"Star Ocean: First Departure" Review
I just finished it up, It was a pretty good game.
It was definitely a great game and I'm planning on playing "Star Ocean: The Second Story" next.
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...n/hhreview.png
- Graphics: 8/10
The pre-rendered background have always been something that I liked, although I think they could have put more detail into them.
Sometimes they were obviously set up quickly and had poor effects on them.
Like I said, I like pre-rendered backgrounds, but these ones weren't over the top like they could have been.
The Sprite usage was great, although the PSP could have supported more 3d, the sprites in this game worked pretty good.
- Sound: 7/10
It was alright, although I would have liked to see more variety in the soundtrack.
The soundtrack overall also wasn't anything spectacular. It definitely wasn't bad, it just wasn't amazing.
The voicework was cool. There is a lot of dialog in this game that I didn't expect with the classic feel of it.
- Storyline: 9/10
The storyline was pretty original; it really put you in a neat realm that I haven't seen before in many RPGs.
I got into it a lot and It captured some emotions well.
The characters were a little flat, and didn't have too strong of individual personality's.
Their personality was there, but It was not quite what we see in modern RPGs; it was fitting for the game and story though.
The game was kind of short, comparing it to a lot of current RPGs, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
- Gameplay: 7/10
I'm not a big fan of the fighting system.
It's a random battle system, like most RPGs, but it's not the time or turn based system that most of us are used to.
This is a complete real time system, where you fight along side 3 team mates controlled by AI.
The AI is decently smart and they don't do anything stupid or get in the way, but in general fights were boring.
They were boring due to the fact that most of the time all you did was hit x, x, x, x to attack. Every now and then triangle to use an item.
- Replay Value: 8/10
I did a lot in this game. For each dungeon I would check every door and make sure I got all of the items.
I also though that I went in every house and talked to everyone, as well as doing everything the game offered.
Apparently I was wrong because I know of at least 2 characters that I never came upon.
Also, judging from screenshots, there appears to be much more that I missed than I thought.
I didn't see anywhere near all of the anime cutscenes so I'm planning on playing again and try to make every decision different than I did the first time around.
Even with all this, I felt like I completely grasped every part of the game and I didn't feel like I had missed anything.
- Overall: 8.5/10
Probably one of the top 10 PSP games I've played.
