#Star Ocean: First Departure

[anonfeather]

Do you like Star Ocean?

Hiya!

Since the SO2 remake, I've been rediscovering my love for the franchise. So I made a little discord server for likeminded fans to hangout.

You do fanart? Write fanfic or have a ton of plot bunnies you wanna share? Have Headcanons? Shipping favourite?

You're welcome to join and chat :D

If the invite link doesn't work, poke me, I'll find a different way to invite you. Or you can find me on discord, I have the same handle as tumblr

[rhythmislifeandlifeisrhythm]

[miraworksstuff]

These two games to the booth.

[operationrainfall]

oprainfall Week in Gaming: Dec 29 - Jan 4

While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week! I spent the end of 2024 binging Dragon Quest, and boy am I glad for it. I kicked off my marathon with the exceptional…

[otasunestanblog]

Me starting another JRPG series? It's more likely than you think

[rabbitsinvideogames]

Bunnies from Star Ocean: First Departure

[jessjustplay]

I replayed Star Ocean First Departure R and it was amazing!

November 11, 2023

Game: Star Ocean First Departure R First Time/Replaying: Replaying Game Time: 24 hours Console: PS4 Started: October 30, 2023 Finished: November 11, 2023

I first played this game last year (funnily enough, also in November) and I loved it. I decided to replay it and I had even MORE fun this second time around! I knew it was a great game, but I didn't really know how replayable it was until I started it anew. The fact that you can recruit a different party each time makes things super interesting because the dialogue between the characters will (obviously) be different. I am already excited to replay it a third time! (Next year, maybe.)

In my both my first and second playthrough, I admit I didn't know much about the character recruitment stuff. I just got who I could, but I managed to fill in all 8 spots this time around. I did look up how to get Phia because she was someone I really wanted. Apparently recruiting 7 characters makes her impossible to get, but somehow I got lucky and was able to get rid of one of my 7 characters. This allowed me to find Phia and get her in my party. I was so happy, I think Phia is great!

My 8-team party ended up being: Roddick, Millie, Ilia, Ronyx, Cyuss, Ioshua, Mavelle then Phia, and Pericci. (I thought Cyuss was funny, but in this playthrough I learned he is very rude. I am not recruiting him next time!)

As far as battles, I did much better this time around. I actually understood battle concepts and I leveled up each character's skills properly. Roddick was appraising and cooking left and right. I definitely need to learn how to do the other stuff next time.

Here are my final endgame stats!

(Note to self: wait for the PS screen capture sign to disappear before taking more screenshots... 🙃)

[trustygem]

Part 10 of Star Ocean First Departure R is Now up on YT

[ghoolytv]

Star Ocean: First Departure R Screenshots

[daihime-sama]

Look alive, henchbuns! Our vacation is over! Time to get back to evil deeds and evil streams!

This week: finishing Order of Ecclesia, starting Star Ocean, Master Duel with viewers, and a very special Ultrakill stream.

Twitch | YouTube | Discord | Twitter

Schedule art by Yokoshi.

-RRA Social Media Team

[badragonplays]

what do you think he means by this?

[mister-e-muss]

The last time I posted something about my backlog, it was just a quick thing about setting a record for myself. I figured I’d make this sort of thing regular, and give my thoughts on the games I play at the same time.

.hack//G.U. Last Recode

I’ve wanted to get into .hack ever since Kite and BlackRose made appearances as guest characters in Project X Zone all the way back in the early 3DS days. I can’t say that I regret this at all.

This collection lasted me about 50hrs. I will say though, that these games are best played in short bursts. Wailing on the enemies until they’re ready for you to use a Rengeki on them is fun, but it can get repetitive very fast. Combat itself doesn’t become as fun as it could be until Vol. 2, where you can actually change weapons without going into the menu.

As for the narrative, I found the setting of [The World] fascinating in concept, but not the best aged in terms of visuals. The characters however, were a delight the whole way. Haseo is a great protagonist in that, he’s an asshole, but not an unbearable asshole. If you enjoyed Neku in TWEWY, you’ll probably enjoy Haseo.

Star Ocean: First Departure R

Full disclosure: I got this game because it was on sale and the Sci-fi/fantasy vibes called to me.

If you don’t have a tolerance for older ARPGs, then you might want to avoid this one, as its age does begin to show. That said, it’s not nearly as ages as it might seem.

The skill system was very engrossing, with level ups and new skills happening very fast. There were a few difficulty spikes, but I feel like part of that was on me for not engaging with the item creation/customization until a little over halfway through.

Finishing this left me wanting more in the best way. I can’t wait for November and Star Ocean 2.

Trails in the Sky FC

My experience with the Trails series has been a little bit. . . Bumpy. As someone who only owns a Switch and an HP Notebook laptop, the series hasn’t exactly been very accessible. Near the start of my sophomore year of college, I downloaded and played a demo for Trails of Cold Steel 3. I was, to my mild surprise, only slightly lost about the world and characters. I enjoyed my time with Cold Steel 3 but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. After finishing that game, I decided to play as much of the series as I could before diving into Cold Steel 4. This was my first step for this.

The Trails series’ reputation for deep world building is entirely deserved. I was surprised at how much space this game’s world has. As an example: there’s an orbment shop in one of the towns where a third story counter can be seen. There’s no reason to go there, not even any sidequests, but if you talk to the NPC there, he’ll explain that the third story is where they handle repair requests. It’s a small detail, and the developers didn’t have to make that extra room, but they did, and the world feels more real because of it. Even the magic-science techno-babble tends to make a degree of sense!

The gameplay is as solid as you could want from a turn-based rpg. The Arts and Crafts are great levers, and I never felt too weak for the enemies in any given area. It took me a while to realize that Arts using two turns was a benefit rather than a drawback. Using the cast times to manipulate the turn order is great fun.

I will say though, that I miss the additions of Master Quarts and Breaks that later games brought to the series. They’re not quite necessary, but they did bring a lot of good to the series.

Charting through the rest of the series is going to be a blast if this game is any indication!

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Another few assorted things, I guess, since I've been bouncing around between stuff again.

Death end re;Quest 2 will probably get its own post at some point after I decide whether I'm willing to subject myself through NG+ to see the true ending. After getting to the normal good/bad endings though my opinion so far is that I'm absolutely flabbergasted that there's so much debate over whether the first or second game is better because my experience was that literally the only thing improved in the second was the framerate, and most other stuff was at least a little bit worse.

Geometry Survivor is so close to good but just didn't click for me. The cooldowns on the abilities are all so long that I just feel like I'm sitting around with nothing happening way too much of the time and can't rely on most of them to do anything useful when I need them, and I'm pretty sure my brain is convinced the hitbox on the...ship? is like 10-20% smaller than it actually is because that's how it usually works in games like this. It seemed like most times I got hit were in cases where it seemed like I should've been able to make it through a gap just fine. I think I'd probably like it a decent amount with some small tweaks to stuff like that, but as it is it just isn't doing it for me.

I mostly only got and played Star Ocean: First Departure R because it was on sale pretty cheap while I was still in the good part of SO2R (read: the first half). I wasn't expecting as much from it because it's not a remake to the degree of the second game (it feels more like playing a PS1 game in an emulator with antialiasing enabled and a widescreen hack), but even then I still couldn't really get into it. It's so unclear what will trigger the progression of the story a lot of the time, and like three hours in I still hadn't found a compelling reason to do literally anything other than mash the A button in combat. I do hope they keep going and give the third game (I guess the PS2 one is SO3? even though there was a GBC game between 2 and that one) a proper update too though, since I never really played much of it myself back in the day but had friends into it.

And then finally A Time Traveller's Guide to Past Delicacies is saved for last because I liked it more than all of the other things in this post combined. It's short, it's weird, and I have no idea what it's trying to say, but I love the way it says it. It perfectly captures the bizarreness and jank that 90s FMV games frequently had, and it also reminds me of the early 2010s when I had the energy to keep up with weird, obscure, experimental indie games being released and saw all sorts of strange and fascinating stuff people put out there. Not enough games have live action sock puppets these days.

[gorematchala]

I have completed Star Ocean!!!!

So I only have one negative thing to say about First Departure R and its minor. To get it out of the way, this game has the same disease many RPGs have which is "bad final area and last boss" syndrome. I made the strongest sword I could possibly get for Roddick and half the enemies at the end, including the final boss, are healed if you hit them with it, I assume because they absorb dark element. I will be maining the Soul Eater next time

But there is currently a next time because I really liked the game! Its old and arcane and items are super important even though you'll never need even a fraction of whats available, and all of that PSP jank is so good, I love it. As a remake/remaster/port thing I really love the way the devs stayed true to the SNES game and the PSP game at the same time somehow. Its like the most respectful remaster ever

Besides just liking the game I've started a second playthrough because there are a lot of characters and I want to play with some of the ones I couldn't get before. Unfortunately it would take 3 playthroughs to use all of them and idk if I would go that far so soon after my first clear but the other reason I'm playing again is I understand the skill system now and I wasted so many points and so much EXP before that i basically just wanna see how broken overpowered I can get lol. I feel like theres an upper limit for sure cuz damage caps at 9999, but I wanna max out all skills for everyone and smith some fucked up armor and buy all the expensive items and stuff. Its got all the components of the kind of RPG I'm always looking for, even though just like with FF8 I wish it was just normal turn based combat. The spritework is really good though and it helps the fights be fun

I started the demo for second story and so far I really like the characters and the art and stuff but it kinda encapsulates a problem I have with sequels and modernizing things. The stagger system and all the battle stuff is fuckin awesome, I love it and its what drew me to the game in the first place, but the 3D environments look kinda crusty and the menus are all just blue and samey looking. The SO:FD menus let you change the background color and all the different tabs have colored icons next to them. And its nice cuz theres a lot of menus in that game. With Second Story its like you trade the PSP swag for convenience and sick battle systems. But I reallyyy like the PSP swag is the problem

[hellman55]

Star Ocean: First Departure R (PS4) - Walkthrough (Part 16 - FINALE)

[otasunestanblog]

It's pretty easy and the last act of the story is super rushed but I had fun ☺️