Gamer's Diary - Never Again I'll Go Sailing, GRID

After consulting a walkthrough and some forumites (forummers? forumians?), I came to the conclusion that Star Ocean: Till The End of Time has the hero spend the bulk of the game on medieval-level planets and stripped of his own starfaring culture's technology. It sprinkles some sci-fi in here and there, with a chunk at the beginning and another, larger one at the end, but for the most part it consists of straight-up swords-and-sorcery.

So into the archives it goes. I'll play it when I have no other games worth playing.

Now, as for GRID... it'll take a long time to get tired of that one. I did not have a lot of play time, so I ran the Muscle Car Classic again, and won handily. Tons of fun.

Gamer's Diary - Bait and Switch

If you don't want story elements of Star Ocean: Till The End of Time spoiled for you, stop reading now.

I've had a couple more hours of Star Ocean 3, and I must say the game has left me bitterly disappointed. First, it confirmed my earlier suspicions by maintaining the same glacial pace as before. Second, it compounds the sin of including fantasy magic ("symbology") by stranding our young hero on a medieval planet (!) with elf-like natives (!!) oppressed by an evil wizard (!!!) (actually an advanced-technology human), stripped of his technology and with only his trusty sword (!!!!) for a weapon.

Thus the bait-and-switch of this article's title. I went in expecting science fiction and instead got medieval fantasy. At least Xenosaga had the decency to stay in science fiction land despite its use of "ether" effects.

I will give it one more chance; I will consult an online walkthrough to see whether the game detours briefly into medieval fantasy land or spends the bulk of its time there. If the former holds, I will grit my teeth and play through the medieval portion. If the latter holds, out it goes.

Gamer's Diary - Star Ocean 3? More Like Ennui Ocean 3

I think that the publisher subtitled Star Ocean 3 with Till The End of Time not because the story takes the characters to the end of the universe, nor because the main characters have a love that lasts forever, but because it will take you that long to get through the interminable interactive cutscenes.

Seldom have I seen characters take so many words to say so little. And I found on many occasions that between snippets of conversation that the characters would pause. And do nothing. For 15 to 30 seconds. I kid you not. They did not emote. They did not make funny faces. They did not say things with body language. They did not engage in fisticuffs or greco-roman wrestling matches. They. Did. Nothing.

Forever.

I said last time that I would be able to reach the first save point within five minutes of being handed control of the character. I made a mistake. It took more like half an hour. That doesn't count the half hour I spent in the battle tutorial. It was the cutscenes that slowed me down, including one that was mandatory for getting to the invasion event.

I have a theory about what happened. Play-testing revealed that players could complete the game in 20 hours. Marketing could not accept a length less than the 40 hours standard for RPGs. Some genius bigwig stood up in a focus group meeting and said, "I know! Cutscenes take up half our game's length. Let's just make them three times as long, and players will take 40 hours to get to the end." No one dared challenge the bigwig's logic, and so here we stand.

At this point, with a couple of hours of gameplay under my belt, I have trouble understanding the positive reviews this title garnered from the gaming press. Perhaps RPG reviewers, inured to this kind of padding, didn't even notice. Perhaps the publisher leaned on them to give good reviews. Or perhaps they were just such Square Enix fanboys that their slavish brand devotion colored their opinions and blinded them to the game's faults.

I don't know. What I do know is that I will give this game a couple more hours of gameplay to engage me, and if it does not, I'll put it on the list of games I give away to my friends.

Gamer's Diary - Star Ocean, Last Remnant

Having seen a trailer for Star Ocean 4, and realizing the series consists of science fictional JRPGs, I decided I wanted to play them. I like science fictional RPGs. I found that the publisher had never released the first two entries in the series in the US, but had released the third, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time, for the PlayStation 2. And it had a very reasonable price at the local GameStop.

So I put it in the console, started it up, and spent the next hour wandering around the resort planet's hotel, talking to the inhabitants and barging into people's rooms. I had no idea of where I should go or what I should do. Finally I figured out how to get into the battle simulator (the game's combat tutorial), and when I left that the game proper began.

An unknown force attacked the planet, and the hotel residents (including my characters) teleported to an emergency transporter room. There I found a save point, used it, and that was the end of my free time for the evening.

I don't think that the hour I spent wandering means that the game has a slow pace, or that it gets off to a slow start. I think rather that it means that the game gives you a lot of not-very-important things to see and do at the outset. I will start the game over tonight and I expect to arrive at the save point no more than five minutes after I get control of the characters. Because this time I know what to do and where to go.

All this suggests that I wasted most of the time I spent playing and didn't learn much about the game (especially since I cut short the battle tutorial) or its story. That has some truth to it, though I did find out a couple of relevant facts.

First I found that the game has a battle system that uses auto-attack, much like Final Fantasy XII but without the seamless integration into the game world. One can pause the battle at any time to change the attack or use an item.

Second I found that one class of attacks makes use of "symbology". The game calls it that in order to avoid calling it "magic". As if nobody can figure that out. Why can't JRPG developers get away from using magic spells in their games? Other games have health packs for healing and guns for distance attacks...why can't these do that? The concept of nanotechnology for medicine has been around since at least the early 90s. I found this lazy reliance on magic one of the most disappointing things about Xenogears and Xenosaga - though they called it "ether" there.

I expect to have more to say about this title after I get futher in it tonight (and play through the battle tutorials!).

I came across the trailers for The Last Remnant again recently, and they reminded me of why I both anticipate and scorn this upcoming RPG. On the one hand, it looks very pretty and promises the kind of turn-based combat I like in a JRPG. On the other, one couplet in the first trailer sets my teeth on edge: "Who created those remnants? And for what purpose?"

If the localization team erred in translating those lines, that bothers me. If they didn't, it bothers me more. A translation error in the game's trailer suggests that more and worse will come in the game. If they translated it correctly, it suggests that the game developmers have no idea of what makes a remnant a remnant: a usually small part, member, or trace remaining of a larger whole. One does not create remnants; the destruction of the whole leaves them behind. Since the game's story revolves around remnants of an earlier civilization, this bodes ill for the game's nonsense factor.