Excellent Japanese Role Playing game - another home run for Square Enix. The Combat is fun, the story is great.
First things first, lets all sit back and have a good laugh at the choice of the our Hero's name... "Edge Maverick" I can see it now...
cut away to - the writer in charge of naming the Star Ocean Hero:
"we need something Edgy - a real Maverick for our space opera... wait a minute... I think I have something! ..."
fade back in.
ok, I have a good 20 hours worth of play time invested in this game, and I really do enjoy it. you have to be prepared for the Long long traditional Enix cut scenes, (which are stunning and brilliant of course,) that are generously sprinkled through out the game. By the time that your done with the 3 disks of content, You'll have seen a good full length Movies worth of cut scenes. Feel free to pop some corn, because there will be plenty of time to just sit back and eat it as the story develops.
The videos are done with excellent voice work and amazing visuals. As for the actual quality of the story, I'm only half way through so, take what I say with a grain of salt, but ... perhaps I'm jaded, but there are some very 'cringe worthy' elements to the story, our Hero (Edge Maveric - yup... seriously, they named him that...) is such a whiny baby sometimes you just want to reach into your computer monitor and Slap the guy and say :
"Edge! Stop being such a wus! Man up a little bit! Mavrick's don't cry!"
I'm hoping that at some point the kid will just embrace the fact that he's the main star of a Square Enix game and stop apologizing and acting all surprised that he's the heroic type... I imagine it's supposed to be endearing, but honestly, it starts to get annoying.
The voice acting is great, and if this game was translated from anything, you certainly can't tell! There is one character Lymle in the game that talks like a baby all the time, (The BradyGames Strategy guide says she is 15, but she looks and talks like a 6 year old, kay?) and - ok, I'll admit it - I kinda just wish she'd shut her yapper and keep casting spells. in other words, she's slightly irritating.
Graphics are incredible, they really shine, the environments are diverse and amazing. The maps are really fun to travel through and discover.
The music is spot on, it's high quality and really sets the mood like in game music is supposed to do. you hear certain themes a lot, but so far, (20 hours in,) it hasn't driven me crazy yet!
Combat, now here is a thing that really makes a guy nervous, I mean many people got 'into' this kind of game from playing Final Fantasy 7 (or something similar to it with turn based play.) Anytime one of these traditionally 'Turn Based' games wants to toss in 'real time' elements, I get real skiddish. If I want some 'real time' combat, I'll play Oblivion - or forget that, toss in the Gears of War. If I'm sitting down to play a JRPG, then I'm hoping for some old school strategy making turn based game time. That said, I am happy to say they somehow got this right!
It starts with the camera controls and controller set up, praise be that they included lots of options on how you want to handle these elements. It didn't take long before I had every thing inverted, and locked up just the way I liked it... not having these features would have honestly prevented me from enjoying the game, so - I'm supper happy that they took the time to make the options to set it up the way I want it.
Camera angles and controller configuration, check.
Switching between characters is smooth, and the fighting style between characters is diverse, the AI can be set up and tweaked before and during battle. If you heavily use the "y" button which pauses the action and allows you to simply and effectively set up strategies, you can see the elements of the old school 'turn based' aspects come through. That said, even the most jaded "real time combat hating" gamers will find themselves actually enjoying the thrill of this real time combat.
... ok, that's not true... but still, for the rest of us, rest easy, it's actually fun!
The 'pause the action' menus are used far less than expected... It's just a good thing that they are there for boss fights! There is some slight agitation (frustration seems too harsh an adjective,) that occurs, with the fact that when your in the middle of an action, lets say coming out of a special attack, that you have to wait for the action to complete before your able to use items or queue up another action from the pause menu. The flow seems choppy when the action is stopped so that you can say, eat some health restoring berries, only to find that you keyed the button a few milliseconds to quickly, thus requiring a restart for the action to finish then a re-pause to eat the darn berries.
(I take a tangent here... but I'm leaving it in.)
Speaking of 'darn' our hero seems awfully fond of the word 'Damn'. You'll get to hear him say Damn, Dammit, and even the, try not to bust a gut laughing out loud, "DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL!" the line is delivered with the full force of passion that only the president of your high School Drama club could muster. Maverick was so emotional about the whole affair though... I was just glad that the monitor was one way, and he couldn't see me snickering... (if only that could have been the case in high school...)
Ok ok, I continue to raz on some of the over dramatics of the story and actors in the game, with the whines of the heroes who don't seem to want to BE heroes yet, and the ever blooming romances that cause flash backs to the star wars prequel shows, "but, I love you Padme..." the annoying 15 year old spell caster who talks like she is 6. (that chick needs to wake-y wake-y up-y and stop with the cute-sy woot-sy BS. No wonder Lymle didn't have any friends on her planet except for her sick grandfather who probably just tolerated her so she'd keep bringing him his morning meals...)
So ya, I poke a bit of fun at the game, but heck, maybe you need all that crap in there to make it a good story, because over all, I feel invested in characters. I actually care about them and am looking forward to 'what happens next'. And isn't that what developing a story arc is all about?
in Conclusion, when taken as a full experience, this is a wonderful game. Looking at the production quality, the art, the depth of the item creation, the collection quests, the stories, the rich NPC filled locations - three DvD's full of content, makes you wonder how on earth you pay the same for a game like this and those crappy 'game based on movie' games.
This game is a winner - by Wade Hone.