Star Ocean: First Departure R – A Slightly Tedious Journey

Back when Star Ocean: The Divine Force was announced, I said I intended to play Star Ocean: First Departure R before it came out.

And you know what? I actually did!

In the midst of all the romance games I played in February, I also played through Star Ocean: First Departure R, which is a remaster of the remake of the first Star Ocean game (whew).

The story starts out with a group of friends in a small village who encounter a terrible disease that is turning people to stone. While searching for a cure, they run into two people from a starship and learn that, their planet is part of a universe with advanced technology and has been caught up in a war with an alien race.

Now, you might expect this to turn into a spacefaring adventure. That doesn’t exactly happen. The space opera setting is there, but they soon learn that the only way to find a cure is to go back in time to their own planet’s past.

As a result, the majority of the game has a medieval fantasy setting despite the larger context.

It is an action JRPG, and the combat is… fine. More interesting is the skill system, which lets you put points into a lot (and I mean a lot) of skills to increase stats, gain combat bonuses, and learn special abilities.

Unfortunately, this eventually resulted in First Departure R feeling tedious to me. Some of the abilities are great, such as one that lets you change the encounter rate or one that lets you temporarily lower your stats in exchange for more exp. But a significant number are related to the game’s numerous crafting skills. Crafting requires materials and often special crafting items as well. Attempting it uses up those items, but there’s a chance of failure even if the skill is at max level.

You can influence the success rate further, however, by playing music. Music is tied to other skills. You’ll need instruments, and you’ll also need to have music written. These skills also require items and have their own success rates.

I can see how the system sounds neat, and I’m sure there are people out there who adore it. I am not one of those people. Using items with skills to help me use different items with different skills to craft something and not even be guaranteed success drove me crazy. After a certain point, the game felt like it expected me to be crafting better gear, too.

It’s a shame, because there are other aspects of the game that I really liked. The story is nothing special, but there are multiple party members to recruit based on different conditions, which means I only got to see some of the characters and their stories.

Character interactions also come into play through “Private Actions,” a system which lets you split up in town and witness special character events.

(Unfortunately, there is no airship, so the only way to backtrack is to use ships to travel between port towns and walk across the world map for everything else. I like backtracking, but that was annoying enough that I didn’t backtrack to check for new Private Actions as much as I would have liked to.)

In short, Star Ocean: First Departure R left me with mixed feelings. It has some aspects I loved, but also some that annoyed me enough that I was just ready to be done with it. As you might guess, that presents me with an important question… will I enjoy other Star Ocean games?

What are your thoughts on First Departure R and the Star Ocean series?

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