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Wednesday 5 March, 2008
Gameplay:
Apparently the two main characters are apparently related, well at least Sophia called Fayt's mother aunt so I guess they are relatives, maybe I miss herd what was said. Hopefully I did because they seem a little to "close". I have begun the second game section after the computer has told your main character that your hotel is under attack.
The game is quiet humorous at this point, although it is not done intentionally. As the attack begins the characters that surround your characters still have not reacted to the attack. There is a kid looking at something in the lobby the other adults are also walking around without a care in the world. After you have run out of the lobby, everyone reacts.
After you run out of the lobby you make your way through some a teleport machine you meet your parents. Then the enemy army attacks and you make your escape, you lose your parents and end up at the refuge site. After gaining some info about the different things happening in the surrounding sector of space you activate another evacuation to another location.
During the first evacuation you get to fight off some enemies. This fighting comprises as both of the main characters running around the enemies, Fayt smacks them with a big stick and Sophia uses her mental points to attack the enemies.
Design:
This game is a pretty good, it has many design qualities that endear it to early RPG's. Like the style in which the game's story-line unfolds. Many of the early RPG's failed to give step by step instructions on what is player should do to further their game state, but Star Ocean uses a very interesting game mechanic to replace the step by step instructions. By interacting with bystanders in the game, the player learns vital information which triggers story events. Not everything that is communicated to you during your gathering of information is useful to the furthering of the game but they are interesting snippets of info about the backstory of the game. Even though the requirements of the game mechanics cause you to have to wander around aimlessly for a while, the interactions with other characters in the game make up for the extra time the game requires you spend between game events.
The game also has another unique game mechanic that is not seen in many RPG's now days. The fact that you can choose what dialog you can say during certain events in the game suggests that you can manipulate the direction in which the game unfolds.
In respect to my earlier comment about the game becoming humorous during the most dramatic bits of the story-line, it is not actually the designers fault. It is caused by the limitation of the known programing techniques during the development of the game. The characters in the game have very bad human emotions. In one scene the entire family is standing by a couple of soldiers who are immediately shot as they defend the civilians, but none of the family react to the fact that some other characters have just died. Also the voice acting in the game is pretty bad, the voices also lack emotion. Everything seems to be said in monotone even if the subject pertains to something that would cause high emotional reactions. Even though these would usually be negatives in a game, the player has to remember when the game was made. It actually made me enjoy the game more because it brought humor into the game, while also reminding me how far games have developed from even five to six years ago. (The programmers and the designers were simply restricted by game technology that they had access to)
There arn't really varied levels, just varied locations in which the game occurs. Although the game doesn't really have level segmentation the designers successfully split the game into smaller tasks by restricting the story to the current location of the main characters. A small portion of the story is revealed as the player explores the location and interacts with all the bystanders of the location. I found this a interesting way to segment the game.
The game hasn't frustrated me yet, which is interesting because usually there are a couple of game mechanics that infuriate me. I hope to find time to further my progress in this game.
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