STAR OCEAN 5 ANNOUNCED FOR PS3, PS4

I find it discouraging that the developer who talks about targeting "older fans of the series" seems to be focusing on Star Ocean 3, which I consider to be the point of departure from what made the first Star Ocean games noteworthy. Admittedly, the quality of the dialogue writing went up relative to the previous games (if Star Oceans 1 and 2 ever had well written dialogue in their Japanese versions, then they certainly weren't translated well.) But the characters were less likeable, the skills and talents systems of the previous games were stripped down nearly to the point of nonexistence, as were the Private Actions and Intraparty relations. It wasn't until I read a guide that I discovered that nearly all your plot and general behavioral choices early in the game are affecting your party relationships, before most of the characters have even been intoduced, which would be a textbook way not to handle relationship values except most designers aren't dim enough to need that kind of advice written down. The map completion and trophy systems introduced to the series the practice of being rewarded for endlessly tedious chores you would never think of doing for actual fun. And the third act twist was the most overblown and absurd I can think of in any game, and went a long way towards trivializing the previous installments.

The first two Star Ocean games aren't on my all time favorite games list, but they had a lot of uncommon features which worked well and added a lot to them. Pretty much all my own game ideas (which are currently on hold until I wrap up my commitments to other projects) crib heavily from their Private Action system, and I think there are a lot of interesting things that could be done with the skill/crafting systems. But the later games, I feel like they were made with a clear lack of understanding of what the strengths of the earlier games were.

Honestly, I don't hate Star Ocean 3, although I definitely don't love it. Taken on its own, I don't think it was seriously bad, although it had some poorly thought out design choices and a bad ending twist. But I do find it frustrating that the designers decided not to reprise the elements that made the previous games particularly interesting, and didn't offer anything really worthwhile to replace them. All in all I thought it was a so-so game, but I emphasize the negative because I found it disappointing.

You know, I decided near the middle of my first playthrough that Nel was my favorite of the available characters, and I tried to aim for her ending, and failed to get it. I tried to aim for it from the beginning of a later playthrough, and failed again. I tried using a guide from near the beginning of another, later playthrough, and discovered that as close to the beginning as I was, I had already missed a lot of points with Nel even though it she hadn't even been introduced yet. I quit and never picked it up again.