Adreankael

This game's reputation is somewhat deserved. Play this game with the original Japanese voice acting. The English voice acting is horrible. So bad some of the characters make you want to shut the audio off completely. If the 4th character doesn't give you a headache then you should be able to endure the rest of the horrible English VO. The game has a terribly cliched story and the script seems to have been written by a 10 year old. Probably one of the worst entries in the Star Ocean series due to the VERY sexist portrayal of the main female protagonist. She actually says "Now maybe I'll be of use to someone." The way the male protagonist turns into a whiny little baby during part of the story is also a huge issue. Several plot holes are left unresolved and the use of Deus Ex Machina in the story is atrocious. The PC port has limited resolutions. I suggest using Special K if you're using the steam version and you use a resolution other then the 6 or 8 they allow. All that being said it is STILL a Star Ocean game so it's probably better then a lot of the drivel coming out of the game industry now but honestly it was a disappointment.

Do not purchase. The PC version of the game is horrible. Bugs abound. Disconnect issues are so regular it's not even funny. If you're in the middle of an event and you disconnect (50% probability) when you reconnect you won't be in the same instance you were. You will be in a different instance and you'll miss the event. The PVP is atrocious. mouse and keyboard players are switching to controllers because of the auto aim assist that controller users get is so OP in pvp. The weapons are so horribly balanced it makes most weapons impractical. Exotics are useless except for one exotic for warlocks which makes them invulnerable. I would give this game a 1 rating but I think it deserves a little credit for the story. So I'm giving it a two. Great story but short and all in all it doesn't make up for the horrible decisions of the development team, the horrible implementation and the bugs.

After playing every Star Ocean game available (and loving 90% of them) I can honestly say this one is a bit of a let down. I seriously expected more from this series. I wish I could rate it higher then 7 but several things take the score down quite a bit. Problem #1 is the english voice acting. Reimi was the only voice actor who didn't make me cringe during dialog. The rest are borderline atrocious, with one character decimating that line altogether. I'm not sure what to make of Lymle. If the voice actor was going for a lobotomized, traumatized child then they're spot on. Seriously, she sounds like she has suffered massive head trauma. Acting lessons are good, kay? Problem #2. The special arts of one Edge Maverick (seriously who came up with these names? Cliche much?). Many do less damage per second then just spamming the basic attack. While they do more damage per button press, when you spread that damage over multiple hits and you factor in the time it takes for each skill to finish they do less damage and take more time then pressing the basic attack button 5 times. Not to mention how they leave you more vulnerable during the time it takes to execute that skill. Making them more risk then reward. Pros: Beautiful graphics. Although the land could use a bit more foliage the character models and many of the textures are beautifully rendered. The addition of being able to swap between Anime or "Modern" style for the artwork is a definite plus. The ability to swap VO languages and to experience the game with Japanese VO is a definite plus as well. Especially when you take into consideration Lymle's annoying English VO and the poor overall quality of the English VO. If you're going to play this game swap it over to Japanese VO. I expected more from this series, I really did.

Pros: Best of the Y's series so far in story, length, game mechanics and English voice acting, if you can keep it running long enough to actually play it. Cons: Constant crashing, horrible optimization, previous gen console quality graphics. I cannot even begin to describe how bad this port is. It crashes so often that it takes an ungodly amount of patience to actually play enough to write a review. I've tried on multiple computers with varying AMD and Intel setups and the results are generally the same. Crashes, crashes and more crashes. The best luck I had was on an old AMD FX system paired a GTX 1050 TI. With that setup I've managed to play about 42 hours in the game so far. (Still crashing but far less frequently, about an hour or three between crashes). All in all play it on the PS4 but STAY AWAY from the PC port until they get all the issues patched out. Give them year or so.

Pros: A truly immersive game setting, story premise, NPC personality depth, music, antagonist personality and back story. Cons: The story was either lazily written or it was chopped up due to time constraints. Extremely annoying and all too often no way out scenarios that result in you feeling frustrated and annoyed. I would be singing this games praise but for a few things that have turned an otherwise amazing experience completely sour. Far Cry 5 could have and should been the best of the far cry games so far but due to either sloppy and very lazy writing or horrible production it's the worst. The premise of the story is excellent but the execution of it is atrocious. I'll try very hard not to include spoilers but suffice it to say they make the protagonist and the antagonist not only impotent but stupid as well. I have never seen a story either so lazily written or so horribly rushed. It makes no logical sense. The story pins the protagonist into a no win scenario time and time again, giving the antagonist opportunity after opportunity to end the conflict. Once or twice would have been fine but it gets tedious and annoying after 20 times. Do the antagonists act on those opportunities? Take a guess. To add insult to injury it resorts to the use of deus ex machina to get him out. It reeks of rushed and cut story or amateurish writing. The game play is standard far cry albeit without the towers. The graphics are beautiful and the setting is amazing. The music is wonderful and probably the best part of the game. All of these things add up to what should have been the best game of 2018, but with the no win scenarios every 20 minutes it ruins it. TL;DR: They botched this either due to bad writers or a moronic production team. If you don't care about the story making no logical sense this is a great game.

Pros: It's Secret of Mana with a fresh coat of paint. Cons: It's Secret of Mana with a fresh coat of paint and nothing else. Some things need more then a fresh coat of paint yet that's all this game got. The original game was great, for both the platform it was on and the time it was released, but they could have done so much to improve this. Suggested improvements would be increase the area rendered to eliminate alot of the loading screens, remove the invincibility monsters get after knocking them to the ground. What's completely baffling is how they actually made the game worse by making the menu ring open in the center of the screen instead of over the character's head, making it all the more difficult to use. The Voice acting is sub par at best and the character's mouths do not move when they're talking. This is unsettling and given that their mouths can and do move for expressions, it's all the more confusing they didn't include this feature. All in all it is secret of mana but this game's low rating is a case of not enough tough love. Yes, the original was awesome and we loved it but that doesn't mean there was no room for improvement. Keeping a game this close to the original and just slapping a new coat of paint on it was not the best way to go here.

Do NOT waste your money on this game, the game is in Japanese with English subtitles, however the text might as well be gibberish and half the time you wont understand what they're talking about. The battle system is engaging but poorly optimized. With encounters ranging in levels 70 to 150 in the same area (many times right beside each other) you can easily die in one or two hits. There is absolutely no coming back from the dead, you or your companion dies its game over. No way to manually save (it auto saves EVERY time you load into a new area). Total wast of money unless you are a mega fan of SAO and don't care if the game is actually decent.