Controls are easy to get your head around, there are virtually zero loading times transitioning between locations and the whole thing is fully voice-acted in both Japanese and English.įans of Star Ocean will know what to expect here. You can choose between the old PSP character avatars or newly drawn ones by Katsumi Enami which are based on artwork from the original 1996 game. In terms of this new version of the game, what's here is well presented, the newly HD visuals giving the whole thing a fresh energy and those enhanced backdrops from the 2007 PSP update still look pretty good nowadays. As we said, it's totally optional, but it's also more than worth taking the time to indulge in so you get the most of what little story there is here and it certainly adds some much needed depth to the game that you can influence the narrative in little ways through these instances alongside some basic dialogue options that pop up over the course of proceedings. Star Ocean: First Departure R also features Private Actions - another commendably novel idea when the game first released - which are totally optional and allow you to stop to chat to your party members in order to affect relationships - there's a basic affinity system at work here that feeds in to the outcome of the narrative - and also learn some more of backstory to characters and events.
This is mainly because once the characters set out on their quest proper the game loses a lot of its rhythm, wasting time with simple quests which involve copious amounts of backtracking and those random battle encounters which see you face off time and again against the same handful of enemies - whether you're in modern day Roak or have travelled 300 years into its past, you'll come up against the very same foes wearing exactly the same armour - who all too quickly become very easy to beat, more of a hindrance that any kind of satisfying combat challenge. Early scenes showing the young adventurers as fish out of water, being ushered around a space federation ship where they're bamboozled by automatically opening doors, wowed by elevators and confounded by computers are still entertaining and, in these early stages, there's hope for a satisfying and thrilling adventure that, unfortunately, never really comes to fruition. Star Ocean's mixing of traditional fantasy with sci-fi elements was ahead of the curve back in the 1990s and it's still a fun and intriguing setup.
After a chance meeting with Ilia and Ronyx, futuristic space adventurers who have travelled from a much more technologically advanced version of Earth, the gang joins forces and travels through time, harnessing advanced technology in order to get to the bottom of Roak's problems, learn the truth about their planet's war-torn past and find a vaccine to help save the population, including Dorne who is struck down and turned to stone early in the game's storyline. Star Ocean: First Departure R tells the story of Roddick, Millie and Dorne, self-appointed local village defence force and residents of the rather backwards planet of Roak which has found itself in the grip of a mysterious illness that's been turning its inhabitants to stone. However, it's also very much a product of its time, nowhere near as complex or gripping as the second game in the series, and it tends to waste a lot of time with endless backtracking and random enemy encounters that make the whole thing a little bit of a chore to grind your way through. It runs about twenty hours so doesn't outstay its welcome and many of its systems - real time battles on 3D battlefields and extremely deep crafting - are still quite impressive to this day. This is still a pretty fun little RPG to play.
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