Star Ocean: First Departure

Star Ocean: First Departure is, of course, a remake of the first Star Ocean game which was released on the Super Nintendo. It is not unexpected that Square Enix once again did a good job at remaking an old game since they have been gathering as much experience as they possible can in it.

Talking of course about games such as Final Fantasy III & IV and even I and II.



This is not the best game they have ever made and it is highly reminiscent of the Tales of Phantasia game, which was also first released on the SNES, with it's main difference being that Star Ocean employed an eagle-eye (now isometric) view of battles.

Both these games seem to start out very similarly too, since you are just hanging out in your peaceful village when, out of nowhere, bandits (or other evil people) show up and start trashing the place. But that is where similarities end.



Compared to the old SNES system these graphics look like an impossible improvement, I'm a big fan of actually re-writing a game for a remake. It would have been fine for them to do the same as they did with Final Fantasy I & II, just update the pixelated low-res graphics a bit to be less pixelated high-res screens, but apparently this was not enough for them.

Even though they did this it still looks like it predates even the first 3D playstation games, which is kind of shameful after presenting a game like Crisis Core, which looked almost like it could have been one of the better looking PS2 games (FF XII), but then again you don't want to spend too much money on an easy money-maker, do you?



Gameplay is nice. The battles are never really hard as long as you train enough and the idea of specialties and skills (not to be confused with special abilities) has always been a nice addition in my opinion. These skills, when used properly, can very easily make your characters very strong in the usual way of nicely upgrading your stats, but also by giving you skills to get more exp and find more/less enemies and gain more skill points per level. These come in handy in almost any situation. Walking around an easy area where you only get 7 exp? Just avoid enemies. Need a copy of an accesory so that you won't be petrified all the time? Make one. Very nice.



Sounds are quirky. During battles there is a lot going on at the same time, which is not unusual of course, but the things they choose to play and keep out seem far too random to be intentional. When 2 people cast a spell only one can be heard, for example, but after every battle 2 people always have a little victory speech.

The music is nicely done though, in my opinion, it suits the game and during the somewhat more exciting parts of the game it will slightly elevate your adrenaline levels if you are susceptible to such things.



The FMVs they made are awesome. It has the perfect anime look and feel and it suits the game very well, my only regret and complaint about these clips is that there are not nearly enough of them. And they started out so very promising with the entire first scene having transformed from a gameplay scene to an FMV.

The characters really come to life in these in my opinion, kudos.



The game isn't tough. It is not even really annoying at any point. Though of course you can increase difficulty for yourself by not training as much as I did (I had train and look for enemies on almost all the time), or trying to solo it with your main character.



Private actions are another nice thing. They show funny/nice/intruiging/sad scenes between your party members, it is fun to watch them sometimes and they will affect certain scenes in your story.



All-in-all this is a very nice game and it is a nice distraction from your everyday dealings. If you are a star ocean fan then you can't allow yourself to leave this one and if you just like RPGs then your should most definitely give it a try. If you neither like Star Ocean or RPGs then you are probably better off not bothering.

These are some 30 hours that I have enjoyed very much.

Sylph

Once again I am at that point in the game where you have to get your first summon. I remember getting stuck this early in the game a lot when I first started playing this game on the SNES.
This time though I know what's going on and what I'm doing.
I wanted to grab some good equipment before going after the Sylphs, but first time around on just another random encounter, my PSP crashed... And I had to start over again.

Did though later on, got the weapon which really eased the process of getting another 1600 gald to get 2 new berets. It's probably a little crazy to take all that time to acquire 2 pieces of armor that will only increase defense 1 or 2 points. But that's the type of person I am, I figure that if I fight those few extra fights I'll be just a little bit stronger, plus the equipment on it's own (the 1600 gald sword was damn nice) really helps me later on. Had this very same thing with Final Fantasy, but I haven't gotten through that one yet.

I have a feeling that I'm gonna enjoy playing this, I'm still pretty much stunned by the fact that it's so different from the SNES version.

Can't let go...

I picked up Valkyrie Profile again today because I just can't leave it be. I've played it and hated it at times, but it is still very cool and the enemies that are the problem can easily be fixed by just running away. I've also discovered that using weapons that are less powerful but have more actions help a lot, since they add to your overall combo score and can start those overdrive thingies. These thingies are very handy in taking down enemies.
That plus the fact that I've also found out that the CT is the amount of time (in turns) that it takes to be able to take certain actions all really helps.

Still having a lot of trouble though, the game doesn't get any easier, but at least now I have made progress, I went to Lezard Valeth and spoke to him and saw the cool cut scene in his crazy-ass basement and stuff. The fight was pretty easy, but suddenly the game seems quite a bit more interesting.

I don't know if I'll actively pursue finishing it again, because I'm having this much trouble and it's only chapter 4 (of 8 I think). But I will at least be playing it sporadically. I am quite happy to find these things out.

Tales of Phantasia

I can't remember how long I have been trying to tackle this game or how many times.

I've always been playing it on the SNES, but a while ago a friend of mine finally got a translated version of ToP for the PSX. Sure it's not like the full-voiced version for PSP, but that only just got released really and we don't expect a US/EU release, so that will take a few more years to translate I'm guessing. Though translators seem to be getting faster, since a few months after Monster Hunter Portable 2nd got released they'd made a pretty comprehensive patch for that too.

Anyway, I've been playing it these last few days, mostly on the train home from work on my PSP and damn it's different from the SNES version. The characters look different, their status profile images look very different, the battles are totally different (friend of mine tells me it uses Tales of Destiny 2's battle engine), and generally it's just gotten some sort of face-lift or something.

Haven't gotten very far yet, still in the first part, exploring where Dhaos is supposed to be buried, or captured really. But so far it's going much better then it used to. And I don't know if the defend and combo-hit features are from the ToD2 engine or I just never knew about them in the SNES version, but Cless can now hit 2x and like I first noticed in Tales of the World he can defend, which is a big plus really.
I seem to generally understand more now then I did then (I have that a lot with games I played a long time ago). So I'm using a lot of abilities more now then I did back then and just generally know how things work better.

So I am confident I will at least get further in the game that my last try. And Looking forward to playing more too.

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Now playing: Wuthering Heights - A Sinner's Confession
via FoxyTunes

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

Having been interested in this game for a very long time now and never finding either the energy or the time to play it, I decided when I finished my last game to actually try and get through it.

Right now I'm in some kind of tower, it's actually a story part, where someone is apparently in love with Lenneth and is thus killing beings and turning them into 'ghouls' in order to get her to come to him, presumably so that they make sweet love on the ancient wooden desk thingy that he uses to dissect his 'pray'. He might throw an elf he just captured in the mix to get it extra freaky, who knows with these people nowadays.

The tower is pretty damn rough from time to time, last time I tried I ran into some kind of Cerberus thing that had an attack that hit 3x and did both poison and freeze, so most of my party was incapacitated. This time around I met with a Fatal Glow thingy that used explode one too many time and 3/4 of my party died, somehow I recovered from this (using my last revive drinks) and am now on my merry way down to the damn sicko.

Too bad really that it is bed time and my girlfriend seems to be in a foul mood, because if that had not been the case I might have advanced my tries to get through it and found some freaky action on the way. ViMhoe is the word!