Star Ocean IV HD announced for PC/PS4

The ability to play Ninja Gaiden Black is better than 6 months worth of games.

1&2. Then stop right there because 3 goes full retard and sends the series into a death spiral of pure shit.

1 was pretty good for an SNES game, there's a fan translation of it that was released years ago. 2 is pretty great and well worth playing. 3 was a nonsensical clusterfuck that seems to be enjoyed in the same way that FF8 is enjoyed.

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SNES translation of 1 is good. voice acting is in english, too
PSP port is basically made in SO2's image
SO2 for PS1 is great
PSP version is great but missing some of the charm the PS1 version had
blue sphere is a mystery and translation never
3 is trash
4 is serviceable trash because the combat is actually really solid
I didn't even bother with 5

when are these fucks gonna port SO1/2 to modern systems, then go ahead and finally port blue sphere to the west

They sent Second Evolution to the Vita and PS4 (and then ported it to PS3 as well) as in Japan already. Square-Enix has expressed no interest to bring it west on any of the involved systems, and as far as official releases go the prior PSP one is STILL UMD only in the west (and thus can't be bought for play on the Vita; same with First Departure as well as Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth). That said, Square-Enix seems to have a noticeable hatred for even doing digital rereleases of old games that Enix handled back when they were rivals before the merger anyhow. I can't speak of the Japanese PSN or VC, but here in the west the only old Enix game to be once again made available has been ActRaiser 1. No other Quintet titles, no Star Ocean 2, no Valkyrie Profile, and no Dragon Quest from back in the "Warrior" days of the series.

I'll never understand why square hates money as much as they do

The battle system is worse than 3's even if it isn't as broken.

2 and 3.

1 is ok, if you're into short, simplistic games. Just grab the rom and play it on an emu, or if you want to buy it you can grab the PSP version and a used PSP real cheap. That remake isn't half bad, since it adds Welch and stretches the game time out a bit with some more content and a bonus dungeon. I wouldn't bother with 4 or 5 though, both are low-end JRPGs, and when compared to 2 and 3, they look absolutely heretical to the series. Simplistic combat, lesser crafting options, ridiculous stories (not to say 2 and 3 were Hamlet, but they were decent).

Same reason they keep making all these other bad decisions. The company is ran by people that have been there far too long with insane egos.

So here's what I remember about 4.
Gameplay's pretty good. Combat reminds of the Tales of series, you actively control one party character in battle. Positioning and reflexes are important, and attacks are really flashy.
Crafting is relevant and useful. You can make both buff food and equipment, some of which is ridiculously strong and/or cannot be found in the wild.
Character development requires a guide. I don't think the system was too obscure, but you will want to make the most out of the absolute killing machine that is Meracle, and you will want to have Myuria as your elemental dd because they somehow managed to make the loli mage an annoying piece of shit.
Speaking of annoying pieces of shit, this game is full of them, with the MC taking the cake. He develops the most acute case of cloudsyndrome in recent history, as far as I can tell. The contrast to his usual shonen protag demeanour is so stark that it's actually humorous, though admittedly the circumstances of his personality break are quite dire and the fact that everybody else seems to go idgaf after like 20 minutes doesn't help.
The story is also HELLA stupid. I forgot most of it already. I think Dark Falz is in this one, too.

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3 has, without a doubt, one of the worst battle systems in any jrpg I've ever played
they took something as good as SO1/2's battle system and took a big nasty shit on it and added MP death for kicks

I've seen people take stances both ways as to who ruined what in the merger (be it Square getting their people, who had prior tanked their company, into power positions to continue to fuck up, or that Enix somehow tainted everything). I can't comment much myself as I wasn't big into vidya when that was going down to note what happened, but as I said, they seem to despise their old rival's works. In most cases, if NA got a work from Squaresoft prior, it's seen digital rerelease somewhere, but there's a few exceptions (SaGa Frontier 1 and 2, and BFM), and PAL is still to this day lacking Chrono Cross and Xenogears in any format. Enix published games, which they should by all rights own the rights to as a merged company though, they barely give a shit about. hating money is one thing, but I'd wager its more that they don't want to acknowledge games/versions of games their one-time rival handled.

I suppose as long as Dragon Quest keeps trucking out there, Square's liable to keep using it a battery pack to balance out fucking up on all sorts of other games, unless they flub something REALLY big, like the upcoming episodic remake of FFVII.

western dq fans should hang for encouraging such degeneracy and actually proclaiming they prefer it that way

1 or 2 are worth playing. 2 has far more content, but honestly I liked the simpler and more grounded story over 2's clusterfuck. Half of 2's characters feel like shitty underdeveloped oc donut steels, and the main story kind of goes off the rails late game. Gameplay is more or less the same between the PSP versions - so if you've played one, you've played them both.

3 was alright, I suppose, up until the 4D fuckery that pretty much noped eveything the series had thus far tried to pass as lore. Play up to that point and then quit.

4 was just boring garbage, and the only SO game I started that I couldn't bring myself to finish. Shame, since the format feeling more Star Trek-ish was good and I liked a lot of the designs. Titty witch Myuria and best girl Reimi are great, but where it fails - it fails hard. Welch and Lymle alone are enough of a reason to shelf the fame for good. Also, Meracle is for furfags.

So… honestly, I didn't find SO5 to be nearly as bad as previous games. It goes back to the simpler and more grounded story of SO1, has decent character design - even if the characters are flat, the combat is easily broken garbage - but that's modern SO for you. Crafting was heavily trunicated - but that was never an aspect I enjoyed in the games. Still, it makes the game objectively worse even if it makes it more playable for me.

Really a goddamned tragedt that SO keeps getting embarassingly bad sequels while a far superior series like Phantasy Star classic gets ignored in favor free-2-play loli-dressup super funtime online.

Segay said they are interested in reviving old IPs as they gain capital.
Maybe theres hope?

Also, speaking of PS. Reminder that Tri-Ace managed to fuck up a single-player version of PSO2 despite having tons of assets to use directly from the Vita port of PSO2 which largely go ignored.

I sure hope you're not shitting on my boy ashton, the #1 powerhouse nigga

Worse than the mp death was the hard point restrictions on allocating skills. Its been a while, bit i think the point allowance was like 20, with four slots. Some of the skills cost up to 15 points, and not just broken ones like Fayt's black hole. Thinking back, the entire system felt intentionally hamstrung for the sole purpose of making the characters seem deeper and more customizable than they actually are. Which is hilarious because its predecessor accidentally did the restrictions better, with a myriad of skills becoming worse as they leveled up

Gameplay was pretty fun, but the story and characters. I do not know how the blaze they manage it but it was both meme-tier cheesy and confusing (as in progression and sense) as fuck. There, this game in one paragraph.

I doubt it. Part of the charm was in the atmosphere and aesthetics which are pretty firmly rooted in their times and I doubt would catch on with modern audiences. PSO Ep I touched pretty nicely on PSII & PSIII, but that pretty much got shitcanned going into Ep II & BB. Even so, I don't know if I'd trust a sequel out of the hands of Rieko and Tohru at least being at the helm - and I'm not sure if Yoshida still works at Sega. Rieko does, but she's been relegated to mobile trash busywork when she's not making 7th Dragon games.

The original games wrapped up rather nicely anyhow, and I don't know where the series could really go from there. I know they planned on flipping the script on the Great Light and making it a villain (it was never good to begin with, they were just the victors of an alien civil war - and the Profound Darkness was only evil because they were the losers of that war and ended up going mad and being consumed with rage and a desire for revenge while in captivity behind the seal). Either way, Algol is meaningless now without a PD to seal away - so it's story is over.

None.

>tfw i hope they add a Myuria option

You underestimate just how shit 4 really is.
You'll be crawling back to those diapers after playing 4. Besides, 1 and 2 are the only good SO games anyway.

Or you know, you could just buy the original console that the game was released for?
It's not like Xbone has any games going for it outside its backwards compatibility.

I'm good, thanks

Shit, that bad?

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You take that back

I always look forward to chances to use this pic

Myuria option what? She shut Edge down because he doesn't know the first thing about women and she still wants to stay true to her dead husband.

Oh, yep, there it is.
I completely forgot how bad this scene was.

How so?

I enjoyed the combat in SO4.

Kay

Well the biggest issue is the lack of content, specifically in a lack of environmental diversity (the entire game pretty much takes place in one of two areas - crystaline desert or overgrown ruins), as well as a fairly minimum-effort level design which does not alter or take advantage of other game mechanics. For instance, levels are pretty much all just flat planes following a maze-like pattern. Sure there is debris laying about that you could jump over, or you could walk around, but jumping is never really needed in the course of the game. It's just there, to be there, because PSO2 has it.

As the levels don't really diversify, you don't see a huge difference in enemy spawns either. Largely, the same enemies you fight at the start of the game will be the same enemies you fight in every mission, until the end of the game. Some new ones may be added to the mix, and are uncommon spawns, but no areas have unique enemy spawns with unique abilities that require specialized tactics or gear to combat.

Also, there aren't really any boss fights except for the final story boss battle. You have larger enemies you have to fight monster-hunter style to take down and capture, but these aren't really bosses. There are only four variants that you'll be repeatedly fighting over and over again to obtain slightly more powerful versions of.

I can't really speak to the story, since I don't speak nip.

Being Tri-Ace, they brought back the terrible weapon crafting systems of PSU that absolutely nobody liked or wanted… which is why PSP/PSP2/PSP2i and PSO2 all drop weapons whole and complete. Of course, this has none of the more robust skill/talent learning systems of Star Ocean - but are just arbitrary obstacles to keep you grinding missions you're already sick of. Story-wise, I can understand why they went that route, but it doesn't have the gameplay to justify it.

Also, no online… I assume because Sega didn't want side-PS game that players could sink their time into without having a micro-transaction storefront being integrated.

PSNova is a lazy cheap cash-in. Poorly planned, missing key features and content to justify it's existence, and poorly executed. It really adds nothing to the PS franchise, doesn't capitalize on what PS already has to offer, and doesn't really add anything new of worth aside from a monster-capturing gimmick that's just there to serve as this game's version of a photon blast. Personally, I never use them. They're just a super-attack you don't even need.

Nope, because 5 is just trash all across the board. The only single redeemable thing in SO5 is Fiore. 5 is the worst SO game, period.

SO4 was at least entertaining and had good combat, the voice acting and model animation for cutscenes though, ooof.

Seriously whoever did her design should receive a fucking award.

agreed. I'm still depressed her design was used in such a lame game.

1 and 2 are the 2D age of Star Ocean and are baller, play 1 first if you decide to dive in, 2 builds on it and goes crazy and a bunch of characters from 1 are in 2 or are at least mentioned.

3's kinda silly as shit It goes full meta retard near the end and starts off with a serious tone but the gameplay is actually really good. A lot of people took issue with the story because after you leave the medieval planet and go to the Moon, shit starts getting thrown at you real quick and when you cross the threshold it makes your whole journey seem insignificant in scale and all the struggles you faced before amounted to nothing which I personally liked since that's a good theme when centered around space and the sheer scale of it.

Star Ocean 4 is like star ocean 3 in gameplay but with a bunch of shit changed around and it's pretty good, it's one of the games where the caster characters are actually really useful in combat instead of support due to how the special combo system works.

Star Ocean 5 can go suck a fucking dick holy shit, the presentation is retarded, and the combat is slow.

In short, play 1, 2, 3 and 4 in order, and never touch 5. It's a rollercoaster of a series and people are overblowing 3's twist.

Every time I think I can forget, someone goes and reminds me.

So is 4.

What the fuck?

SO 1, 2, & 3 are all already playable on the PC via emulation. Nobody wants SO5.

That pretty much just leaves SO4.

maybe they want to test the waters and if they get shekels they will port SO5

Huh. Thanks for telling me.

Please make this a Fiore thread, my dick thanks you in advance.

Emulation is not a legit way to play the game, not in developers' eyes anyway.
Why not just port all of those too?

Ha ha no. Because of the terrible attribute (elemental) system you usually need 2-6(!) copies of a weapon before it could be called "complete", otherwise it would do only fraction of its proper damage.
I hate it.

The NT weapon system is retarded, too. I'd rather blow 500K-1 million meseta on Dudu than have to hoard 10 star weapons for three months to get a weapon up to snuff.

Also she deserves a happy ending.
Only if Edge wasn't much of a pussy, he would have got with Myuria.
I only wish there was an option that'll make you choose Myuria instead of Reimi.

Edge doesn't deserve her and neither do you

for the gameplay? all of them, for the story? 1 and 2

she can stay true to her husband if she hooks up with girls, you know

yuri endings are the future

I'll never understand this.

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