Nevertheless, I swear, these games really are all that good. And Star Ocean 3 sure isn't another exception, though I admit to some mixe feelings in a few areas.We'll start out with the best part: The battle system. Extremely good. Reminiscent of Tales of Symphonia's, though I do think it is better in every way. It's real time, set on a full 3d plane, and a very large one too, for a battle area. It's one of those cases where it seems very simple, yet contains quite an amazing amount of depth.
You have three basic options: A major attack, a minor attack, and blocking. You also have three meters, or bars: HP, MP, and Fury. HP and MP are obvious, but fury... well, every time you attack, it uses fury, a certain percentage of it. If you have 100% fury, and are standing still, then you automatically block all minor attacks. A major attack will break through the shield though, and take out most of your fury in the process. If you stay still for a second, your fury bar will begin to refill itself.
It's all set up very nicely, seamlessly even, though there was more of a learning curve then most RPGs would bother with. That didn't even take into account the battle skills, of course. In this game, battle skills are your usual skills, except instead of taking MP, they take HP. Then they have Symbology, which takes MP. And don't forget, if your MP goes all the way down, you die. Essentially you have two interchangable health/magic bars.
And then there is the bonus gauge. There is a bonus gauge on the side of the screen, and depending on the enemy's level in comparison to your's, it will go up a bit every time you hit the enemy. If it gets filled, then you'll get a bonus for that battle. That could be triple experience, double money, increased chance for an item, or extra HP/MP regeneration at the end of the battle.
Once that bonus gauge fills up, it remains full until the character you are controlling is killed, an enemy lands a critical hit, you run from a battle, or you reset the game. It's possible to get a bonus battle chain set up, if you can keep the same bonus gauge full for multiple battles in a row. For every five battles, it adds another type of bonus. So if you have 15 battles in a row without hving your gauge broken, then you'll have every single bonus at once. Triple exp, double money, etc., etc.
But we're not done yet! The final touch are the battle trophies, which can be awarded if you meet special conditions in the battles. I believe there are 300 of them. There's one for finishing a battle in under a minute, for under 30 seconds, for under ten seconds. One for finishing a battle with just minor attacks. One for having the same person land killing blows 10/20/50/100 times in a row. One for keeping a bonus chain for fifty straight battles. One for moving a certain total distance during battles. One for a million/a thousand/100,000 button presses during battle. One for finishing a battle without taking damage. Etc., etc. As I said, there are three hundred of them.
Depending on the amount of battle trophies you have, you can unlock stuff, such as extra costumes, or new difficulty modes, stuff like that. Nothing that will diredctly effect your present game though.
They also have the most extensive invention/item creation/item fusing system I've ever seen in an RPG, one which is almost as surprising as the battle system, in terms of depth. I won't go into here, in part because I don't fully understand it's intricacies myself, and in part because I'm lazy.
I bet you're all wondering about the other stuff, by now. The important stuff, right? Normally I'd agree with you there, too... But Star Ocean 3's story was a dissapointment. It's not bad, per se, and I actually loved the first half of it. However, there is a point where they have a very important plot twist. You know, the usual big event that tends to happen between disks. They have this huge buildup, an amazing sense of momentum, and then... the plot twist strikes. This plot twist not only completely kills that amazing sense of momentum, but it demeans everything your characters have done up until that point.
This plot twist is not inherently bad, it's mostly the way they implemented it, really. By the end of the game, I was happy enough with it, though I still think I would have been happier with something else.
But enough with the overall story, which is undoubtedly the weakest part of the game.
I'd say this game has a very cool universe. It's far from fully realized, and there are probably more loose ends by the end then I have ever seen in an RPG, but overall, the universe it is set in seems very... cool. I blame it on the character and world design, which is fantastic. Very impressive ruins, landscapes, and spaceships. In my experience, high-tech areas in RPGs are boring, repetitive, and bland. Not so here. Which is good, considering it's a futuristic RPG.
Though even with the whole futuristi RPG, they manage to throw in castles, swords, dragons, and places/people/organizations with technology equivalent to that of our middle-ages. And they do so quite believably and without too much cheese, too. An amazing feat in of itself.
I love every last character in this game, too. Which is cool, especially when you take into account that they have multiple endings depending on your reltionship values with these characters.
Finally, the music. This game has great music, and is one of Sakuraba's greatest acheivements, IMHO. Nothing compared to Mitsuda's works, of course, and it pales in comparison to some of Sakuraba's other stuff (such as Baten Kaitos), but it's still fantastic. A bit more jazz involved then I would hve liked though.
And Misia's singing during the credits is a nice touch. I love that song.
All in all, I reccommend this game. Very much. There are better games, but not many of them.
