[Thoughts] Star Ocean: Till the End of Time · 2:18am Jun 16th, 2018
(Thoughts are up to Kirlsa Caverns)
Sigh...
I'll be straight with you guys for a second. I hate this game, no sugar coating. I bought it after a friend recommended it to me and I believed I'd have a good time with it but all I felt after the first few hours was PAIN AND SADNESS. I hate the characters, I hate the battle system, I hate the story, I hate the sound in fucking general, it bores me to no end and the only fun I've had with the game is making fun of it with my sister.
Let's start with the story. This game takes place in the future where everything is cool and high tech and whatever. You play as Fayt Leingod, the recent winner of the 20th annual "Stupidest Main Character Name Ever" contest. You're staying at a hotel with your girlfriend/cousin/sister Sophia, who's name I had to look up for this because that's how little of an impression she had on me. Fayt is dicking around with a video game and ignoring his companion when some stupid ass fish people invade the planet and he's separated from his parents who are also there I guess. Then some escape pod stuff happens, Fayt falls on a planet and now you have to save your girlfriend and parents from undercooked sushi monsters. I'll fully admit the opening where the aliens attack is pretty cool and sets you up for a great game, but it all falls apart when you get to the first true level of the game.
You see, if you were expecting a 100% space-faring RPG, you can take those hopes and smash a watermelon on it's head because fuck you, you get the medieval setting for two levels. First impressions in quite literally anything are beyond important, so if I'm playing a game in the future then I expect there to be energy swords and laser blasters, not wooden carriages and hay bales.
I don't even want to talk about the characters or dialogue in this game because it hurts. Every character so far I really dislike simply because they're not interesting and they're super annoying. Fayt is a generic main character, Sophia is the girl, Cliff is a moron, Peppita is irritating and Nel is such an unlikable and unbearable bitch that I don't think I could hate a character more. And the dialogue? The dialogue sounds like it was written by a 10-year-old who thought making a game in a fantasy setting and marketing it as a sci-fi setting was a funny idea.
And speaking of the dialogue, let's segue into my least favorite part about this game: the audio. Music first just so we get it out of the way, it's not great. Each song sounds like the composer's scraps and I hate almost every song here. It doesn't help that each song is so out of place that I'm seriously worried the guys working on the music were smoking some sweet shit and just put late game songs in the first few levels. Like take the ruins level. You're probably expecting some slower, more ambiant music to coincide with the setting. Nope! Heavy metal rock band. Fuck that noise.
But the music isn't the only issue. When I said audio, I mean all the audio; the sound mixing in this game is atrocious. Almost every conversation in the game if there is music playing, five out of ten times you can't even hear what the characters are saying because the music is too loud. And sure, I could turn down the music volume if it actually mattered, because the other five times it actually works! If it weren't for text boxes during cutscenes, I wouldn't have followed anything in the story. This is absolutely unacceptable.
Combat! It tries to be Tales but really, really fails. I made a rhyme, yay! It's literally Tales down to the bone, like I'm convinced the games use the same fucking engine it's that similar, only this time every time combat is initiated I want to kill myself. The combat barely works, or if it is functional then it's so convoluted that I haven't figured it out yet. You're given formations for battle to maximize strategy, although that barely matters since enemies are always off to one side. You have techniques, abilities, items that heal health percentages rather than set numbers, the entire battle system is literally just Tales just worse.
I haven't even gone over the numerous glitches or lighting effects or the overly long loading times between overworld play and battles, effectively killing any enjoyment I had for this game which was already pretty small. Don't even get me started on Kirlsa Caverns, the place I stopped playing, because the game doesn't fucking tell you what to do or where to go. But the absolute worst thing? Guess who published this game! Go on, take a gue--
SQUARE ENIX
I know Square is already a pretty shady company, but they make up for it with great games still with timeless stories still being made to this day, and to their credit they didn't make this game. They did publish it though, so the blood is on their hands.
I will say this though: as mentioned before, I got a good laugh out of the game with my sister since we were just constantly making fun of it, be it the bad voice acting, the terrible sound mixing or just the fact Sophia is your girlfriend who acts like your cousin and looks like your sister. Incest is wincest (disclaimer: Wyst does not actually condone incest). But there are far better ways to get a laugh than spend 30 bucks on a terrible, terrible game.
Did I miss anything? Got a question for me? Want to hear my thoughts on something in particular? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Honestly I want to hear your thoughts on the Metroid Prime Trilogy in honor of Ridley being on Smash Bros.
4883456
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boyyyyyyyyyy
:)
4883461
Just saying.
I wanna hear your thoughts on Tales of Berseria
4883461
Also FUCK THE DARK TORVUS BOG LEVELS.
4883463
You're in for a hell of a ride. Long story short, Prime is one of my favorite game series ever.
4883469
Lol shockingly some of my favorite levels
4883466
I would, but Berseria is a game I haven't played nor have access to. I can easily do the Tales game in general though.
4883471
Which Dark area was your least favorite?
4883473
Dark Agon Wastes
4883474
Fair enough.
4883472
Yay
Never heard of this one. Then again, I've played like three I think.
4883724
Four Star Ocean games, maybe even more? I didn't even know there was more than two.
4884218
Well, I know there was one on PS2, but I don't remember what it was, and I have Last Hope and Integrity and Faithlessness, both of which I need to beat.
that sounds so awful,