Star Ocean 4 sounds and looks so awesome

[Kestastrophe]

I always noticed them in SO1, and I think i tried it once, but I just ignored it unless it was required to progress the story. To call it a "system" though is giving it too much credit, imo. This is no different than a storytelling method in many other games.

[WrikaWrek]

Story sucks major ass = no sale.

This ain't no 7 hour affair, i don't care about 12h+ games that have shit stories.

[TVC15]

Never played SO3, what was disappointing about it?

What made SO3 blow ass for me was the dialogue.  Not the content, but the way it plays out.  The VA is abysmal.  You can hit the X button or whatever to cut off the voice. . .but the characters continue pantomiming the dialogue, and you can't skip that.  So even if you hit X to skip the voices, you still have to wait 5 goddamn seconds in silence as duders continue to gesture silently, even though you read the text box in like 1 second.  It sounds like a minor nitpick, but those 5 seconds of pantomiming add up when you are in a dialogue that is more than a few windows long.

Shit game.  Hope this one is better (I will buy it), but IU makes me think this will be an even crappier gen for Tri-Ace than last gen.

[Bebpo]

I'm ok with terrible stories (like most games) if the cutscene direction is good.  That means the cutscenes are concise and entertaining, hopefully with at least a little style.

When they are 6-8 mins of characters just STANDING THERE WITH MONOLOGUES like Tri-ace direction and Trusty Bell it makes me want strangle the fucking writers.  I still remember in SO3 there is a cutscene with Maria talking about her parents or something and it went ON AND ON AND ON and I wanted to claw out my eyes.

Real talk:  Cutscene director should be like the 2nd most important job at a developer after game designer.  He/She is the person who makes players want to HIT START TO SKIP or actually watch your story regardless of the intellectual merit behind it.

[Great Rumbler]

what's the private action system? Is that when you press a single button outside a town and some worthless dialogue exchange, followed by your party leaving you?

Outside of a town, you press a button. You're party then enters the town and splits up. You wander around town looking for them and have some kind of dialogue exchange with each character, sometimes with choices you can make that affect which ending you get.

[Bebpo]

For example Matsuno's dude is GOOD.  FFXII's story might be distinguished mentally-challenged but the cutscenes, especially with the judges, glue you to your seat.  Vagrant Story's cutscenes do the same.  I think that dude is doing FFXIII Versus and even by the trailers it shows that you're going to ENJOY those non-playable bits.

[BlueTsunami]

The comic relief looks to be better this time around and I agree about TVC's complaint about the uselessness of skipping text. My replaythrough of SO3 made this very apparent.

[WrikaWrek]

For example Matsuno's dude is GOOD.  FFXII's story might be distinguished mentally-challenged but the cutscenes, especially with the judges, glue you to your seat.  Vagrant Story's cutscenes do the same.  I think that dude is doing FFXIII Versus and even by the trailers it shows that you're going to ENJOY those non-playable bits.

The cut scenes i've seen so far from Versus were nothing special. And the action was stupidly cheesy.

In any case, ugh, a story might be crap, but if it's told in a cool way or whatever, yes it makes up for a lot. But If the story is garbage, the art direction is garbage, and the characters are crap, there's no amount of cool factor that can save it.

[WrikaWrek]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/949/949606p1.html

Edge Maverick







Sex: Male
Age: 20

................................
................................
................................

 

[Great Rumbler]

First picture looks okay, but in the second he looks like a fifteen year old girl. The expression on his face certainly doesn't help.

But anyway, let's forget about that and focus more on this:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

What the heck is going on here?!

[close]

[BlueTsunami]

That picture is a buildup to the other picture where Edge has the slap mark on his face

[Great Rumbler]

Haha, I looked at that picture several times and never noticed the slap mark until you mentioned it. 

[BlueTsunami]

February 2, 2009 - Xbox 360 is usually left out of the weekly top ten lists from Japan, but that's definitely going to change later on this month. Star Ocean: The Last Hope hits Japan on the 19th just a few days before our release, and we're pretty sure gamers over there are going to eat it up like natto mixed with soy sauce.

How can we be so sure? We're actually going by a little bit of anecdotal evidence that evidenced itself at a weekend demo event. Square Enix gave Star Ocean 4 its first retail showcase on Saturday at the giant Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo's electronics capital of Akihabra. Despite the rain, the wait to get onto the eight available kiosks was about two-and-a-half hours. Square Enix reps had to hand out tickets to control the lines.

Since we haven't had a sampling of the game since the Tokyo Game Show, we decided to stick around for a short play test.

The demo build of the game, presumably based off the final retail copy, started players off at a different save point from the Tokyo Game Show demo. Our character levels were all at 45 and up, and the in-game clock listed a 22 hour play time. Presumably, we were starting towards the latter part of the game.

While the save file started us off outside of a shrine on the planet of Rokutoroppu (please note that this is not an official English translation of the planet's name), there was no requirement that we actually venture into the shrine. Instead, we decided to explore the outerworld.

And what a big outerworld it is. This planet, whatever its real English name may be, is huge, spanning mountains, forests and beaches. Midway through our attempt to trek from one end of the main map to the other, we came upon a small town with stone buildings and just a few residents.

Based off this little snippet, it's pretty clear that Star Ocean 4 will offer players plenty of freedom to explore its multiple planets. There are few hurdles, with only a couple of loading points here and there, and even then the load times are pretty much non existent. Exploration shoud be one of Star Ocean 4's charms.

Signs promoting the demo event, posted outside the store entrance.
For those who occasionally get the urge to skip out on battle and just run around freely, the game seems to have you taken care of. You have access to a dash move which lets you dash past enemies in short bursts. We were able to avoid any enemy we encountered.

Not that there's anything wrong with the Star Ocean 4 battle system that would make us necessarily want to avoid battle. The game's battle system offers plenty of variety thanks in large part to a flexible party system. The demo had Edge, Reimi, Faize, Lymle, Backus, Meracle, and Myuria all as playable characters. While you can only have four in your party, you're free to swap them in and out even during the heart of battle. This should allow you to customize your party to match the battle at hand.

There's quite a bit to the battle system, including new system with such only-in-Japan names like "Beat System," "Site-In/Site-Out System" and "Rush System." It's tough to get used to these systems in only fifteen minutes of play time, so you'll have to hold off for our upcoming review of the final version.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/950/950055p1.html

OM NOM NOM

[Great Rumbler]

YESSSSSS

[Van Cruncheon]

First picture looks okay, but in the second he looks like a fifteen year old girl. The expression on his face certainly doesn't help.

But anyway, let's forget about that and focus more on this:

(Image removed from quote.)

hwy, it's judith's (from tov) sister! jesus do they have one guy in all of japan that does the character designs for rpgs

[Bebpo]

hwy, it's judith's (from tov) sister! jesus do they have one guy in all of japan that does the character designs for rpgs

For the generic ones that aren't worth hiring a real character designer for...yes.

[recursivelyenumerable]

For example Matsuno's dude is GOOD.  FFXII's story might be distinguished mentally-challenged but the cutscenes, especially with the judges, glue you to your seat.  Vagrant Story's cutscenes do the same.  I think that dude is doing FFXIII Versus and even by the trailers it shows that you're going to ENJOY those non-playable bits.

yes, he (Jun Akiyama) is doing Versus

[Error2k4]

February 2, 2009 - Xbox 360 is usually left out of the weekly top ten lists from Japan, but that's definitely going to change later on this month. Star Ocean: The Last Hope hits Japan on the 19th just a few days before our release, and we're pretty sure gamers over there are going to eat it up like natto mixed with soy sauce.

How can we be so sure? We're actually going by a little bit of anecdotal evidence that evidenced itself at a weekend demo event. Square Enix gave Star Ocean 4 its first retail showcase on Saturday at the giant Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo's electronics capital of Akihabra. Despite the rain, the wait to get onto the eight available kiosks was about two-and-a-half hours. Square Enix reps had to hand out tickets to control the lines.

Since we haven't had a sampling of the game since the Tokyo Game Show, we decided to stick around for a short play test.

The demo build of the game, presumably based off the final retail copy, started players off at a different save point from the Tokyo Game Show demo. Our character levels were all at 45 and up, and the in-game clock listed a 22 hour play time. Presumably, we were starting towards the latter part of the game.

While the save file started us off outside of a shrine on the planet of Rokutoroppu (please note that this is not an official English translation of the planet's name), there was no requirement that we actually venture into the shrine. Instead, we decided to explore the outerworld.

And what a big outerworld it is. This planet, whatever its real English name may be, is huge, spanning mountains, forests and beaches. Midway through our attempt to trek from one end of the main map to the other, we came upon a small town with stone buildings and just a few residents.

Based off this little snippet, it's pretty clear that Star Ocean 4 will offer players plenty of freedom to explore its multiple planets. There are few hurdles, with only a couple of loading points here and there, and even then the load times are pretty much non existent. Exploration shoud be one of Star Ocean 4's charms.

Signs promoting the demo event, posted outside the store entrance.
For those who occasionally get the urge to skip out on battle and just run around freely, the game seems to have you taken care of. You have access to a dash move which lets you dash past enemies in short bursts. We were able to avoid any enemy we encountered.

Not that there's anything wrong with the Star Ocean 4 battle system that would make us necessarily want to avoid battle. The game's battle system offers plenty of variety thanks in large part to a flexible party system. The demo had Edge, Reimi, Faize, Lymle, Backus, Meracle, and Myuria all as playable characters. While you can only have four in your party, you're free to swap them in and out even during the heart of battle. This should allow you to customize your party to match the battle at hand.

There's quite a bit to the battle system, including new system with such only-in-Japan names like "Beat System," "Site-In/Site-Out System" and "Rush System." It's tough to get used to these systems in only fifteen minutes of play time, so you'll have to hold off for our upcoming review of the final version.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/950/950055p1.html

OM NOM NOM

I think it was also confirmed that Bacchus gets a skill that makes him invisible, so you can slip past enemies without being seen.

Also...

New playable character.

[GilloD]

My wife is going to Peru for 3 weeks in March. Time for me to use my Japafag Super Powers@

[demi]

I will be relying on the resident JRPG experts for impressions of the game. I want to play a good JRPG and you guys have the best tastes. Real talk.

I'm sort of enjoying Tales of Vesperia but it's a bit too animu for my tastes and going back to Fallout 3 has unfortunately made ToV feel shitty in comparison. Don't get me wrong, its a very solid JRPG and can be pretty fun, but I'm looking for something a little more interesting.

[demi]

Sounds just like a regular JRPG overworld to me - like Vesperia's

[demi]

Well I'll have to see it in action. I'm copping it on the quickness.

[Jansen]

(Image removed from quote.)

DAY ONE

[Error2k4]

http://video.yahoo.com/network/100000031?v=4442754&l=3470586

6 minutes gameplay vid. IGN for some reason decided to turn off the BGM.