Smack talking SO2? Bebpo, I don't know if we can be friends anymore...
I actually really liked 4, but the biggest issues were with the IQ in battles and the disk swapping/crashes on 360. I didn't mind Lymle even, thought the hate she got was a bit too much. Wish we got a physical release of the remaster.
SO1 & 2 are fine rpgs for their time (and gameplay-wise 3 is fine but broken, 4 is eh, ok I guess, but the site system gets old). But SO1/2 are long, long ago, and the series has sucked ever since.
The thing is it's not like Tri-ace has terrible writers and can't write a good story/characters. Valkyrie Profile is great, Resonance of Fate is silly fun, even the recent Exist Archives has a good cast and decent plot. It's just the Star Ocean games continually have absolutely terrible writing and characters. It's like they make the SO franchise to troll gamers. I mean hell in SO3
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The entire world is just a videogame!
Maybe that's it and SO games are troll games, idk. I bought SO5 on release but still haven't played it because I just don't care about SO when there's better rpgs to play.