Star Ocean 3

Now, I didn’t really like Star Ocean 2, mainly (specifically, actually) due to the mashy-button type of battle system.

How does Star Ocean 3 differ from Star Ocean 2? I liked Star Ocean 2, just not the battle system.

Furthermore, is Star Ocean 3 any good at all?

Talk to me about it.

Go.

…Go damnit!

star ocean 3 has a samurai in it, therefore you should get it

no i haven’t played it

Well, in SO3, button mashing will get you nowhere; there’s a Fury meter that disallows endless attacking, There’s lots of other changes too, most of them for the better. You should give it a try.

It’s not actually the comic , but the News section and the link (Which has several opinions on the game) that you should check.

I personally couldnt get over the following “problems”:

~The Camera
~The character head models
~Shitty voice acting
~Boring lengthy filler crap between plot bits
~Stupidly designed dungeons (You had to be at just the EXACT angle to activate a button to open a door in a room FILLED with random computer crap that (all but the one) were just static objects. Basically, there was no damn way to tell that you even needed to be looking for a button and Gamefaqs was the only solution. When discovering the machine I needed to “activate” I got pissed cause I had already tried to push that one 2 times before, but failed because of SHIT collision…

Oh well, beyond those things with were rather important to me, it may be good.

I’ve not got board of the battles, Dieing one the other hand… you won’t see the Game over sceen as much.

It got more replay value than I thought

Big Nutter
I got over exited after beating the Dragon first time with a trophy, that my battles have been a bit lacking inresponce on R2. stuck on Manual…

I actually thought the voice acting was really solid… much better than FFX, for example. I actually liked SO2 more than SO3 for various reasons… both have good and bad. I like the exploration aspect of SO3 a lot. I’m not all that far into it yet (although I’ve already racked up 40 hours!). I haven’t gotten bored yet. :sunglasses:

When I refer to shitty voice acting, I refer to this:

When they are speaking along with the text, there should be a natural feeling to it, as in, the text should adance to the next “page” after they say the last word. BUT, it doesnt, there is an unnatural pause in the voice acting because the game still takes that 1 second to sit there before going to the next block of text. This creates a very fake sounding conversation even though the voice actors may be decent sounding.

That is not solid, that is badly designed. And its a teeny tiny quirk that causes problems for me. I say that if there is voice acting, it needs to add to the game, not distract, and because of the pauses, it pulls me back out of the game and says to me:
“HEY SEAN! This isnt real people having a conversation! This is little sound clips that need a moment to load instead of having nice flow to them! HAHAHA! YOU SUCK SEAN!!!”

Yeah, I dont like it when game design screams that to me.

My brother borrowed SO3 from one of his friends for a couple days, I have to say, it’s definately one of the better console RPGs I’ve played. I agree with Cid about the voice acting, sure it isn’t natural, but it’s still pretty convincing.

Definately going to buy it when I get the chance.

There HAS to be a pause in the text so you’re not bombarded with a huge conversation that goes way over your head quickly, especially if the text is there (so you have time to read it). People bitched about this with FFX and it’s really an obvious answer. I’m with Cid on this one.

As for other aspects, well, SO3 is a lot smoother and quick than SO2 was. It’s basically not turn based at all, obviously, and you just run around and kill things. The battle system is so fun, since you have to build up a gauge which will allow you to win things such as triple exp when you fight the required amount of battles, which is the key to levelling up in the game. You have to have patience.

The music still gives you that SO2 feel, however, a lot of the music has been “rocked up” if you know what I mean. The PA’s are automatic now (meaning you don’t have to press square)

There’s no overworld map, you need to walk to all of your destinations, which isn’t that annoying, because in the main world you stay in, you’re just passing over hills and plains.

The characters are kind of generic, but interesting. They grow more important and personal for you later on.

The storyline is kinda predictable if you start thinking in the abstract. I figured out what as going to happen, and a lot of people didnt receive it greatly, but it didn’t shock me too much.

Give it a try, the first few hours are really slow, to build up a storyline, but once you start getting into the field and fighting, you’ll like it. Similar sounds and graphics are present, as well as Item Creation, however, you need to recruit inventors to make them, which is expensive and challenging.

The Lip sync on the Pal Vertion is as good as Several Cartoons that I see On TV. It’s Better than FFX and FFX-2 and The Bouncer.

Big Nutter
There’s some time Between some Characters if they’ve got a long Name.

“There HAS to be a pause in the text so you’re not bombarded with a huge
conversation that goes way over your head quickly”

ooooh, so thats why nearly every Film ever made has horribly long pauses between each line… cause we couldnt handle it if the conversations sounded natural… I understand totally.

You forget that for most films, you are not expected to remember what people say and use that as instructions to continue in a game.

Personally, I use the “don’t advance automatically option” anyway, because as far as I can tell, advancing it automatically means there’s no way for me to pause the game during scenes. -_- Yes, there are some quite annoying bugs/design decisions in the game, but I’m still having fun. :sunglasses:

FFX and X-2 didn’t even attempt to lip sync, BigNutter (except for Yuna in X, and she sounded awful because of it). SO3 is really nice that way, yes. :sunglasses:

Fixed Camera mode.

~The character head models

True, they are shitty.

~Shitty voice acting

Same.

~Boring lengthy filler crap between plot bits

It’s a Square-Enix storyline, what else did you actually expect?

~Stupidly designed dungeons (You had to be at just the EXACT angle to activate a button to open a door in a room FILLED with random computer crap that (all but the one) were just static objects. Basically, there was no damn way to tell that you even needed to be looking for a button and Gamefaqs was the only solution. When discovering the machine I needed to “activate” I got pissed cause I had already tried to push that one 2 times before, but failed because of SHIT collision…

And? If you suck so much as to not being able to press a button, then quite frankly, well, there’s nothing more to say here.

SO3 is probably one of the best most recent games S-E produced, it’s good, clean, gameplay-oriented fun. However, if you didn’t like SO2, stay the fuck away.

What Cid said. This isn’t a movie, this is a game. We don’t have to go though 50 hours to get to a plot device in a movie. It’s better to slow the scenes down to GRASP what we are being told.

If SO3 took out the Fury meter and the MP killing thing, I would love the game just as much as SO2.

So far I’m unimpressed. What’s the game about? How similar is the battle system to SO2’s? So far you haven’t really answered any of my questions - but don’t worry, you can keep going.

I didn’t like the game as much as I did SO2. The battle system is better, but the rest is worse. The battle system is still active, but it is fun as hell. You run around and have several sword swipes and it is easy to control the target you are attacking. Save points are way too far apart, which means that if you die you have to redo a lot. The graphics are nice and the voice acting is fine. Overall, I’d say that if you didn’t SO2, because of the battle system, then you might like this one. However, if the story of SO2 was important to you, then this one won’t change your mind and you probably won’t like it. It is a good thing that battles are so much fun though sinc eoyu have to do a lot of them to gain a level because of the way that the experience system is setup.

The story of the Star Ocean games were never a really strong point. The interactions between the characters were more important than the story in the end.

That is part of the story to me. Besides, it doesn’t change what I said about the story.