Intro:Star Ocean: Till the End of Time begins on the planet Hyda IV where a young man, Fayt Leingod, and his childhood friend, Sophia Esteed, are on vacation with Fayt's family. Fayt is son of a famous scientist in the field of symbological genetics. For an unknown reason, the Vendeen Empire — an alien civilization with highly advanced technology that spans only a single planet — attacks Hyda IV unprovoked, thus initiating a war with the Pangalactic Federation. Fayt and Sophia escape on the starship Helre, but are separated from Fayt's parents, Robert and Ryoko Leingod. The Helre is also attacked by the Vendeeni, and the two are separated.
GameplayThe gameplay of this title is much more advanced than that of its previous titles. Battlefields provide plenty of free space to move around, and there are plenty of techniques at your disposal to attack your enemy close range or even from great distances. Of course there are enemies with the same capabilities, so don't think you can beat them up from a distance without them being able to do the same. And most bosses have a move that they will use once their defeat nears(their trump card), and this move will usually consume the majority of the battle field! The characters use battle skills and symbology to fight. Battle skills consume a small amount of HP and Symbology, of course, consumes an amount of MP. And since you fight with the X and O buttons, the moves set to X are your weaker attacks(incapable of crushing guards, but take less HP when a battle skill is used), and the O moves are your stronger attacks(can crush guards and take a greater amount of HP from your character, while dealing much greater damage to the enemy). If losing HP by using battle skills sounds bad to you, then you'll be glad to know that you still have standard attacks(triggered by slightly tapping the X/O buttons). Of course they don't have as much power as battle skills, but they can still do pretty decent damage. And some of them set you up for combos. For example: Fayt Leingod(the main character) taps O at the start of the battle, he'll charge towards the enemy and swing his sword upward, knocking the enemy into the air. Tap O again while the enemy is airborne and he'll do a backflip kick(kinda like what Fox and Falco do on SSB when they use their up smash attack) and send the enemy back into the air for a 2nd hit. And when they come down Tap X and he'll kinda thrust his sword into them and get two more hits out of that. And as for Symbology...well that's basically like spell casting in a sense. You have moves that assist and moves that deal damage. Each move takes a little time to prepare(depending on the effect they'll have). You are completely vulnerable while doing this, so you'd better hope you teammates keep the enemy distracted. Which reminds me, you can have up to 3 fighters in at once moving freely and doing what ever they want to do. But you can set a battle preference for them, i.e., attack enemy with all your might(will make them do just that). There are about 8 settings for them. In the end you can have a max of 8 members in your party, but throughout the game you'll have atleast 10 different fighters at one point. And if that isn't enough for ya, then wait until you unlock the 2player vs mode. You can either do 1v1 or a 1v1v1. You can use 10 different characters and fight on every battlefield that you've been on throughout the game. I could go on with different aspects of gameplay, but I'm gonna move on to the next section.
SoundThe soundtrack of this game is great. In fact, if you've played
LEX in the rpg section, then you'll notice that a lot of the music was used there also. Most of the music was composed by Motoi Sakuraba.
GraphicsThe cutscene graphics were nice, and the rest of the anime styled graphics were great too. Of course they aren't the best that I've seen in a game, but at that time when the game was new, I couldn't get enough of how bright and vivid everything was.
Replay Value This game has so many features that are only unlockable after the main story is completed. Features that include optional dungeons, harder difficulties, and more. There are also a few cameo appearances from other Square Enix characters in this game. There are 300 battle trophies that you can collect(things you get for meeting certain conditions). And on top of that, there are 10 possible endings. The replay value of this game is definetely HIGH
RulingI would score this game a 9/10 because it's great! It's fun, interesting, entertaining, and more!!! If you haven't played this game, then I highly recommend it. I would've given a 10 but I really wanted more planets to explore, btu a lot of the events in the game took place on Elicoor 2.
Subject: Star Ocean: Till the End of TIme 
Sun Sep 07, 2008 3:37 pm
