Star Ocean: Till the End of Time – Review

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is a game which has been kicking around in production for a long time. Production on this game started around five years ago when it was being developed by Enix who are now under the name Square Enix. After a release in Japan last year which was met with lukewarm reviews, the developers decided to do a little tweaking to make the game what they believed was the perfect game. They added two new playable characters as well as some other cool features such as the two player battle arena. All of this was meant to blow away the RPG market on the PS2 and although this game is visually beautiful, it has numerous irritating parts and unbelievably sexist comments throughout. For me the game just isn’t friendly to female gamers and I’ll explain why in this review.

The games premise is that you play Fayt Leingod who is vacationing with his parents and best friend Sophia Esteed on the resort known as Hyda IV. Whilst there enjoying the sun and the beach not to mention the games the hotel has to offer, the planet comes under unexpected attack and Fayts parents are separated from him and Sophia thus setting up Fayts.. fate.. where he will embark on a journey to get back to those he loves whilst facing evil of course.

When you first load the game you’ll be met with a beautiful introduction sequence which is rich with stunning graphics and atmospheric music which is more like a movie start than a game. The music and graphics sound a little like a cross between Star Trek and Supergirl for some reason but they are still very impressive. You get the choice of three difficulty settings and for the beginner its definitely best to choose the easiest until you get used to the controls of the game. The characters are quite similar to Final Fantasy characters, very cutesy and smooth. One of the most annoying aspects of the first part of the game where you’re in the hotel with Sophia and are running around checking it out, is the fact that she is VERY irritating. She is a stereotypical girl, moaning at the guy about playing video games rather than going to the beach with her. He of course tries to make it up to her by thinking in his mind he can take her shopping the next night to make it up. Yawn.

This is so dated. The fact you can play female characters in this game as part of your team is completely eradicated by all the females being moany and motherlike. When Fayt speaks to his mother on the beach, she has a go at him for playing games too much, but his father of course doesn’t mind as long as it’s his own money. Almost every female he meets at the hotel fancy him and mention how cute he is and the flirt at the beach basically offers it up to him on a plate. It’s just all a little sad in my opinion. Even the way the characters speak to each other is very over-dramatic and many little things that are mentioned are finished with an exclamation mark as though its a big deal; “I’m going to get a drink”, “A drink!”, why why why does it need this kind of talk?

Ok so aside from those irritating points how is the gameplay? Well when you first start off don’t let it put you off the entire game. You will eventually get into it and its your typically RPG turn based type fighting. You cross paths with evil on a 3D box shaped plane and it’s here you can show off your magical abilities. There are three team mates and each of you have your own life bar which is known as your mental points. Basically this is your magic meter and you have a stamina gauge as well. You can build up your stats like you can in most RPGs and the game at its very basic has a fighting system which means you can attack with with X button which is a quick standard attack or there is the circle button which deals a stronger but slightly slower attack at your enemies. The further you go in the game the better your character gets and you can give them their own special skills in their personal profiles. The fighting system is advanced and well thought out and learning the skills is fun and challenging all at the same time. To give the game depth, the developers have added extra nice touches to keep you interested. You can customize weapons, create new inventions, patent items but you’re limited here by money of course, just like in the real world.

There are also riddles to be solved, puzzles to work out, maps to navigate and mysteries to become absorbed in. One problem however is related to the idea of maps, sometimes it would be nice to have more detail on what you’re meant to be doing and where you’re meant to be heading. You’ll be relying on your memory here and if you’re not great at that it could prove to be a problem. Although the sound at the beginning of the game seems to be full of promise, it doesn’t really feature that heavily through the rest of the games levels. At certain points it can actually become really grating because it repeats over and over, particularly at the hotel when you’re lovingly provided with elevator music. The sound effects are fine but are hardly earth shattering or mould breaking. This also goes along with the heavy dialogue featured throughout the game. You can choose to either have words on screen and dialogue or variants therein. There is ALOT of dialogue in this game particularly at the beginning. It can be tiresome to wade through minutes and minutes of ingame chat only to be given a small item at the end of it.

Overall I think this game could have been flawless. It has great graphics, good battle scenes and controls, extras which make roleplaying fans coo in wonder, and an absorbing story line as the game progresses, however for me as a female gamer, even playing female characters just couldn’t pull this game back up from the dated sexist quagmire it lays in. It’s a good game that could have survived fine without the stupid comments and the stereotypical female characterization. If it hadn’t been for this then the game would have most likely got an 4 or 4.5 but i just couldn’t justify this at all I’m afraid based on the negatives I’ve mentioned. You’d think that having all these years to make the game, the developers could have skipped the usual female moaning and irritating characters. Sigh.

There I go again, moaning like a typical female.

Review by Angela