Board 8 > Wow star ocean 4 is... Not that bad?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Look I mean theres def bad game design leaking from every orifice in this game, the characters are inconsistent and nonsensical (one moment the main character is acting surprised that a crew member wants to join him on the mission they are already on. the next moment the same guy invites a 4 year old girl to leave her village and fight monsters with him without even pausing to hesitate. ) The battles are repetitive, and enemies range anywhere between impossible to get hit to impossible to avoid getting hit. The boss battles are like a half hour long. The dungeons are basically hallways with room, and after a battle its genuinely hard to tell which direction you were initially heading down the hallway.

But weirdly, everything kind of comes together and works out in this weird campy ass space story. Theres just so much to laugh about in each scene, the exploration is on par with SO3, and the pickpocket mechnic is absolutely brilliant. Being able to steal one coin of money from a crying little kid in a village is a stroke of genius.

Thanks to ltm for suggesting this, Im only on the fourth planet but I am 100% sure this game won't go downhill.
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That Edge what a Maverick
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you're wrong, it's a trash game

I didn't like the combat nearly as much as so3 and dropped it pretty quickly. I want to go back some day though
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Doesn't that game have lymle. I made it not much further past that travesty of an addition to the party.
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SantaRPidgey posted...

Thanks to ltm for suggesting this,

Fuck you, too.
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So based on that amazing OP I have to ask, are there any JRPGs that you would consider straight up bad? I'm legitimately curious now.
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He's probably gonna name something good
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Sure, off the top of my head

Lunar (Any lunar)
Eternal Sonata
Tales of Zestria
Arc Rise Fantasia

Those examples stand out of games that get JRPGing wrong in all the usual ways. Star ocean still checks a lot of the boxes, but there's something about the Star Ocean formula that flavors tropes that are usually very hard to swallow into kind fun world building and exploring.

So far my favorite parts are:

-The main character literally shaking an injured man to death when asking him what happened.

-the aforementioned invitation of a 4 year old to be a crew member

-a villian who has the main character in confinement says "do this and I will kill you afterwards" the main character doesn't do it, and the villain responds "We will need time to think of your punishment"

-During a tense time sensitive situation, the crew spends about 5 minutes deciding how they will run down a small corridor that is closing itself off AS THEY SPEAK

-Going through an entire dungeon with over double exp because the game engine has a lot of ways to cheese it.
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oh! my other favorite part!

The "girl next door" character accusing Edge of trying to look up her dress when crawling down a ladder despite the fact that she does not wear a dress

a fact that the audience knows because after every battle the camera shows her from a panty shot angle
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what an amazing list of pros
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Lunar (Any lunar)

Oh hey pj was right.
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Oh jesus I just got to the cat girl
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I don't remember the catgirl and I beat that game, so she must be the best character.
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You get shipwrecked on Earth, 1957 which has all sorts of cool possibilities for companions A classic earth cyptoid, a roswell type alien, even just a typical 1950s Americana themed human but instead the game is just like "nah this is where you pick up a random half naked catgirl"
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Sounds to me like the game is that bad. It's just in the so bad it's good territory.
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TheGoddamnSanta posted...

Sure, off the top of my head

Lunar (Any lunar)

oh, okay. I didn't realize you were making a joke topic. carry on.

I love Star Ocean 4. The battle system is amazing. Edge totally had the right to be emo, and he gets better. And Lymle's "kay" makes sense if you read the dictionary and find out why she acts like that. Her relationship with Faize I really liked.

Best Star Ocean game by a mile and one of my top 10 games ever.

(this is a serious post. Had to say that because people might think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not. I love Star Ocean 4. And 5 wasn't that bad either. I might be easy to please. The only season of Survivor I watched was South Pacific and I loved it and everyone else hated it. I tried watching the next season but after a few episodes I hated Colton)
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So2 is the only good one.

"Thanks for recommending SO4" is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.
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Star Ocean 2 is good. Star Ocean 3 is fine. It has some big flaws, but I thought it was generally enjoyable.

It doesn't matter if Lymle's "kay" makes sense, she's still in the top 3 worst ever jrpg playable characters

I'm not sure that Lymle in the top 3 worst playable characters in this game. And no, that's not because Lymle is good. The characters are that bad.
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there's one part of the game where you have to find a criminal, the cut scene says "we should ask the townfolks"

Apparently they mean "townfolks" of a completely different town, because literally no one in the town you are in mentions the criminal.

After you go to a different town, you find out from the people running the colosseum that the criminal has entered, but the colosseum is not "ready" despite the person outside it happily telling you its open.

After looking around the entire town for a secret entrance, eventually I talked to an npc who said she saw the criminal running towards the colosseum, that opened the doors.

It's literally such bad game design I can't even get mad at it, I'm more impressed. It's like if Lunar Dragon Song was fun to play.
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Also Lymle might actually be the BEST playable character in star ocean 4 (I still don't have a full team)

and no, she's not a great character, but she does seem to be the most mature and tolerable.

If I had to rate the cast I have so far

Lym>bacchus> (myuria, I have no idea if she's good yet, she just joined.)>a pile of burning trash next to a dentist chair while he pulls your teeth>faize>edge>>>Mild genocide>Meracle>Reimi
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also question for those who beat this game, is it just one character ending per game with the character you have the highest affinity for?

is it possible to get NO character endings?
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I think you get an ending if you get a character over a certain amount of affinity. You have to view special cutscenes for some of them, too. But you can get all of them in one playthrough if you do everything correctly. It might be possible to get no endings if you're mean enough to everyone, but I don't know this game well enough to confirm it.
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A quick check of the trophy guide says that you can get all of the character endings in a single play through all the way down to none of them if you screw up enough
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TheGoddamnSanta posted...

Sure, off the top of my head

Lunar (Any lunar)
Eternal Sonata
Tales of Zestria
Arc Rise Fantasia

Those examples stand out of games that get JRPGing wrong in all the usual ways. Star ocean still checks a lot of the boxes, but there's something about the Star Ocean formula that flavors tropes that are usually very hard to swallow into kind fun world building and exploring.

So far my favorite parts are:

-The main character literally shaking an injured man to death when asking him what happened.

-the aforementioned invitation of a 4 year old to be a crew member

-a villian who has the main character in confinement says "do this and I will kill you afterwards" the main character doesn't do it, and the villain responds "We will need time to think of your punishment"

-During a tense time sensitive situation, the crew spends about 5 minutes deciding how they will run down a small corridor that is closing itself off AS THEY SPEAK

-Going through an entire dungeon with over double exp because the game engine has a lot of ways to cheese it.

The Lunar games are AAA what even
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Literally the first time I've seen someone shit on a proper Lunar game.

Glad everyone is in solidarity about that being nuts.
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Arti posted...

A quick check of the trophy guide says that you can get all of the character endings in a single play through all the way down to none of them if you screw up enough

I looked this up and it said pickpocketing lowers affinity for characters

I've pickpocketed every single NPC in this game up until the 7th character

So I guess I'm not getting all those endings lmao
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To be clear, I don't like any of the Lunar games, but when I was talking about "games that get JRPGing wrong in all the usual ways" I was specifically talking about Dragon Song. There's nothing offensively wrong with the other games, they're just snoozefests
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I don't think it's possible for a Working Designs game to be a snoozefest.
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working designs is terrible, and really the only way I can see people having a positive opinion about them is if they have only played the psx lunars, alundra, and growlanser.

they have a reputation for making "helpful" changes that renders games borderline unplayable or grindier after all.
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Did they even do anything else that mattered? Lunar alone is enough to establish them as god tier and be forgiven for all transgressions.
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Wow just fought the boss that basically never stops spawning horseshoe crab enemies (which can do 3/10 of your health bar in one hit [more than the boss' attacks])

I checked my monster book afterwards, I found 80 of them in that fight alone.

So that wasn't cool imhhho
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the working designs aesthetic has really aged terribly, as have the lunar games.

that being said, they're remarkable for their time in terms of story. even if they're boring now, that shouldn't take anything away from what are great characters and storylines.

Keeping this bumped until I beat it! Just reached 50% monster index so I shouldn't be that far. Sort of toying with the idea of going through the whole series in timline order
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Lunar is excellent. Cheesy (especially the final quarter of the game or so), but excellent. I'm one of the few that likes 2 more than 1, but love both for sure.

Star Ocean 4 is the definition of a 6/10 game. Playable, but much better is out there
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yes play all the star ocean games!!
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Well I sure as hell am not going to disappoint Kleenex

hopefully they bring the english ps4/vita star ocean 2 to the states before I get to it!
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Every Star Ocean is bad except maybe 3. 3 has nostalgia going for it, and I haven't played it recently, so it's probably still bad.
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I mean 3 is objectively bad, as much as I love it.

1 isn't bad. It's just dated and flavorless. 2 is just more of 1 it seems.
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Star Ocean 4 platinum when
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ninkendo posted...

Star Ocean 4 platinum when

I honestly don't expect to live long enough to achieve that
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2 is a great game. 3 is not.

Also I thought Lunar 2 > 1 was the common stance?
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SantaRPidgey posted...

ninkendo posted...

Star Ocean 4 platinum when

I honestly don't expect to live long enough to achieve that

Yeah that's a terrible idea.
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LapisLazuli posted...

2 is a great game. 3 is not.

Also I thought Lunar 2 > 1 was the common stance?

I've said it a lot of times on b8 that maybe you keep reading my opinion. A few others have agreed with me on it though. With that said most people ive talked lunar to seemed to like 1 more than 2, at least to my memory.
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guys get this lunar talk out of my star ocean topic

This is for mediocre RPGs about space not mediocre rpgs about... gosh I literally don't even remember the plot of lunar... a dragon?
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TheGoddamnSanta posted...

guys get this lunar talk out of my star ocean topic

This is for mediocre RPGs about space not mediocre rpgs about... gosh I literally don't even remember the plot of lunar... a dragon?

The moon? I know literally nothing about the series but it has lunar in the title and that involves the moon right?
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Just beat the second to the last boss.

Considering the last boss made me use almost my entire inventory and I barely won, and two levels higher, this boss made me us 4 blackberries before he died, seems like the difficulty is not super balanced
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They're quite different bosses and success has far more to do with how you figure out how to deal with them than your level. Level's not that important in this game, thank goodness.

That said Kokabiel (assuming that's who you mean by second to last boss) is generally easier than Armaros Manifest, yes.
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