The Star Ocean Series

I recently got Star Ocean: First Departure, and I've been playing it with the code that simulates Galaxy mode (since the vanilla game doesn't have a Galaxy or Universe mode). It's about as good as SO 2 is, which makes sense seeing as they both use similar game engines. The increased amounts of voice acting throughout the game, including during the Private Actions are a nice touch. I always thought that P As were a ghetto version of the Skits in Tales, but Voice Acting is helping me care about them more.

I agree with SO 2 (and SO 1 remake, idk about hte SNES one) having a better skill and item creation system. in SO 3 it pretty much just lets you have more hp, mp, and improve the ai. in SO 1 and 2 you do anything from bump up your stats, to doing pierce damage, to summoning bunnies to ride on. SO 3 also had a weird item system that felt too random for my tastes. I still don't quite understand what I'm doing when I try to make items in SO 3. SO 1 and 2s was easy to understand.

Last hope has a great crafting system it's nowhere near as random as 3 it's all based on the 3 person party makeup and your skill rank.

Making some of the higher level items require a lot of ingredient grinding, and the inventory system is limited to 20 items at a time. This made using the Duplication skill a bitch because you have to go back to Aeos to farm magical clay all the damn time.

If you're using the Duplication skill for ingredients, you're doing it wrong...

Besides, most of the high number ingredients in the Last Hope's creations system are capable of being purchased from a vending machine in the ship to begin with... Though, I'd agree that ingredient farming in the game is annoying to say the least(on the 360 version only, though) due to the need to change disks with just about every planet change...

I still have to say I preferred the creation system to 2's... If only because of the guarantee of getting the item... Rather than the possibility(or likelihood) of failure in 2 if the Random Number God didn't like you.

SO 2's system wasn't random? Pre-SO 3 systems were completely random. At least SO 3's system allowed you to aim for items according to their price.

SO 2's Creation System annoyed the hell out of me. It doesn't help that the PS 1 version was so slow.

The PSP remake for SO 1 had the best P As. Especially if you get Welch.

I liked Star Ocean 2. Didn't like Star Ocean 3. I didn't find 3's characters to be as interesting and I found its crafting and battle systems were overly complicated and not particularly enjoyable. The plot is rather meh on both games and I don't really care much about 3's plot twist.

To put it simply, 2 was fun, 3 was a chore.

I was using duplication on items, not ingredients, but those items are the ingredients for most high level creations. The magical clay thing was still an issue though.

Once you get a Violin in either 1 or 2, you can get any item creation skill to work 100% of the time. But honestly, the way the game is designed, it's kind of a Game-Breaker.

That's one of the things I liked about the Star Ocean games though. They had the regular game, which you can get through if you don't like to grind much or exploit the game mechanics, and then they had the bonus dungeons which pretty much demanded that you do those things. Boosted Indalecio is one of my favorite bosses ever, because he's fully plot integrated, and you pretty much have to throw everything at him that the game will let you in order to win.

Except the Bloody Armor exploit. That was just cheesy.

edited 4th Feb '12 6:49:47 AM by Desertopa

Well, to be fair, Unlimited Indalecio is a pain in the rear, but he's not particularly difficult if you strategize correctly. The only problem is his earthquake spell (which is pretty dang near a Total Party Wipe) and his insane speed. I find that having Rena spam Press against him makes the battle far more manageable, as it stops his casting - he's not immune to Void element - and stuns him for a fraction of a second.

^ I find that he can come down to luck sometimes.

Well, if you're at least level 200 or so (and possibly have beaten the Iseria/Ethereal Queen a few times), I've never had trouble with him after I've developed my strategy.

I use Claude, Rena, Ashton, and Precis normally.

Claude is player controlled, with the Eternal Sphere and spams standard attacks.

Ashton primarily will use Dragon Breath, and Precis should stick to Bloody Mary (Barrier may work better, but I've never in 10+ playthroughs gotten her to make that item.)

Rena spams Press constantly. Turn every other spell in her list (including all healing spells) off. You may want to manually have her cast Angel Feather, though do have damage items ready in case Indy decides to do the same, because that's what makes the battle a pain.

I've actually haven't beaten the bonus dungeon yet, but I've beaten the unlimited version of the last boss. My strategy was basically Head Splitter, then hope I don't die on landing. If I don't, attack until he's dead, hoping he doesn't cast one of his big spells enough times in a row to automatically kill my entire party.

I think that's what happened. It's been quite a while since I've played.

How far did you get? Really, the only difficult levels are 7 and 10. 7 because of the 6x Funnythief L99 battle, and 10 because it's got all those machine monsters. I guess 13 is nasty because every enemy is basically a boss battle.

I got to the bottom, fought the boss, and died. Didn't really bother a second time.

Fair enough. Gabriel Celesta is a pain. Especially if you use Eternal Sphere, since she's immune to Star elemental attacks.

So yeah, SO 3 was a fun game but I kinda sucked at it. Nel was the best character, followed by Cliff and Peppita. Music was respectable. Terrible backtracking. Last half of th gme was much better than the first half. Might again with cheats on so I an enjoy all the benefits I couldn't earn fairly such as alt costumes.

Nikkolas, in the previous thread, you said something about Maria being a horrible character gameplay wise. I found that amusing, since I vaguely recall her being able to do some sort of Game Breaking infinite combo.

Oh I have no doubt she was a great character if you bothered to level her up. As it was when she joined my party she was about 10 levels behind and kept dying. I really didn't need her so I just never used her again.

From what I recall (it's been years since I last played), her main role in my party was to cure the characters who I actually had fight.

edited 9th Jun '12 5:52:05 PM by lrrose

I frickin' love SO. I got my start with 2, which could be my favorite RPG of all time from the IC system alone. Then, I got TLH and the PSP rerelease of the first game. Of these, the first one is my least favorite.

TLH's plot is severely underrated. I loved how Edge accidentally made a simulated Earth explode; it really developed his character. Also gotta love Faize's cutie-breaking. It made the endgame much more emotional.

My favorite character in that game was Lymle. At first, I thought she was a total Creepy Child at first, but as the game progressed, she turned into a sympathetic woobie with very quirky behavior.

My favorite characters for fighting in TLH were Edge and Meracle (put points into their critical hit % and watch their damage output explode), and Serah (for healing).

Despite TLH's amazing plot, I didn't like the changes made to the IC system, so it doesn't hold the same place in my heart like 2 does. They're both good for different reasons.

So from what I know this topic fell off the main page and someone made a thread that wasn't even the same topic but it got locked and this was resurrected. What, is thread Necromancy this website's official policy now? Pages were requested in the first place so that old topics would eventually die instead of go on forever!

Well it's nice to read something complimentary about TLH. I had been planning to play it as soon as I get my PS 3 back.

So to the general people of this thread, how would you rank the games? I'm curious how SO 3 stands up to teh others.

Maria is utterly broken to hell and back. Energy Blast...that thing just kills everything.

remind that my first RPG is SO 2

never able to finish because lost second disk T.T

Is that a big laser thing? I remember a big laser thing.

My thoughts on Maria were basically that she was introduced way too late in the game. She was seemingly an important character, but only arrives after you've already spent way too long invested in this irrelevant Fantasy-world plot. I get that these plots are kind of the Star Ocean thing, but it would've been better if she was taking part in that with you, or something.