I don't really know what to say about this game, because unlike other games one feature dosn't jump out and bite you on the nose and then stick around for weeks stealing your food and underwear.
Anyway. There's some sort of plot, but if you care about that you can go play the fucking game yourself. But this is one of the rare games where I don't want to kill at least one of the playable charecters. (The secondary ones are a diffrent matter. Bring me the head of Calamity Jane and Emma!) You get to control Rudy, a blue-haired bum who goes mute halfway through the game, Jack, the troubled drifter, and Cecila the chick. To keep the game from getting boring they all have diffrent skills. Rudy can use ARMs, which are basically guns. At least most of them are. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell the Wild Bunch is. Anyway, Jack can use Fast Draw techniques, which are basically a monk skill set - he has one powerful single-enemy attack, one that heals your party, one that hits all the enemies, etc. Cecila gets magic, which you get to name, so at the end of the game I had spells like ShitBeat, Esuna, Cure 4, OWCH and my personal shame, "PeeP 8)". It's a long story, okay?
Anyway I just got horribly off topic, the problem of having a guilt attack at 1:36 AM and deciding you need to write something. Okay. So where was I? Oh yeah. Enjoyability. It's pretty fun. It has a fair amount of puzzles in the game, where you have to use tools like the bombs or hookshot to get past certian areas. They get annoying after a while, but most of them are so easy that I didn't find them that annoying. Plus when I got really bored, I could amuse myself by walking around and dropping bombs on townspeople.
OK, what else? Graphics and music. The music is pretty good, espically Zed's theme music, called "Oops..." on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, this game does what a lot of other games does, and mixes the battle music too quiet, so you hear really loud sound effects and normal music or normal sound effects and really quiet music. Gerh. As for graphics, they're passable for the time they were made, but now they look pretty bad. Your charecters are small, and they look like they're made up of a whopping two polygons. The ARMs and stuff are also pretty boring - you pull out a green tube, and then there's a really fake-looking explosion in the shape of a cone. Whoooo.
OK. I think by this point this article has lost all coherance, so let's just cover the rest of the stuff I'm missing and get out of here. This game has side quests, which is good. It has a really easy last boss, which is BAD. It has exactly one major plot twist and a dorky mute hero, which is bad but sadly somewhat common. Also, the ending really sucks. I mean it really, really sucks. Just turn the game off after you kill Ziek Super Badass Tuna or whatever his name is. You'll be happier that way.
On a closing note, what's the deal with Star Oceans? This is the second game soundtrack that has a title like "Into the Star Ocean", let alone Star Ocean I and II. Am I missing somthing, besides my leg? Hey man, I lost this in 'Nam! Show a little respect you beatnik puke!
Everyone loves screenshots, right!? WELL TOO BAD, because Bleem! was really screwing up and I couldn't get into a battle without either Bleem!, my computer, or something unrelated from freezing. In other words, you get to see what it looks like running around, but that's only passingly interesting. So instead you get three pictures of me dropping bombs on random villagers.
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Written by Evk and posted on 05-22-00.
This article is ©2000 Nick Hammer.
Evk@salamando.net
