Star Ocean SNES ?'s

[Lanzo]

Hey guys I was looking into getting of copy of Star Ocean either the jp version or a repro. However, the repro is a little expensive so I was curious for someone who doesn't know any Japanese how hard would it be to play the jp game? Is their any English at all? The only star ocean I ever played was Till the End of Time and I really enjoyed it. How does this game stack up, story and soundtrack wise?

[kupomogli]

The soundtrack is good and it's been translated in English, however the SNES version even though decent is extremely overrated.

If you own a PSP you can pick up Star Ocean First Departure for $20. The game was remade with Star Ocean the Second Story style graphics and gameplay. Much better than the original version.

If you haven't played Star Ocean the Second Story you should either pick it up or pick up Star Ocean Second Evolution for the PSP. Second Evolution is slightly worse because they added triple attack in for the characters. Though some good features they added is that every story sequence in the game(but one small part) is fully voiced,

[Lanzo]

That sounds like a good idea, but I don't own a psp... yet. Im hoping one day the price of them will actually go down.

[Aussie2B]

Star Ocean is actually the first text-heavy import I ever bought and played through, and at the time I couldn't read any Japanese whatsoever, not even katakana. Other than a few tiny insignificant things, there isn't any English in the game per se, but if you learn katakana, which is easy and I did as I played through the game, there is a lot of "hidden" English. Katakana is a set of characters that the Japanese use to express foreign words most of the time, and most of the time that occurs, English is the foreign language. So basically it's like learning a new alphabet, sounding out the words, and very quickly it becomes easy to recognize the English words the characters are trying to represent.

Anyway, since I had an experience similar to what you propose, I can tell you that the game is pretty straightforward and doesn't have many puzzles, so it's fairly easy to play without knowing any Japanese as long as you have the patience for a little bit of trial and error. There's also Ian Kelley, who wrote some excellent FAQs on the game, and through his work, I was able to do every last little thing in the game. Although I do have to admit that I played through Star Ocean 2 prior to the original, which I imagine helped a fair amount. Experience with SO3 would too, I'm sure, but maybe not nearly as much.

As for the quality of the game itself, I like the soundtrack better than SO3's. Sakuraba started going more orchestral with SO3, but I prefer his older more prog rock style. The story in the original is kinda thin, as in most tri-Ace games, but I thought the plot and personalities of SO3 were mostly a mess anyway. I prefer those in the first Star Ocean. I'd agree that you should pick up SO2 sometime as well, but I disagree that the PSP remake of the first Star Ocean is better than the Super Famicom version. First Departure certainly isn't bad, but it's kind of a cheap, hack job throwing SO1 in a SO2 shell, losing all the impact of how technically impressive Star Ocean was for the Super Famicom. Plus there are a lot of elements of the gameplay that got lost in the transition of shoehorning it into SO2's framework.

[Lanzo]

Star Ocean is actually the first text-heavy import I ever bought and played through, and at the time I couldn't read any Japanese whatsoever, not even katakana. Other than a few tiny insignificant things, there isn't any English in the game per se, but if you learn katakana, which is easy and I did as I played through the game, there is a lot of "hidden" English. Katakana is a set of characters that the Japanese use to express foreign words most of the time, and most of the time that occurs, English is the foreign language. So basically it's like learning a new alphabet, sounding out the words, and very quickly it becomes easy to recognize the English words the characters are trying to represent.

Anyway, since I had an experience similar to what you propose, I can tell you that the game is pretty straightforward and doesn't have many puzzles, so it's fairly easy to play without knowing any Japanese as long as you have the patience for a little bit of trial and error. There's also Ian Kelley, who wrote some excellent FAQs on the game, and through his work, I was able to do every last little thing in the game. Although I do have to admit that I played through Star Ocean 2 prior to the original, which I imagine helped a fair amount. Experience with SO3 would too, I'm sure, but maybe not nearly as much.

As for the quality of the game itself, I like the soundtrack better than SO3's. Sakuraba started going more orchestral with SO3, but I prefer his older more prog rock style. The story in the original is kinda thin, as in most tri-Ace games, but I thought the plot and personalities of SO3 were mostly a mess anyway. I prefer those in the first Star Ocean. I'd agree that you should pick up SO2 sometime as well, but I disagree that the PSP remake of the first Star Ocean is better than the Super Famicom version. First Departure certainly isn't bad, but it's kind of a cheap, hack job throwing SO1 in a SO2 shell, losing all the impact of how technically impressive Star Ocean was for the Super Famicom. Plus there are a lot of elements of the gameplay that got lost in the transition of shoehorning it into SO2's framework.

Hmm, I see. Maybe I will go for the JP version then. I've actually always had an interest in learning Japanese and because I've been watching subtitled anime every week for some years now, I can recognize a few simple spoken words and what they mean. I may try to learn to read katakana, I'm pretty sure I have an app on my ipod for that, but I'd rather buy a book or something. And as far as the soundtrack, I'm kind of like prog metal (Dream Theater) and symphonic type stuff. So the soundtrack is made by the same composer for all the games?

[Aussie2B]

Learning katakana is so easy that you could just Google "katakana chart", print one out, and be good to go. It's just a matter of memorizing the characters like learning your ABCs and getting used to sounding them out, like how "Star Ocean" would be "su-taa o-sha-n" (that may seem confusing now, but, trust me, it's all really simple).

Yeah, Motoi Sakuraba has always been the composer for the Star Ocean series. In fact, he's done almost every tri-Ace game. Radiata Stories was the only one he had no part in, and he shared composing duties for Resonance of Fate.

[Arkhan]

just make sure you don't print out a crappy chart with the wrong stuff on it.

some of those charts made by people are incorrect, and how they manage that is beyond me.

get it from a trusted source (Random House, or Kodansha), or ask someone who's knowledgeable before you commit to memorizing the wrong stuff.

[Lanzo]

just make sure you don't print out a crappy chart with the wrong stuff on it.

some of those charts made by people are incorrect, and how they manage that is beyond me.

get it from a trusted source (Random House, or Kodansha), or ask someone who's knowledgeable before you commit to memorizing the wrong stuff.

I will do that. I have two books published by Kondansha International so I assume its the same company.

[Dred]

However, the repro is a little expensive

It's not as expensive as everyone says. People makin' such card-mods just fooled ya. Besides of label making case, it should cost less of 60$:
-> original SO cartridge - 15-20$ (maybe less of this price, 'cause it should cost 5-10$ - my friend bought a cart two years ago for this cost)
-> one eprom 27C322 - 5-10$ - only one is needed. the 2nd eprom (2mb) has the same information as original non-hacked japanease rom

Just find someone, who will burn ya prepared rom into a chip and somebody who will solder you an eprom into the PCB and viola!

Guys, who say that it's really hard and expensive to do it are trying to fool you!

[Chaz From Phantasy Star 2]

I wouldn't get Star Ocean unless someone paid me to take it off their hands... that battle system made no damn sense...

[badinsults]

You can always get a powerpak and play it using the uncompressed graphics patch.


Or you can stop being picking and play it with an emulator for free.