find things that are genuinely nice and interesting and, if you're like me, you'll find a little inspiration in the fact that it exists because it means it could be implemented in something else and much better.  Unless your tolerance for nonsense is high, you might find reason to put this down early, however, and you might not miss out on much in that case.  However, the good might outweigh the bad for you, so I recommend you give it a shot if it interests you.

So I Beat Star Ocean: First Departure

It's a pretty good feeling, having finally, completely taken down this series that has daunted me since days long passed.  While it wasn't quite as....hard-fought as Star Ocean 2, it wasn't a cakewalk either, thanks to the eleventh inning bullshit Tri-Ace threw in, though I'm not too upset about it really.  Though I am left with a bunch of conflicting emotions about the whole of it, as I usually am upon beating a game with no intention of jumping right back into the thick of it again directly after.  (Trophy hunting is mostly to blame for this, thanks to a lot of "Beat Hard to unlock Very Hard and beat it for a trophy" set-ups)

And even now, I'm not really sure about all I want to say here, as I am really, honestly tempted to write a review for the game.  I haven't gone through it as comprehensively as I did Ghost Trick prior to that review, but then again I'm quite sure I don't need to; thanks to my start-and-stop Relationship with SO2, I'm quite familiar with all that is Star Ocean 1&2 if you haven't noticed.  Still, restraint here would mean that I have that much more I can say in a review that isn't retreading information, and honestly, I think I'm going to go with that.  I need to write another one, anyways.

Still, I can say a few things here; namely that I really, really wish there were more games that do what Star Ocean tries to do.  Likely because other games would do it better, and quite so, but also because it's fairly untrodden territory as far as I know.  The mix of Sci-Fi and Fantasy is rather seamless, especially so in Star Ocean:  First Departure when a man of Science learns how to use Symbology, which is Star Ocean's universal term for "magic", basically.  And not only that, but the lengths it goes to characterize the...well, characters surpass the attempts of several other prominent franchises, even if the end product isn't very 'deep'.

This is a dangerous thing to say, but Star Ocean (possibly as a series, I don't remember much of 3 and never played 4) is entirely too steeped in Anime.  The problem with this is that it's not, generally, the best examples of them either, so you'll get a lot of archetypes that are characterized well, but they still never grow out of those archetypes.  They never really surprise you, which works both ways, I suppose.  At least you know a character when you know them and don't have to worry about them suddenly being opposite of what you know about them, which most games confuse for a 'twist'.

Still, Star Ocean:  First Departure and Second Evolution (and by extention, Star Ocean and Star Ocean:  Second Story, the originals) have good foundations and very strong concepts, but they don't always build on them in the best ways.  And that's why I wish somebody else would take this 'formula' and work with it, polish it into something that really, really shines.  But maybe someone already has; I admit, I'm not as into RPGs as I was at one time, and even then I wasn't as knowledgeable as I could have been.  All I know is what I've said already and since I'll have to reiterate that in the review, I'll just save it for that.

On Star Ocean 1&2 And Why They're So Fun to Break

So, I've been playing Star Ocean:  First Departure on PSP as I claimed I would do for my next PSP game and I've had a lot of fun with it.  As we all know, the sequel to the game, Star Ocean:  Second Departure (Or Second Story, depending on which version you prefer) was one of my gaming 'white whales' for quite some time until I learned to relax and enjoy the game rather than the grind.  So when I started First Departure, breaking the game was, well, not really close to my mind.  This was something new, different than SO2, so I didn't need to really try all the different tricks to break it into little pieces and control it.

But, well, these things happen sometimes and you don't intend for them to happen, but you're just playing and suddenly you've constructed Gods of Destruction who have access to a near limitless source of money and have the answer to infinite power (read:  fairly reliable level-ups from one encounter) at your fingertips.  And you didn't really mean to do it, but, well, you did it and it'd be a shame to let that go to waste, you know?  For those of you who don't want to learn how to absolutely wreck Star Ocean 1 (and, for the most part, 2), perhaps skip the next couple of paragraphs.

The skill lists in Star Ocean 1 and 2 are largely intechangeable in both name and effect, so knowing that there's a skill in SO2 that, when purchased (up to a max of 10 times, as with all the skills) reduces the overall skill point cost of all other skills, I couldn't help but, y'know, save my SP up for that.  With that bought, and by that point I had access to all the purchasable skills, I used the rest of my SP bounty on skills that just so happened to unlock Train, which, when activated lowers your characters overall abilities slightly in exchange for more XP gained for each battle.  I guess, before I go on too much, I should sort of explain the skill system as it is in Star Ocean 1 and 2.

You see, it's sort of a three-tier system:  You buy skills with skill points after you've learned said skills from different skill guilds scattered across the land.  They sell you different skill-sets (there's four sets and three levels of each; each set offers a few different skills within) for Fol (money) and then, as I said, you purchase skills with SP which you gain, unsurprisingly, from leveling up.  After purchasing some compatible skills, you start unlocking specialties.  Specialties are sort of super-skills that let you make different items, whereas the regular skills basically only offer passive bonuses.  (Knife, for example, raises your strength with every skill level.)  Train is an example of a specialty since it, well, does something, same as Alchemy, Customization, and Music.  (All of which you should be interested in.)

Then it goes a level further with Super Specialties which are gained after a certain majority of the group learns the proper specialties.  Super Specialties, because of that, use the whole party, rather than just the individual and are harder (slightly) to get to Level 10 because of it, but these are your major bread and butter.  Orchestra (the next level of Music) will really help you in Item Creation, Group Appraising will let you raise prices at stores (when you want to sell something, thus making more money) or lower prices (when you want to buy things at a lower cost) at will, and Blacksmith will let you make some really outstanding armor.  These are just examples, of course, as there's quite a few.

Anyways, after getting the Train specialty on everyone, I just so happened to invest the right way to get my Super Specialty, Enlightenment, up to Level 10.  Enlightenment, as with Train, lowers your abilities while active (did I mention you can deactivate Train?  Well, you can.  Same with this.  Think of them like DBZ-Style Limiters) in exchange with netting you a good deal more SP per leveling up.  A string of coincidences, you see.  It was all very surprising to me, honest.  That served me well for....well, the most of the game, really.  I'm in the final stretch currently and will likely be able to finish it as early as tomorrow or as late as Sunday, depending on when I'm bothered to actually play it again.  And when I stop grinding.  Oh, right, the grinding.  Again, purists may want to skip, skip skip.

So, remember how I mentioned Alchemy as a Specialty?  Yeah, well, it's probably one of the more OP Specialties there is, topped only by Music and a couple others.  With a simple chunk of iron (which you can buy for 150 Fol) and a little luck, you can turn that iron into gold, mithril, and other various gemstones and ores all the way up to the mythological Philosopher's Stone.  Provided you have level 10 Alchemy, an item that will up the success of Alchemy, and the required talents (which I'm not even going to go into) you can create a few Philosopher's Stones out of every batch of 20 iron you buy.  Moreso if you use Music and even more if you use Orchestra.  Why go to the trouble, you might ask?  Because a single Philosopher's Stone will sell for 300,000 Fol at base.  Upping the cost with Group Appraisal takes that to the higher end of ~490K per stone.  I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

With this untold wealth, it's easy enough to go off and buy some nice accessories and some nice instruments (provided you haven't bought them all already) and use your resident music-lover to compose some musical pieces for them all, particularly the Silver Trumpet, which will cost you a pretty Fol.  After writing The Devil's Aria, you can perform it at any time on the world map, which will summon a boss encounter similar to that person's Music Specialty level.  8 is the sweet spot here, because with that, you'll summon a rather large phoenix that can go down like a bitch and net you 91k experience in the doing.  Over and over again.  I remind you that because of Train and Enlightenment, I'm not even using my characters at their fullest.

The process is rather similar in Star Ocean 2, though I'm not quite sure what specifics are different.  I assure you, some of them are, but that's really the bulk of it right there.  And, while many RPGs offer you the ability to become OP as hell, much as I described, somehow in SO it's different.  I'm not quite sure if it's because you're OP as hell with sealed off ability or if it's just the way you can just become as death pretty much with only a few hours work, but it's really, really satisfying.  And part of the reason why I never could beat SO2, because it was that feeling that I was going for but never really got until this last playthrough.  This time, with SO1, though....I was ready for the game.

The game was not ready for me.