But...I didn't DO anything...
User Rating: 6.2 | Star Ocean: Till the End of Time PS2
First off, I want to say my favorite video game genre is RPGs, and Japanese style RPGs are my favorite in the genre. So my disappointment with Star Ocean: TtEoT may be a little more intense than for most folks, so take my review with a grain of salt. First, the good. The graphics are top notch. There's not really anything cutting edge, nor does it appear to "push the limits of the system"...but overall their pretty good. The intro movie that runs at the beginning is extremely impressive. The score is standard RPG fair, with some interesting moments and a few odd choices. As far as sound, goes, the voice work is where the game starts to break down. In at least one scene, two characters appear to be voiced by the same actor. And some of the minor characters' voices are so atrocious it's hard to watch the cutscene. And, speaking of cutscenes, there are A LOT of them. If you played Xenosaga Ep. 1 you may think you're fine with watching a lot of long cut scenes. In fact, you'll spend considerably more time watching cutscenes than actually playing the game. Perhaps the biggest issue with the game is this: you don't actually HAVE to play the game. For example, I was playing on the defauly difficulty level (because it won't let you play on the hard difficulty until you've collected some "battle trophies). There's an extremely long cut scene before the first boss fight. I got an important call while the scene was playing and, since you can't pause the game during a cut scene, took the call in the other room. When I came back, the battle was over and I HAD WON. There's just something terribly wrong when you can win a boss fight without even being in the room. That's the biggest problem with SO...you don't feel like you have any control over the game, or that you're even playing one. Being able to control only one of up to three characters in battle takes away that sense of victory. There's no point in playing the game if you can't loose. And those cut scenes...there are way too many, and they're way too long since there's nothing really special about them. 
