See the general consensus is that Tri-ace's only problem is their horrible cutscenes/characters/stories and that the gameplay is great. Maybe I am crazy but I don't think their gameplay has ever been, or currently is, particularly good.
I'm on the 3rd planet in SO4 and not even talking about the cutscenes, here is everything that I dislike/hate/pisses_me_off:
-Big empty overworld connectors between towns/dungeons where you go X DASH X DASH X DASH X DASH X DASH for minutes. It reminds me of why I hate Oblivion and makes me hate all the time between towns and dungeons.
-Long windy dungeon designs where you never have any idea how far you are into the dungeon or the general flow of the dungeon. It's basically "try this way! try that way! try that way!" until you've gone everywhere and have some idea of how the dungeon is constructed so now you can actually proceed. As opposed to other rpgs like Vesperia where you are continually making progress through the dungeons and never feel lost. So basically I don't really enjoy when I'm in dungeons either.
-The dungeon map is non-scrollable; go fuck yourselves Tri-ace. It'd be nice to know BEFORE going down a 3 minute dashing path that it's a dead end.
-Too many encounters. You know something is wrong when at 8 hours in I've had far more encounters than I have in a Tales game at 8 hours in. The reason besides just having enemies every 10 feet in dungeons is that YOU CAN'T DODGE MOST OF THE ENEMIES. What is the point of visible enemies if they put them in these narrow hallways where you have to hit them everytime. Combined with the respawning everytime you leave the room, it basically becomes more frequent than random battles in areas that you go back and forth a lot.
-BACKTRACKING. Fuck, not only do I have to run back and forth across long boring overworld sections, but I have to run all the way out of long ass dungeons after killing the boss. THIS IS THE FUTURE. GIVE ME A TELEPORT TO SHIP OPTION.
-In shops when buying you can't see how many of the item you already have in your possession. AM I MISSING SOMETHING HERE?!? Because this is something that is like IN EVERY OTHER RPG. I usually buy like 5 of every material in games so I always have it on me if I need it. Now I see like 20 materials and I have no idea if I already have 5 or so of any of them, so either I check my inventory 1 by 1 (waste of time) or I just buy 5 of everything in the shop regardless (waste of money).
-Item Creation quests are TERRIBLE solely because you can't just IC from your menu. Having to get the quest, then get the materials, then RUN BACK TO YOUR SHIP WHICH MIGHT BE 10-15 MINUTES FROM TOWN, make the item, then go all the way back just to get like 900fol on something that cost you 300fol in materials is a huge waste of fucking time. If you could just pop open a portable IC system while in the shop and do it right there it'd actually be worth doing! Likewise, when it comes down to making a weapon/armor back at my ship when I'm 10 mins away from my ship or spending money and just buying similar stuff in the shop I'm at right now, I'll just spend the money because again...waste of fucking time.
-Further IC quest stuff. Unless you have a guide book or write things on a piece of paper, sitting around trying to buy all the right ingredients for multiple requests requires like a dozen back and forth openings of the menu. There had to have been an easier way to do all this without making it a complete hassle.
-When you buy equipment all you can see is GOOD or BAD. You can't see the stat differences. WHY IS THIS GAME'S SHOP INTERFACE STILL IN THE DARK AGES!?!?! Likewise, when you make armor/weapons in IC you can't see the stat changes. So yeah, I don't really enjoy being in towns much either.
-BATTLE SYSTEM
--Targetting is sooooooo fucked. Because you can't manually change who you are targetting (other than RUN CLOSE TO THEM AND POINT AT THEM), the blindside system gets glitchy A LOT. You can have a guy charging at you 5 feet away and you want to blindside jump to his side, but when you start charging your blindside it targets some dude HALFWAY ACROSS THE MAP who is looking at you and you either blindside him by running halfway across the map in slow-motion, or he's so far away that your blindside doesn't complete and meanly the guy who was 5 feet away from you is now in your face.
--Targetting is sooooooo fucked part 2. On bosses that have weakpoints because you can't TARGET their weakspot unless you are right in front of it, most of the time you can't blindside attack the weakpoint. If you blindside attack the boss you'll just run in slow-mo to the bosses's back and slash. This is not great when the weakpoint IS NOT IN THE BACK. This is especially fun when you've built up your BEAT S rank so you do GREAT damage off blindsides but now this is all totally useless on the boss (aka. the only enemy you would care about doing amazing damage on) because you can't blindside attack his weakspot unless you get lucky.
--The camera sucks. Especially when you come off a blindside attack on an enemy and you can't see anything at all that is going on in the rest of the map. Hell I just hop back instinctively once I finish a blindside attack since I never know what could be coming.
--Very limited movelist. I checked the JPN wiki and saw that you get like 8 moves total for THE ENTIRE GAME. wtfffffff. I complain that Tales doesn't have enough moves when you only get about 10-15, so yeah I don't like this. It means every battle is doing a blindside -> the same combo for 5 hours on repeat until you get a new move and then it's blindside -> same combo for 5 hours until you get a new move, etc...
--The support skills seem even worse. Unless the faq is just not up to date, it seemed like characters only get like 2-3 battle skills for the entire game and by the 3rd world I already have 2 of them. What happened to Tri-ace games having dozens of skills to give you lots of variety in your character building!?!? It's like they went back to SO1 content level.
That doesn't even get into the graphic, writing nitpicks I have. A lot of those gameplay complaints are nitpicks but they are things that OTHER RPGS DO, which means when Tri-ace isn't doing them they are doing a shitty job at making their gameplay up to par with AAA jrpg developers.
On the plus side, I like item creation.
I know there are a lot of Star Ocean fans, so they must like all this. I've never understood these people though. I played through SO2 and thought it was awful. I played through SO3 and thought it was godawful. And so far I think SO4 is pretty junky. Somehow I still find the games compelling enough to play through. I guess one day I'll sit down and play SO1 psp and hate that too.
