pleaseinsertdisctwo
Member
I’ve played every Star Ocean game. 1 and 2 are pretty dated gameplay-wise, but last I played them, they were enjoyable little romps. 3 has some clunky gameplay and tedious design decisions, but it’s an ambitious game, can be fun, has a pretty big budget, and is a super memorable experience. 4 has a trash female cast but I found it to be a really fun experience + it’s really pleasant presentation-wise for me. 5 was the most forgettable game I’ve ever experienced.
6….
I just completed it today.
I will say that, movement-wise, the game is a huge step up from prior games. DUMA is fun to use. Combat also feels less clunky, though also simplified from 3 and even 4. Es’owa was a fun mini-game.
Unfortunately, though, SO6 was ruined by what was probably the most boring story I’ve experienced in quite some time. At the 2/3rds mark I really just wanted the game to be over and it felt like torture to keep playing the game.
The game has a ton of cutscenes, as expected from a JRPG, but almost none of them are even remotely interesting. The dialogue is extremely wooden for a majority of the characters. Most cutscenes (as in, probably around 96%) are just characters standing and talking for a very long time. There are many stretches of the game that will have you sit through a 5 minute cutscene, go somewhere 100 feet away, sit through another 5-10 minute cutscene, go somewhere 100 feet away (or maybe an Inn), sit through another 5 minute cutscene.
And the plot of the game is just not interesting. At all. It’s basically an uninspired semi-rehash of the first portion of SO3 without any of the ambition or anything to make it interesting. It takes forever for the conflict to even actually begin, and then it feels like it never really takes off. It feels like nothing happened the entire game.
In addition, outside of Raymond and maybe Elena, all the characters have the charisma of a plank of wood. I just couldn’t care less about any of them. I don’t like how Private Actions in the series are handled in the first place, and I certainly didn’t feel like going out of my way for these characters. Too many cast members spoke in a very stiff manner. Albaird, Theo, Laeticia, Malkya, and Midas all sound exactly the same.
The sci-fi portion of the plot was also completely uninspired and was tied to the rest of the game in such a half-assed and flimsy manner. It also didn’t help that once this portion of the plot kicked in, the cutscenes used the same background track for a majority of the cutscenes.
The game never felt like it had any actual drama or high stakes. Just like with Star Ocean 5, I think spaceships were shown for a grand total of 30 seconds. 20 of those being in the opening cutscene for Raymond. It was seriously so funny how, in the later parts of the game, there would be abrupt cuts to a spaceship for literally 1 or 2 seconds. What’s the point? Outside of that, there were soldiers from kingdoms 200 feet away from each other that fought for like 30 minutes total, and, uh… that’s it.
So, while I love cutscenes, lots of cutscenes are a huge problem for me when the plot is uninteresting, the characters lack charisma, and the cinematography is nonexistent. And that’s definitely the case for this game.
Outside of that, the soundtrack was yet another typical phoned-in Sakuraba soundtrack, the game also ran like total gutter trash on a base PS4, and for some reason if characters are talking outside of cutscenes you literally cannot do anything until the convo is over, which is stupid and annoying.
The game was quite buggy, especially in enclosed environments. It was very common for me to encounter an enemy that the game wouldn’t register as an enemy, and the game would sort of bounce back and forth between activating combat mode and not.
So, while it’s better than Star Ocean 5, almost anything is, so that’s not saying much.
I think it’s much worse than Star Oceans 1-4 despite gameplay being improved in some aspects.
I hope that, if tri-Ace makes a SO7 (which they might, seeing as they’ve been hiring lately), they don’t play it safe and phone it in with the story and characters, and I also hope that they either have a higher budget, or they at least allocate their resources a little better.
6….
I just completed it today.
I will say that, movement-wise, the game is a huge step up from prior games. DUMA is fun to use. Combat also feels less clunky, though also simplified from 3 and even 4. Es’owa was a fun mini-game.
Unfortunately, though, SO6 was ruined by what was probably the most boring story I’ve experienced in quite some time. At the 2/3rds mark I really just wanted the game to be over and it felt like torture to keep playing the game.
The game has a ton of cutscenes, as expected from a JRPG, but almost none of them are even remotely interesting. The dialogue is extremely wooden for a majority of the characters. Most cutscenes (as in, probably around 96%) are just characters standing and talking for a very long time. There are many stretches of the game that will have you sit through a 5 minute cutscene, go somewhere 100 feet away, sit through another 5-10 minute cutscene, go somewhere 100 feet away (or maybe an Inn), sit through another 5 minute cutscene.
And the plot of the game is just not interesting. At all. It’s basically an uninspired semi-rehash of the first portion of SO3 without any of the ambition or anything to make it interesting. It takes forever for the conflict to even actually begin, and then it feels like it never really takes off. It feels like nothing happened the entire game.
In addition, outside of Raymond and maybe Elena, all the characters have the charisma of a plank of wood. I just couldn’t care less about any of them. I don’t like how Private Actions in the series are handled in the first place, and I certainly didn’t feel like going out of my way for these characters. Too many cast members spoke in a very stiff manner. Albaird, Theo, Laeticia, Malkya, and Midas all sound exactly the same.
The sci-fi portion of the plot was also completely uninspired and was tied to the rest of the game in such a half-assed and flimsy manner. It also didn’t help that once this portion of the plot kicked in, the cutscenes used the same background track for a majority of the cutscenes.
The game never felt like it had any actual drama or high stakes. Just like with Star Ocean 5, I think spaceships were shown for a grand total of 30 seconds. 20 of those being in the opening cutscene for Raymond. It was seriously so funny how, in the later parts of the game, there would be abrupt cuts to a spaceship for literally 1 or 2 seconds. What’s the point? Outside of that, there were soldiers from kingdoms 200 feet away from each other that fought for like 30 minutes total, and, uh… that’s it.
So, while I love cutscenes, lots of cutscenes are a huge problem for me when the plot is uninteresting, the characters lack charisma, and the cinematography is nonexistent. And that’s definitely the case for this game.
Outside of that, the soundtrack was yet another typical phoned-in Sakuraba soundtrack, the game also ran like total gutter trash on a base PS4, and for some reason if characters are talking outside of cutscenes you literally cannot do anything until the convo is over, which is stupid and annoying.
The game was quite buggy, especially in enclosed environments. It was very common for me to encounter an enemy that the game wouldn’t register as an enemy, and the game would sort of bounce back and forth between activating combat mode and not.
So, while it’s better than Star Ocean 5, almost anything is, so that’s not saying much.
I think it’s much worse than Star Oceans 1-4 despite gameplay being improved in some aspects.
I hope that, if tri-Ace makes a SO7 (which they might, seeing as they’ve been hiring lately), they don’t play it safe and phone it in with the story and characters, and I also hope that they either have a higher budget, or they at least allocate their resources a little better.
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