While the game takes place in the future, much of it occurs in medieval settings. Whether the area you find yourself in resembles the future or the past, overworld exploration has its charm. I like uncovering the HUD's map over time, rather than having it presented fully to me right away. This gives you at least some sense of breaking new ground. The camera movement really should've used the right analog rather than the shoulder buttons, but it makes you peek around to find chests and the like. Enemies exist topside, so there are no random encounters. While you can usually run past them, you're advised to battle it out to get experience.
Speaking of experience, Star Ocean has a different slant on leveling up. Instead of immediately bumping up your stats, it gives you points which you can decide to allocate for better attack, more hit points, and the like. You've seen this system in more action-oriented RPGs like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, but it works relatively well in this capacity, too.
Everyone always looks so happy, like little China dolls.
Moments of Weakness
Graphically, Star Ocean is treading water in the kiddy pool. The main characters have some detail, but the environments and the common folk don't stand out from the rest of the RPG crowd. Sometimes I caught myself thinking I was watching an anime, but these moments were few and far between. It's eerie how a lot of the characters lack emotion. Sophia, Fayt's "girlfriend," for example, still seems to be smiling as the starship she is residing in starts to go down in flames. Maybe they're piping in Prozac through the air vents.
One of my biggest gripes with Star Ocean is its lack of save points. I encountered a few very frustrating occasions where I wanted to stop playing, but had to sit through another half-hour of cutscenes before I could get to a save point, or times when I would save in a city, work through it, watch a cutscene, then die in the field and have to start from scratch. Either the game should've given you more places to save, or just made saving something you could do at any time. I don't understand what developers hope to accomplish by making it a chore to save your quest, but whatever it is, they missed the boat. To me, it just seems like you're forced to play till the end of time.
RPG fans should have no problem gettin their recommended daily allowance of role-playing nutrients from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. You can't help but have fun with the real-time battle system, which will help keep you primed and awake through some overly lengthy -- but still decent -- cutscenes. Little extras like item invention, a multiplayer arena, and Battle Trophies round out the package nicely, and keep things fresh. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, but it gets the job done.
