Thursday, January 13, 2005

You Know I Hate You

Honestly, I was planning on Part 3 of the Linux Free Strategy Game Roundup for this week. However, a stick was thrown between the spokes of my progress with the as of yet unnamed game in the form of a difficult-to-use interface, which I'm sure I'll mention next week. So, this week, you get more about Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time.

Having put over 50 hours into it at this point, my fondness for this game is now firmly cemented. I know I touched on it last week, but I'm still learning new intricacies of the battle system all the time. The different play styles for every character are really unique - if every character looked exactly the same, you'd still be able to tell which one you were controlling by feel alone. The invention system - again, something I mentioned last week - had me entirely confused at first but, while it can be frustrating, the amount of depth it offers to anyone willing to take a look is truly impressive.

Now, here's where certain people are just going to start to laugh at me. I admit that with Star Ocean, the gameplay is where the strength lies. That said, I really ended up liking the game's characters and story. Granted, this is a Square-Enix production we're talking about, so that's not exactly unexpected. The story doesn't end up taking too much shit, but if you frequent certain message boards, you'll see an awful lot of bitching about every single character. Except one. Albel. I won't spoil it for anyone who has yet to play the game, but let's just say he's the type of guy who appeals to the Sephiroth crowd. Let's also just say I hate his guts. At least you get a chance to tell him, if you wish.

All the time I've been spending with Star Ocean has been keeping me away from my two other current gaming addictions: Anarchy Online and Monster Hunter, so I've decided the only thing that really can be done is to beat Star Ocean(or at least the story portion, there's more afterwards) as quickly as possible. In fact, I'm off to work on that now.

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