Players will have plenty to take in between battles, as well. While Star Ocean doesn’t use all the fancy filters and post-processing effects available these days, it still manages to create impressive environments. Alien planets, futuristic space stations, and rustic villages will tickle the eyes with bright colors and vibrant details (thanks, in part, to a healthy dose of bloom). In smaller scale situations (combat, indoors, or in cutscenes) the game isn’t visually impressive, but passable. The scale and variance of the alien worlds still makes Star Ocean a good looking game, even if it doesn’t throw dynamic range lighting in the player’s face.
And that’s really the best of Star Ocean: oddly placed humor, cool-looking vistas, and several hours of beating the crap out of the local flora and fauna. The dungeon-cutscene-dungeon flow isn’t getting any more innovative, and often Star Ocean lingers too long at either end of the spectrum. Dungeons can last several hours, while story sequences will have you putting the controller down (probably to check your e-mail or chat on AIM) after minutes of gameplay for another extended non-interactive cutscene.
Star Ocean is an unapologetic JRPG in every positive and negative sense of the term. Gamers that aren’t already a fan of the genre will find little reason to convert. Those that have already acclimated to the genre’s negative conventions will get plenty of entertainment from oddly charming characters, satisfying combat, and visually impressive environments. As far as sci-fi RPGs go, If Mass Effect is a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant, Star Ocean is a jog down the block to a McDonalds for a kid’s McNugget combo with apple dippers. It’s not as good, and you know it’s not as good. Still, sometimes nothing hits the spot like a McNugget. Under all that JRPG bunk, Star Ocean satisfies and entertains -- even though I’m not quite sure why.
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