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Let's Play Star Ocean: Till the End of My Animes (Star Ocean 3)!

Introduction

While largely shat upon by the three other Star Ocean fans in the world, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is my actually favorite game in the series.

But Landwhale, three out of four gamers can?t be wrong! All I ever hear about this game is how awful it is!

SO3 suffers from what I can only articulate as some good character and story ideas trapped in a terrible, terrible reality?there are a lot of things in this game that made me go ?dang, that?s cool? or ?gee if this was a book I?d read it? but in turn there was quite a lot of *ANIME*. A lot of people can?t get past all the bullshit that the latter entails so they either just ignore it and have fun with the battle system or froth at the mouth every time this game is complimented (stop liking what I don't like!).

What helped me digest this week-old quiche of a game was the presentation of its universe, either through NPC text or the dictionary (arguably the most interesting thing about the game :v

. I?m not going to ramble on about detail here, but dammed if I?m not expounding upon it throughout this LP. Let's think of it as a coping mechanism.

And that?s just the story?the battle system gets its fair share of bitching. Speaking of which?

Combat

?Improvements? on Star Ocean 2:

Four kinds of regular attacks, divided into weak (x) and strong (o), both of which can be short or long range. You can also assign battle skills to these buttons, which are activated by pressing a button rather than tapping it. Battle skills can cost either HP or MP to use.

The fury gauge: a green 0-100% bar. All actions (moving, striking, casting) drain this bar. Standing still refills it. At 100% you can guard against weak attacks, but if a strong attack strikes you at 100% your guard is shattered and it drains to 50%.

Heraldry (magic!) is now called Symbology. The game tries to pass this off as terminology evolution, but since it was still called Heraldry in the Japanese version this is a little silly. A big selling point for me is that magic no longer halts the flow of the battle, so caster enemies can no longer ruin your day as most spells are 100% avoidable.

MP kills. The most common complaint and a plague upon new players, as your starting party is particularly susceptible to them ( CLIFF smile:.

But frankly I love MP kills and if anybody whines about them here you?re a big goddamn baby and I?m going to laugh at you.

If all this sounds needlessly complicated, don?t fret, it?s really easy to pick up after some practice.

Item Creation

While not as hilariously game breaking as the previous instillation's, SO3's IC is the key to removing anything remotely difficult about a fight. However, instead of just your main party being responsible for crafting, there are freelance inventors dotted throughout the game that you must recruit in order to make certain items. The game breaking inventors are, sadly, not interested in being hired until around the end of the main story. More on this RNG fuckfest when we come to it.

Battle Trophies

A gamut of 300 battle conditions to achieve that will unlock a music player, three extra costumes per character, Full Active Mode, and the last two tiers of difficulty.

Music Player (165/300): Opens a menu that lets you play through the game?s soundtrack. In typical Motoi Sakuraba fashion, there are only about three worthwhile tracks in this game, one of which being a good tune from another series he?s been riding for over a decade. Worst reward ever, I?d rather have had nothing.

Costumes (45-120-240/300): Essentially recolored character models, although some outfits do lose/gain accessories. Each tier gets progressively more anime, ending with gothic Lolita maid outfits for all the ladies in your party. No, I?m not joking.

Full Active Mode (285/300): Instead of running to the ?correct? spot to execute an attack, the character will act wherever it is currently standing. I?d argue that the game should have played like this in the first place. By the time you get around to unlocking this, you?re probably sick of the game.

Difficulty Levels:
- Earth ? baby mode. Enemies take a 0.7x stat hit. The only reason you?d ever want to play this is to speed through the game so you can fact check character interactions for your erotic fanfictions.
- Galaxy ? normal mode. The stat values by which the later difficulties are calculated. Can be completed with little to no knowledge of Item Creation (or even the battle system, really. My first time through I just long O'd everything to death with the black mage).
- Universe (75/300) ? hard mode. Enemies receive a 1.5x stat buff. Probably my favorite mode for a ?fun run??it?s the hardest you can make the game without having to switch everybody to manual because the AI is, quite literally, too stupid to live in the next mode.
- 4Dicks (195/300) ? two dicks in your ass and mouth mode. Stat buffs range from 1.8x to 3x Also, the fury gauge disappears, leaving you to eyeball whether or not an enemy is guarding or using a strong/weak attack--let's hope you aren't playing on a bad monitor, or you're in for a whole world of pain.

Versus Mode

About a fifth of the way through the game you can unlock an arcade-fighter-like sub game that lets you pick a character and fight against the rest of the playable cast. The catch is that every character has a handful of pre-set battle skill "styles" and you have to unlock certain characters/costumes by finding their Trading Cards.

There is no reason to bother with this, although there is a 2-player mode which if available outside of this sub game would have been pretty cool. I remember playing Final Fantasy 3 (VI) back on the SNES as a 2 player and wondering in my later years why so few RPGs have a similar feature. It's like Square knew I'd grow up to be a friendless shell of a person.

Characters

There are 10 playable characters, 2 of which were added in the Director?s Cut before being shipped to the states. One of them was already in the game but unplayable and the other was created from scratch as a selling point of the re-release. The fact that he?s a mandatory character and takes up one of the 8 available character slots is a popular thing to complain about.

Unlike SO2, choosing one character does not lock out another. Instead, you have 2 slots for a pool of 4 optional characters. We'll talk about that later, although I'm pretty set on going with

and

this time around. I'll be running a

and

game alongside this one for their endings and some different scenarios, at least.

Spoilers

Instruction booklet and dictionary "spoilers" are acceptable, as you can't really help but stumble into them, especially the latter. The second you encounter a new character (or just happen upon an entry that mentions them!) their life's story appears in the dictionary. However, please still spoiler tag all main character and major NPC details until they are revealed in the LP.

Don't talk about any future plot developments unless it's speculation. Not even if it's spoiler tagged.

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Landwhale, huh? I know one of those.
I'LL LOSE WEIGHT AFTER WE GET BACK TO EARTH.
About that...
Let's just grab him and get out of here.
Just think about all the bull we could have avoided if this is what happened.
What are you talking about? The game falls apart after you get him.

Oh what foul role will we color twins play?
Good god please use 3P or 4P. Wait, no, I'm wearing pants in 3P. Fuck pants.
Wait, you're pantsless and shirtless in 4P.

...

renders/official artwork under this thing

music links (there is a reason Fayt is close to tears)

highlights from the Nel/Roger game (should popular demand not sway me from my main party choice)

me rambling about shit maybe one or two readers would care about (this LP is for you!)

Throwbacks and references go here. Edge isn't here because he's a faggot and there's like two things in SO4 from 3.