Pros: Star Ocean is a decent RPG and has a great deal of fun features for you to unlock and explore, like combining equipment to make your weapons, armor, and accessories better. It has excellent graphics, you can even see the fibers on the characters' clothing. The ending was a bit of a tear jerker for me. It has likable characters and a great story-line. You get to play with up to 6 characters at once. There is one character you are not allowed to control which has to do with story-line but I wish we could have played as her at least at some point. The game fighting mechanics are pretty solid, it has nice signetergy (magic) spells, and skills but a few things are difficult like using your "overdrive" which took a bit of getting use to. You can go on missions to unlock rewards and new specialties, but you do not have to do the missions. Using the PA system you can see extra story-line for your friends in the game. Also you can gain roles and specialties by listening to enough of their side story-lines.
Cons: Star Ocean has a few too many repetitive missions for me, which I though got boring and daunting fast. The story mode was too short. There needed to be more locations, more places to explore. While the locations were beautiful it was almost too linear and a lot of buildings had very little to do in them. Most buildings were not enter-able. The way the characters leveled up and used roles (which are basically how the character acts when the a.i. controls them in battle) was a bit tricky to get used to. I felt like while there was really cool specialties, it was too hard to get materials to make most of the spells, recipes, equipment and etc. Also, it felt like the game was too short to really utilize these specialties. In addition you can use the PA system which basically allows you to see extra story-line for you characters. The problem is, it gets old fast and you have to keep hunting down your friends to watch these stories, if you want to hear them.
Overall Score: I gave this game a score of 8 because I felt the game was a good decent rpg with great graphics and great story-line. It lacked non-linear exploration, had repetitive missions, and was too short. It has some replay value but not much. A good solid title, that is worth the money if you buy for $30 or under.