Star Ocean: First Departure
It all begins on the planet Roak.
September 19, 2008 - The original Star Ocean never made it to the U.S. when it was released over ten years ago. Combining classic fantasy RPG themes with sci-fi elements, the Star Ocean series has since garnered a sizable collection of fans across not only Japan but the U.S. (which did receive subsequent Star Ocean titles). Now, Square Enix is bringing the first Star Ocean game to the U.S. in the form of the PSP title Star Ocean: First Departure. A reworked version of the original with an enhanced engine, new artwork and fully voice dialogue sequences, First Departure is a significantly refined edition and U.S. gamers can finally experience the story that started the franchise.
I had the chance to go hands-on with First Departure for a while, and though I’ve only scratched the surface of what is sure to be a very long and involved game, it’s already looking to be a fun, engaging experience. First Departure begins with an impressive anime scene animated by the fine folks at Production I.G. An advanced spacecraft glides through the colorless depths before encountering a strange anomaly that, apparently, splits a planet into millions of pieces with very little effort. As the massive shockwave ripples outwards, the ship takes flight and the scene slowly shifts to the quiet planet Roak, where three youthful Fellpools (a race of tailed “humans”) bicker about how boring their town is. Roddick Farrance and Dorne Murtough are members of the town’s defense force, and their mutual friend Millie Chliette urges them to go on patrol instead of complain.
Clearly this is a classic RPG opening, where the simplicities of daily life are foreshadowed with the image of world-wide disaster. You’re soon given control of Roddick and co. and the trio patrols the town and talks to the humble, peaceful-minded townspeople. The backgrounds of First Departure are pre-rendered and resemble the painted backdrops of old, and the character sprites move around on them like a traditional PSone title.
After exploring town briefly, Roddick and his companions notice that a small group of bandits have attacked the town — in broad daylight, no less. These battles serve as your introduction to the combat system, though there’s really no in-game tutorial to speak of which was a little surprising. The battle system of First Departure rings true to the Star Ocean franchise and immediately reminded me of my time with Second Story years ago. The battlefields are technically 3D planes but your characters remain 2D animated sprites, which is charming in its own way. You control one character at a time while the AI handles the behavior of your other two (or more) warriors, though you can obviously set behavioral patterns to coax your teammates to act in certain ways, like focusing on healing or conserving magic.
I was actually surprised at how “hard” some of the battles are right at the beginning of the game. There’s certainly not a lot to them, which is why I’m putting “hard” in quotations, but your teammates will die very easily and you’ll need to keep a close eye on their health, especially when Millie temporarily leaves your party. Otherwise, initial battles are just a matter of selecting a target and then executing combos with the X button, while the L and R triggers can have special abilities mapped onto them. For the most part, this basic, generally real-time system is a lot of fun and has a huge amount of potential, especially when you consider all the characters you can control along with all the abilities they’ll learn with time. And those players who are concerned about the difficulty of real-time confrontations needn’t fret too much — you can pause the action at any time and browse a command menu to select items, spells and choose your target.
Unfortunately, some of the problems I remember from the original Second Story seem to be here in First Departure. For example, if you and a teammate are targeting the same enemy, you always seem to run to the other side of the enemy before attacking, meaning you waste time and also expose yourself to unplanned attacks. It seems like two characters can’t be directly “on top” of one another, which is likely the origin of this issue.
But this is mostly a trivial problem and you’ll learn to work around it. The only real problem I had during my time with First Departure is an issue I have with most modern Square Enix titles: no Japanese language track. Perhaps I’ve just become too comfortable watching anime with the original Japanese voice actors, but hearing the English cast just doesn’t work for me and the actors themselves sound a bit awkward. Perhaps they’ll warm up to their roles down the line.
First Departure will be followed by Second Evolution (a similar remake of the original Star Ocean: The Second Story) early next year, so fans of the franchise should have plenty to look forward to in the coming months.
September 28th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Happy Ramadan to everybody. Why this web site do not have other languages support?
September 29th, 2008 at 5:55 am
The reason is i don’t know other languages…
Wanna contribute?
April 21st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
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September 4th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
nice blog, congratulations!
June 8th, 2010 at 1:57 am
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