[E3 2015] Star Ocean 5

[Pumpkin]

http://i.imgur.com/ZJfAxp8.png


So today we got some cool gameplay footage at E3 for the upcoming Star Ocean 5 Integrity and Faithlessness! I know I'm super pumped, and maybe some fans of the series would like to see them pull this off after what a lot of people consider a disappointing Star Ocean 4.


http://i.imgur.com/rcrQM4S.png


We got to take a look at some explorable towns, total RPG style. You even get your little party bros following you around!


http://i.imgur.com/qZgqG73.png


I think the seamless transition from exploration to battle seems really interesting, and I'm excited to see how well it's pulled off!


http://i.imgur.com/pqrl557.png


There also seems to be a party of six here, that's a good sized battle party! I can already see some characters down there I want to know more about!


http://i.imgur.com/fyNWycQ.png


And don't worry, there's still plenty of butt shots special attacks being shown off if that's what you're in to!

Full trailer can be watched here:
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So are you looking forward to the new Star Ocean? What did you think of the trailer? I'm pretty excited!

[Vyk]

I'm one of the people who loathed Star Ocean 4 due to edge trying to out-Tidus Tidus. But it was the only Star Ocean game I'd legitimately played. I dabbled in the first couple out of boredom. Rented one, emulated one. Never played the PS2 one. So I can't say the entire series has disappointed me. Just the 4th one. So I'd be willing to give it a shot. And I know it has a lot of fans, so I'm glad its happening at least for their sake

[Mirage]

6 characters in battle is way too much. I'm really not sure if that's a good idea.

[Vyk]

It worked for Baldur's Gate and its ilk :3

I presume there's at least one healer, probably more than one, with presumably competent AI to keep things up

[Mirage]

It worked for baldurs gate, sure. And 10 characters works for Disgaea. 200 works for starcraft!

[Ayen]

I have not played a single Star Ocean game.

Time to play catchup.

[Mirage]

Skip 4.

[Vyk]

Skip 4.
Agree

[Ayen]

Skip the first four games and go straight to 5?

Okay.

[Freya]

I've dabbled in most of them but I need to replay them.

[Forsaken Lover]

Only skip Till the End of Time, for it is truly a nexus of all that is bad about the human race.

Going to the Holocaust Memorial Museum is less soul crushing than SO3.

[Lawr]

Will the main character have a cliche name like the 3rd and the 4th?

[Vyk]

Weird how divisive 3 and 4 are

[Pumpkin]

The way they have the characters spaced out in battle at the bottom makes me think they could fit a 7th person

[Mirage]

Weird how divisive 3 and 4 are

One is a game, the other is a PG-13 hentai showcase

[TrollHunter]

Star Ocean has always been a (This word doesnt mean bad) franchise honestly, but its a mediocre franchise that I adore. Will probably play the smurf out of this and do all the postgame without being able to sincerely recommend the game to others, as usual.

[Sephiroth]

Skip the first four games and go straight to 5?

Okay.

4 is actually 0 and 5 is 2.5. Do not skip 4, you will miss something and I am more talking about the experience itself than the story.

[Jibril]

You'll miss the experience of witnessing the assassination of a franchise, yeah.

[Forsaken Lover]

Yeah it was terrible how the franchise named STAR OCEAN finally dealt with exploring outer of space instead of stranding you on Generic Fantasy Planet #4555512.

How dare they. I know I personally was very disappointed when I got an awesome space ship and the ability to go to different planets right away. I never wanted any of that in mah sci-fi JRPG.

[Shauna]

I thought they were both pretty fun games (I need to get round to SO1/2), and so am looking forward to SO5 when it inevitably hits.

[Forsaken Lover]

This is according to a poster on TVTropes:

So in the private presentation, Nakamura said they had to fight to get the witch girl in. They first had to get approval from the higher-ups because her design may be pushing the rating. They didn't want to change her because they thought Akiman's take on her was really unique and eye-catching.

It's a good sign, being able to out-risque SO4 is a remarkable feat.
R6eCYKtdTVI

[metagloria]

Star Ocean 3 is one of the best RPGs ever made, and has the best soundtrack bar none.

Star Ocean 4 is fine. There's nothing wrong with it at all. It's a pretty game with a good story and fun combat.

[Wolf Kanno]

Still need to play SO4 and get around to finishing SO1.

[Ayen]

Skip the first four games and go straight to 5?

Okay.

4 is actually 0 and 5 is 2.5. Do not skip 4, you will miss something and I am more talking about the experience itself than the story.

Wat? They went Devil May Cry with the numbers?

[Vyk]

They've already said where this takes place in the timeline?

[Sephiroth]

They've already said where this takes place in the timeline?

Yes, it is between 2 and 3.


And Devil May Cry did that when? I only played the new one and that is a Reboot.

[Wolf Kanno]

They've already said where this takes place in the timeline?

Yes, it is between 2 and 3.


And Devil May Cry did that when? I only played the new one and that is a Reboot.

The third game is a prequel to DMC1 and DMC4 takes place between DMC1 and 2. Oh game designers and their crazy use of numbers.

[Jibril]

Yeah it was terrible how the franchise named STAR OCEAN finally dealt with exploring outer of space instead of stranding you on Generic Fantasy Planet #4555512.

How dare they. I know I personally was very disappointed when I got an awesome space ship and the ability to go to different planets right away. I never wanted any of that in mah sci-fi JRPG.
That's not why it's bad.

It's bad because the combat did a complete 180 in design philosophy. It completely missed the point of all the changes they made in SO3. Fury, MP damage and anti-attack auras were there for the express purpose of discouraging button mashing. They wanted you to play smart. On the higher difficulties, you actually have to. Those elements were implemented as a reactionary measure to the way people played SO2, and they didn't want Star Ocean to be that kind of game. It's the same kind of thinking that went into what made Bloodborne good and different from the other Souls games. SO4 disregarded all of that and went for nostalgia.

They replaced all your defensive options with flashy gimmicks like blindside and rush combos. Blindside is a "defensive maneuver," except you only use it for offensive purposes, and it boils down to "that thing you use when you can't figure out how to hurt the boss." Rush mode and rush combos are an "I win" button. The BEAT system is pointless. The bonus gauge was somehow made even more convoluted than it was in SO3.

There was no reason to go back to 4 character parties (naturally, going to 6+ in SO5 is not a good idea). On paper, having 4 characters sounds good, but until they figure out how to either program competent AI or let you program it yourself, the more characters you have, the more bad AIs you have to fight with. Micromanaging is already difficult with 3 characters, it's going to be a complete mess with 6. The only thing that would make that work is a gambit system and a Dragon Age: Origins style tactical camera. It works in turn-based games because they're turn-based. Real-time action combat demands relatively small party sizes. Online co-op would be a good thing.

The item creation took 2 steps forward with being able to make exactly what you want, and then 5 steps back with how you could synthesize items onto other items to increase their base stats and still have free factor slots. You could do that forever (albeit abusing a programming oversight), until your armor gave you +9999 everything. No real reason to play the endgame if there's no such thing as specs/setups/builds. There's a reason Dark Souls has a community-dictated PvP level cap even though you can go to 999. If you don't abuse the oversight, there are at least 3 characters in the game who can permanently stunlock the entire screen.

It's cool that they brought back stuff like pickpocket and harvesting, but they neglected to implement the most interesting aspects of SO2's item creation. There was no using reverse side to buy inns and get free heals there for the entire game. You didn't have characters who had to craft items to learn their own battle skills, there was no publishing/writing. Then they took away one of the the biggest things in Star Ocean: optional characters. If the shallow battle system and broken synthesis didn't do it, now you really have no reason to play the game more than once.

But hey, I'm not here to make you apologize for liking something. I just have actual reasons for hating that game, ya dig?

[Sephiroth]

THis post does not look like you have played it for 600 hours. And I would play it another 600 before even touching a Souls gameagain, which I have tried for 30 minutes and never tried ever again.

[Randy]

Game looks really good, the environments especially.

But what the hell is with that creepy zoom thing they're doing. I thought I was having some kind of acid trip.

[black orb]

>>> SO5? WTF? SO is a super dead franchise. Not to mention the game looks lame.:luca:

[Mirage]

Is it?

[Jibril]

THis post does not look like you have played it for 600 hours. And I would play it another 600 before even touching a Souls gameagain, which I have tried for 30 minutes and never tried ever again.Compelling arguments. Tell me more.

[Spuuky]

SO4 was truly a wretched game. It has some good aspects (like most things do) but the story and characters were soooooooooo bad that basically overwhelmed anything good that might have been happening. And combat was pretty boring.

[Mirage]

THis post does not look like you have played it for 600 hours. And I would play it another 600 before even touching a Souls gameagain, which I have tried for 30 minutes and never tried ever again.

Which parts of it are wrong?

[Ayen]

THis post does not look like you have played it for 600 hours. And I would play it another 600 before even touching a Souls gameagain, which I have tried for 30 minutes and never tried ever again.

He needs 25 days to comment on something, but you only need 30 minutes?

[Sephiroth]

THis post does not look like you have played it for 600 hours. And I would play it another 600 before even touching a Souls gameagain, which I have tried for 30 minutes and never tried ever again.

He needs 25 days to comment on something, but you only need 30 minutes?

I need 30 minutes because I don't like it as its aspects don't interest me, not because I say "they added this and did it the wrong way and that's a fact which mathematically results in it being objectively bad". I do not claim the souls games to be bad and I do not say what they have done is wrong. It is just "wrong if they want my interest", it still works for many. That's the difference. He also does not need to play a game for 600 hours, it was merely to comment on how the game itself cannot be this bad if I am interested in those so-called badly placed aspects if I play it this long. If someone plays or watches something and says "not interested" that is perfectly fine. It also does not really help to always compare it to another Star Ocean and say "and that is why it is bad". People need to try out a new formula as well - and yes, it also is liked by players. Not everyone hates what Star Ocean 4 brought in. The only things I personally could complain about when it comes to the games are stuff like freezing, which happened to the best games for me and that doll-like stare of some characters in some situations. Also it does not really help commenting about blindsiding is justa defensive maneuver for offensive purposes (while it being mainly used for that might be true but at the same time greatly helps to avoid getting damage, the best way to defend yourself is by not getting damage in the first place) or BEAT is pointless when its flat-out not true as I also made good use of it. I needed to play the game enough for the platinum trophy and can say that you can definitely make good use of both. We can argue about necessity, but that's different.

[Shauna]

Actually people can enjoy games that others consider bad (or someone may not enjoy a game that others consider good) - it's having an opinion. You may find something acceptable, while to someone else it may be a deal breaker. Jibril explained why he felt it was bad. You can disagree, but he still personally considers it bad for those reasons. It doesn't mean you are wrong for enjoying it, and he is not wrong for not enjoying it.

Of course there is no need for everyone to preface and end every post with "this is my opinion" for this general idea to be the case.

[Sephiroth]

Which would result in differentiating between the opinion that something is bad and someone making a claim that something is bad, being very hard.

[Pumpkin]

I loved SO4 so I am very excite about the new one :excited: I've also played 2 and 3 and I wasn't as big of a fan, but I didn't dislike them either.

[Mirage]

Which would result in differentiating between the opinion that something is bad and someone making a claim that something is bad, being very hard.
So which parts of jibril's post do you think are incorrect? Why do you think those points he brought up improve the gameplay rather than make it worse?

[Shauna]

Easy fix for that: if someone is claiming that a piece of media is bad, you will find that their opinion plays heavily into whether they think it is bad or not.

[Sephiroth]

Which would result in differentiating between the opinion that something is bad and someone making a claim that something is bad, being very hard.
So which parts of jibril's post do you think are incorrect? Why do you think those points he brought up improve the gameplay rather than make it worse?

The problem is the line "that's not why it is bad" which introduces, in my eyes, a post that is there to prove something and not explain how an opinion was formed. Also I already explained the part with the blindsides and the BEAT system. I have played the game for a long time. I forgot how blindsides worked for a long time, which both made attacking harder (here the offensive part" but also took away the option of easily dodging any attacks. Jibril's post made it sound like a one-sided thing, which is not correct. Is it mainly used for offensive purposes? Yes. But the defensive part is there in the first place. You just happen to avoid getting damage if you do it right. When it comes to the BEAT, I would really like to know how someone could think the system was worthless or useless or anything like that. I greatly benefitted from it, so worthless? No. I also see no reason to insist on the Welch Synthesis being so much better, as there are already so many options to make broken items in the first place, like the "Super-Tri-Emblum". If you do it right you pretty much decide anyway what things you want to have in those items. The only reason for wanting "more free slots" could only be that you still want to add something else. But Star Ocean The Last Hope gives you enough chances to add the stuff you want, if you just do it right. That one might be a bit "worse", but I don't know if that is even a proper word for it, because, as mentioned, you can easily make your broken characters that wipe the floor with the Ethereal Queen, even on Chaos Difficulty. Even the AI thing with four characters seems to be very weird. I have had no problems with them most of the time, so I would consider that being more of a settings thing.

[setsua25]

If this is real, i cant wait for this to come out. I love the star ocean series ever since i played the second star ocean when i was in middle school. I sadly have not played the first.

I did not hear anything about star ocean5 in the news feed about games at E3.

[Mirage]

What do you mean by "if"? It was officially announced by Square Enix this year.

[setsua25]

Ya pretty much

[fat_moogle]

Star Ocean 4 is the only SO game that I've played and I didn't like it. I didn't put that much time in to it, just didn't grab me at all. I don't remember anything about what little story I encountered and the characters were just eh. It's interesting reading through the comments here as it seems that 4 is the most disliked, so maybe I tried getting in to the series at the wrong time. Star Ocean 5 looks great though! The gameplay looks much more interesting, and the environments are stunning.