Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is the third game in the Star Ocean JRPG series. Originally for the PS2, it was ported over to PS4 with HD resolution and trophy support. Despite the minor enhancements, you still have to keep in your mind that this is an old game, with a lot of aged gameplay mechanics. While the character models are fine, the environments are muddy and pixilated, as are the cutscenes. It also has a weak tutorial system and this is the series’ first game to 3D, so camera controls, using the shoulder buttons, are awkward. At least it has widescreen support.
While you can rotate the camera in all environments, the camera angle is locked in looking down from above. The developers used this as a way to hide treasure chests but this also makes it hard to see afar where enemies are, or where you’re going. You end up relying on the mini-map, so you miss out on checking out the scenery which is half the fun. At least there are no random battles, instead enemies roam the environments so you have a chance of avoiding them if you don’t want to battle.
The game has a clunky battle system at first. In particular, the aiming is horrendous as you’ll miss more often than not. It’s quite difficult to time your attacks when you first start off the game, since enemies always seem to land the hit faster than you, interrupting your attack which is annoying. This gets much better as you slowly get used to the system and your characters gain skills so you can actually use the combat mechanics to its full potential.
The game uses a real time battle system where everyone has a Fury bar. If the bar is full, you are protected from normal attacks. A strong attack must be used to break the shield. This is quite annoying since strong attacks are normally slower, so you might have to wait for the enemy to attack to leave enough time in their opening so you can land yours. In addition, you can side step, run around the battlefield, use items and magic. Not only do you have to constantly be on top of the three status bars of your characters (HP, MP and Fury), but also the rest of your party since their AI is pretty bad.
Attached to your character’s strong and normal attacks are skills, such that you can activate them when attacking. This leads to the cancel attack mechanic where you can chain the skills right after an attack and this gives it a damage multiplier. Unfortunately, using skills not only cost MP, but may cost HP and Fury so as mentioned, in the heat of things, there are a lot of bars to manage. One thing to note is that if your HP or MP is reduced to nil, that character is knocked out. Yes, you can be MP killed, but you can also use this to your advantage against enemies with low MP.
Your party is comprised of a maximum of three characters. During battles, you can change the party member you’re controlling instantaneously with the shoulder buttons. This is required given you need to select that particular character in order to get them to use items or to use specific spells. Unfortunately, most skills use up HP as well as MP and in conjunction with the dumb AI, it is the perfect recipe for party member deaths and constant low HPs, as the AI is too stupid to conserve their HP. Instead they spam skills on enemies, causing them to be perpetually on the brink of death and then because of low HP / MP, they stand around doing nothing to “preserve” themselves.
This is a game where the PS2 roots are obvious. It loves to give you absolutely no guidance at all in progressing the game. While there is a short tutorial on the battle system, it is poorly implemented and left out a lot of the most important aspects like the cancel attacks and skills. It makes no mention that you gain SP when you level up that you can boost your stats with. Dungeons are a confusing maze, filled with gimmicks that are absolutely annoying like locked doors, levers and on-rails sections. Interacting with objects is also hit and miss since you need to angle the character just right.
The game uses save points. Naturally, this is terrible in conjunction with the later long confusing dungeons that is extremely easy to get lost in. Considering that dungeons are designed for you to get lost in, and difficult to see the whole map at once, you could be spending upwards to two hours before finding a save point. This is always a terrible situation and when it happens, it is really obvious and frustrating, even more so with dungeon gimmicks like warping you back to the start of the current floor if you’re touched by moving obstacles.
Backtracking is pretty annoying later on too. There is one particular point near the end of the game where you have to trek through an extremely annoying dungeon with a large and confusing layout filled with traps and high levelled enemies. To make it even better, you have to fight multiple bosses along the way (and forcing you to trek back if you want to save). The icing on the cake? You have to trek all the way back out after going in, talk about annoying filler.
The story following Fayt, along with his childhood friend Sophia as they are chilling on a holiday planet. However, the planet is attacked and everyone evacuates on a spaceship which is then caught in the crossfire. Fayt ends up being separated from Sophia, dropping into a planet with less advanced technology (pretty much medieval ages). He eventually gets caught in that planet’s affairs, and this spirals to a grand scale adventure where he learns that his father is more than he seems. It ends up being a pretty interesting story, despite the poor voice acting.
There are huge amounts of story cutscenes so you’ll be watching a lot of them, which can break the flow of the game where several of them are quite slow and boring. There are awkward pauses and lingering shots during scenes, especially during points where you advance the text and it takes a few seconds to register. The graphics are quite decent, especially for a PS2 game. The towns look great with the only slight negative being the low amount of people at times in the towns so it isn’t as bustling as it could have been.
There is a marked shift in the story towards the end of the game. The majority of the first part takes place on one planet and you’re invested into the happenings of it. Then a huge revelation comes around, and it’s a completely different type of story now which can feel jarring (but not unheard of in a JRPG). It’s not bad, the story is still quite interesting, although it is somewhat lame that you recruit your full party so late into the game, meaning they join you at a very low level and you need to put in some effort to grind them up to scratch for that point in the game.
Dungeons and enemies towards the end of the game become noticeably harder and more annoying. While if you have grinded enough then your stats aren’t an issue. What is an issue are the enemies who has the frustrating combination of: unable to be interrupted, fast attack animations, and being able to spam their moves which hits you multiple times in succession, thereby stunning you. So when you are facing off against two or more of these enemies, you are constantly interrupted unable to attack and die in a very cheap way. This causes the final parts of the game to really test your patience. The difficulty spikes up really hard, as both normal enemies and bosses do a ton of damage.
The final boss can feel extremely cheap because it is so easy to beat if not for the fact that it has a party wide super move that will easily kill all your party members, and can be difficult to dodge without preparing beforehand to cheese it. It is these types of things that make the game so terrible and unfair at times. The dumb AI rears its ugly head here too, and the MP kill aspect is terrible.
There is a lot of post-game content, all of which are optional dungeons, several of which are extremely hard, and has the game’s toughest superbosses. If you followed a walkthrough, beating the game takes around 30 to 40 hours without speed running through. If you play blind, then it’ll be more likely to be 50+, and more likely to be a lot longer given you’ll constantly be lost. There are also Battle Trophies, which are in-game achievements. It’s a good idea but the actual implementation is clunky as it requires a secondary menu confirmation every time you get one and it asks you to save. This happens as well when you load the game, since you need to load this separately.
Overall, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is both a great game and an annoying game. It has cheap game design, whether it’s the unfair boss moves, extra hard enemies, confusing dungeons or save points that are spread too far apart, all these points ruin the game. On the other hand, it is an enjoyable game where the combat is fun and you end up caring about the characters and their current situation. However there are too many gameplay flaws that prevent it from being an amazing game, which is a shame as it tends to frustrate the player, blocking their progression, rather than allowing them to play the game without excessive grinding.
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