Star Ocean 4 vs Final Fantasy XIII

[Forsaken Lover]

o when i got my 360 the first game I got for it was FF 13. When I got my PS3 the first game I got for it was Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

Both long-running series from two companies that now are one. Both highly contested entries in those series as well.

So...which did you like better and why?

Which soundtrack did you like more?

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[Mirage]

Both games are bad, but the soundtrack of 13 is actually good.

[Forsaken Lover]

Are you saying SO4 doesn't have a good soundtrack?

This song is probably my favorite in the whole soundtrack. It's so haunting and unique for a boss battle theme. XIII's boss themes are very typical and uninspired by comparison.
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Some other great tracks:

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[Ayen]

I only played Final Fantasy XIII.

Star Ocean by default.

[NeoCracker]

I don't think SO4 was bad, it was fairly enjoyable. FF XIII is just bad.

[Jibril]

SO4 systematically destroyed everything that was great about that series.

FFXIII was a game with a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas and no one on the dev team knew which was which.

I guess I like XIII better.

[Minami]

To be honest i loved both games, but that doesn't seem like a common occurrence <.<

[Mirage]

Are you saying SO4 doesn't have a good soundtrack?

This song is probably my favorite in the whole soundtrack. It's so haunting and unique for a boss battle theme. XIII's boss themes are very typical and uninspired by comparison.
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Some other great tracks:

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SO4 had some good tracks, but most of them are pretty dull compared to other sakuraba music. I wasn't very impressed. An "epic" orchestral version of for achieve certainly doesn't cut it, and generic choral chanting with a couple of instruments doesn't either. Brilliant Rose is the only one out of the ones you linked to that I actually enjoy listening to.

FF13 however, delivers good tracks like there was a conveyor belt in place. FF13-2, for all it flaws, added even more good tracks to the mix, although it also reused a lot of the best FF13 tracks.

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[Forsaken Lover]

Of those songs, I remember Will To Fight and Lake Bresha, and I really liked Atonement, but perhapst his is a fault of FFXIII having unbelievably bad level designs but most of those area songs had no impact on me. They're pleasant to listen to certainly but that's not the point of music like that. It's supposed to help immerse you in the world; to instill in you the atmosphere of the situation and affect your emotions.

Contrast with two of my favorite pieces in SO4.

Silk Road in the Sky I

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This is the track for when you first arrive oN Aeos, the first human site of human exploration to new world. it feels appropriately beautiful and mysterious - this is a new chapter in the history of our race.

Contrast with

Silk Road in the Sky II

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The sort of "nature-y" sound is gone, to be be replaced with this odd mechanical tune. It's imposing and it perfectly sets the tone for the game finally kicking into high gear with the true enemy revealing itself.

I'll be honest - the only locations I remember in XIII are the Sunleth Waterscape, the Palamecia, Pulse, Eden and Orphan's Cradle. Of those five, I only liked Eden. I would have liked the Palamecia but it went on too long. Anyway, point is, while I can remember some great tunes from XIII, I don't remember them very vividly because the rest of the game is so hazy and...nothing in my memory.

[Spuuky]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.

Star Ocean 4 was passable enough, but for Lym's voice is enough reason not to pick it. Also, awful character design.

[Mirage]

Terribad character design.

[Minami]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.

Star Ocean 4 was passable enough, but for Lym's voice is enough reason not to pick it. Also, awful character design.

I liked the character design but have to agree on Lym's voice. I love cute things but that was too much even for me

[Mirage]

As far as character designs go...

OK tier:
Bacchus, Reimi, maybe Lym, not sure.

trout tier:
Everyone else

An interesting thing to note in this game is that the number of female party members is actually greater than the number of male party members. You don't see that very often.

[Forsaken Lover]

Myuria gets her own tier above everyone else because she was awesome.

Jiggle jiggle.

Seriously though, in regards to voice-acting, I give SO4 a C+ or maybe a B-. For your main party you got Sasha from InFamous as Myuria (win), Roy Mustang as Bacchus (WIN), the dude who played Edge was okay, Sarah's voice fit her character perfectly, poor Gohan was trying too hard as Arumat but Arumat is literally defined by trying too hard so what can you do and I never had a problem with Lymle. Her voice was jarring but Lym's entire personality is supposed to be jarring. Honestly, I think I came to regard Faize's voice as the best. He really had to step it up for the later stages of the game to have the right impact and he succeeded.


Now, for everybody else, there were some amazingly bad VAs and it's not even those voice-actor's faults. Poor Michael McConnohie (Kenny, Lym's grandpa, the evil priest oN Roak and a few others) had it the roughest but Gohan was also Crowe in addition to Arumat and Laura Bailey pulled double main character duty as Reimi and Welch. Now SO4 Welch sends even ME screaming to the hills so God knows what she did to you poor souls who didn't like the game But I can't say if this is all Ms. Bailey's fault because SO4 Welch is just....yeah. You need to see it to believe it.

Not that she as always so unbearable. I genuinely found this cutscene amusing.
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Now this cutscene, along with a few others (like Myuria asking wearily about Welch "is this woman....having an episode?") demonstrates to me that the creators of the game at least were self-aware. They had enough sense of mind to realize the inherent....otaku-ness of the game and they even ribbed on their target demographic in that cutscene. I like that. i like when a work of fiction doesn't try to be more than it is. SO4 is just a silly game and it knows it.

[Sephiroth]

To be honest i loved both games, but that doesn't seem like a common occurrence <.<

I agree with you about the loving part. I am over 450 hours in Star Ocean now, about 100 hours left to Platinum and I love it except how long and ridiculous some sidequests are. Final Fantasy XIII with its normal story and characters together with Star Oceans free roaming and sidequests would have been perfect, just not that exaggerated with it sidequests. My favourites in both are Lightning, Snow and Fang as well as Mattie, Myurie and Merry.

Myuria: "Maybe I should let you comfort me?"

So I love the whole Final Fantasy XIII Saga and Star Ocean. Final Fantasy XIII's Saga is my third favourite in general and only surpassed by the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Nier Gestalt.

[Del Murder]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.
Yeah pretty much. I didn't hate FFXIII, but it certainly didn't live up to the high FF bar we've set over the years.

Never played a SO game but I voted for FFXIII because I did like it. :pollbert:

[Ayen]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.

Can't see it. I didn't have much expectations going in having been disappointed with X-2 and XII going in and I still thought it was a bad game even if you take the name Final Fantasy away from it. Honestly don't see what people found enjoyable about it.

[Forsaken Lover]

Even I liked a few things about XIII. The main party was decently strong, each having their own personal and understandable motivation to be there. A big part of what kept me going was waiting for the inevitable Snow/Hope confrontation as they were my favorite members of the party. I felt that whole subplot was expertly done.

Sazh and Vanille also had a wonderful dynamic and I did not see their subplot's ending coming at all. It was also adequately emotional.

The problem lay in Lightning, whom I hated, Fang, who i didn't care about.

Then of coure you end up on Pulse and the character development just dies and now it's all about "the Plot." God save us from FFXIII's plot.

The very beginning of the game is also very frustrating as they literally bombard you with terms like Cocoon, PSICOM, Sanctum, fal'Cie, etc.. I didn't get any of this until I looked it all up and by tht time I was scratching my head in irritation. This is bad storytelling. Contrast witH FFVII, where Barret is kind enough to explain what the hell is going on here with the Mako Reactor and what Mako is.

FFVII has a very fast paced beginning just like XIII but the former was well-done while the latter was not.

SO4's beginning is also nice enough to give you some exposition to explain everything that's going on. Exposition might be a bit of a lazy tool but it's still better than having to search datalogs or get on the internet and ask people.

Dare I say it, SO4 had a better articulated story.

[Mercen-X]

I don't have these systems :(

[Jibril]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.
Could you describe exactly what you mean by this?

[Pumpkin]

I liked both games.

[Shauna]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.
Could you describe exactly what you mean by this?

I think basically what it is, is that as fans of the Final Fantasy series we hold the games to a certain expectation. High expectations, whether you've been disillusioned with the series before or not. FF13 failed to meet expectations of a game within the Final Fantasy series. However, if you were to strip it of the Final Fantasy title, removing those expectations, you would find it to be more bearable as a game.

I believe that is the general message that is trying to be put across. Feel free to correct if I am wrong. :}

[Ayen]

Even I liked a few things about XIII.

It had... nice graphics?

I'm not a hard guy to impress, I like a lot of things that most people think sucked so it's not like I'm picky. XIII's problem is it feels like it's trying to be an epic but lacks any real substance, even the characters I liked felt generally lacking and it didn't get me invested like a lot of other games in the same genre. So I agree that the problem with it mainly comes from the writing.

[Spuuky]

Final Fantasy XIII is actually a pretty good game - it just isn't a good Final Fantasy game.
Could you describe exactly what you mean by this?

I think basically what it is, is that as fans of the Final Fantasy series we hold the games to a certain expectation. High expectations, whether you've been disillusioned with the series before or not. FF13 failed to meet expectations of a game within the Final Fantasy series. However, if you were to strip it of the Final Fantasy title, removing those expectations, you would find it to be more bearable as a game.

I believe that is the general message that is trying to be put across. Feel free to correct if I am wrong. :}I actually meant two different things. That's one of them - that expectations/price/etc can totally change the way a game is perceived. For instance, if it was a $20 indie game with no previous IP you'd be utterly blown away by it.

The other thing is that brands do mean something, and I don't think FFXIII played into the brand in the right way. It takes the traditions of Final Fantasy I care about the least and blows them up, and takes the ones I care about the most and completely diminishes them. To use a somewhat old example now - World of Warcraft is a pretty good game (for the point of this example, don't argue that); but it's a TERRIBLE "Warcraft" game. The part it keeps is the lore, the part it loses is the entire game design, in that case.

[Mirage]

Even I liked a few things about XIII.

It had... nice graphics?

They weren't even that impressive. I mean sure, the videos look fancy, but there are lots of graphical details that really were behind what other AAA games delivered.

[Forsaken Lover]

I forgot to talk about the awesome final dungeon in SO4.

Mirage even conceded he liked Brilliant Rose and in addition to this awesome piece of music, the Palace of Creation is beautiful and interesting. It's a very different design for a final dungeon, with the fast synth music and bright colors. Nox Obscuros, with its subdued music and its black, dead appearance is much more what you'd expect of the evil villain's lair. Coming off that, the Palace seems even grander and more lively. The "time is stopped" parts and the little planetoids you travel across in particular stick out in my memory. That and how confusing it is to navigate the place.

But the Palace of Creation is an infinitely better final dungeon than Orphan's Cradle. I've never seen a duller final dungeon than XIII's.

[black orb]

>>> Both are mediocre games, but SO4 battles are fun and FF13 battles are a total bore. Star Ocean wins.:luca:

[Mirage]

SO4 battles are actually not very exciting.

[black orb]

>>> Arumat made them exciting. ..:luca:

[Forsaken Lover]

Reimi made the battles more exciting.

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