First and most importantly, the OP to the anime is fucking awesome. I have the song on my playlist because of the songs from Stepmania but I never knew where it was from until I fired up episode 1…and I came. Hard:

Anyway, let me point out quickly here that if you have not played Star Ocean: The second story and dont know that Celine loves Baby Rabbit Risotto, then don’t…I repeat, DONT, get this anime…It is very slow and tries to pad out 5 minute scenes in the game over 2 episodes BUT in being its downfall, the fact that it remains true to the games story makes it very fun to watch for Star Ocean fans. The first 3 episodes revolve around Claude getting owned by a teleporting machine then meeting Rena who is portrayed as a moebomb with an annoying voice…so…exactly the same as the game.

Some things in the story are over embellished and some are completely skipped. For example Mayor Regis is a ninja and tries to smash Claude in his sleep to see if he really is the warrior of light…but then he suddenly goes back to being a frail old man…which of course makes perfect sense. Then there’s Claudes raygun…get this:

Talk about extreme…just to kill that oversized gorrilla thing that attacks Rena in the forest.

The anime itself makes use of a hell of a lot of still frames…the animation is somewhat shoddy and in the still frame shots (obviously) completely missing, which is kinda annoying. In certain scenes, like when Claude chases after Alen once he steals Rena, the animation is very smooth but then straight away its back to still frames with voices thrown over top…Which not only downtrails any semblance of good animation pants, it also slows the anime down further.

Recognise this place?

Although this sounds like I’m just complaining about the anime, I still kinda like it. I’m not sure why but I can only think that its simply because I found an anime based on a game that tries to stay EXACTLY on the story instead of making some arbitrary side stories. I seriously doubt I’ll ever finish this anime though unless something changes by episode 9 (which is the last episode I have on my HDD) because when I get to this point, I then have to go find a torrent containing the next 15 episodes of an anime that no one really cares about.

So yea my final words are: Only get this anime if you liked Star Ocean…otherwise don’t, it’s too slow to warrant watching frequently.

Time to go watch Durarara!! Ep 3 methinks.

EDIT: The anime is now going off track and losing focus from the main story…Celine is a bitch and Rena is stupid…also:

The former marks one of the best RPG’s ever made that even spawned an anime, the latter you all know about so I wont talk about it.

The game itself features in much the same as every other old school RPG you can think of…you gain a party of mixed individuals and skills, you pick the group you like the best and you go off to kill everything and save the world from impending doom.

The doom in this case is a meteor-thing which contains and powerful and sinister power. It smashed into the planet and is causing chaos and turning people/creatures into demonic beings and naturally it’s your goal to save them all!

You can start the story as either Rena (pictured above on the very left) or Claude (again but on the very right). I’ve played this game twice through as each character but this time around I started as Claude again which means I am a space traveller under my fathers stern rule travelling about the galaxy surveying planets under rule of the Earth Federation. He ends up on Milocinia studying an alien ruin which he, in his retardation, thinks is a playground. So he jumps on it even though his commander and father says no.

So he gets teleported to the aforementioned planet named Expel who apparently speak the same language as he. He finds Rena being attacked by a demonic creature and rushes to her aide using his Blaster pistol which spurts out huge rays of light as it shoots. Unfortunately for our poor lost hero, the townfolk believe in a prophecy where a “hero with the sword of light” will appear which means he’s now going to be raked into helping these poor sods look after themselves.

(The above picture is part of the anime not the game…but w/e…ACTUALLY! I just found out its from the PSP version of the game! I NEEDS THAT VERSION!)

Anyway as it turns out Rena isn’t from Expel either and that she was found and adopted by her “Mother”…which explains why she has mystical healing powers…powers which make her a highly useful companion. So the town tells Claude and Rena to go fix the world…you can probably fill in the blanks from there…GAMEPLAY TIME!

The outdoor areas are about as indepth as you’d expect a game this old to be, they’re mostly empty with simple paths and forests and you control your main character as you run between cities performing various quests. As with most JRPG games, random encounters feature heavily in this game…everywhere you move outside and in dungeons, you can expect to encounter various groups of enemies who can either be pathetically weak or could severely out number you and on top of that they can enter battle from behind, front or even above you in some sort of fucked up air assault or something. Naturally these surprise entries can force you to move your characters out of certain danger lest your weaker spell casters and healers get eaten alive making combat highly difficult.

The map itself is very simplistic and chances are if you are like me you simply wont use it other than to get your bearings (ie…head north)…I just remember where towns are and map it out in my head as it seems a hell of a lot easier.

Inside towns you will meet NPC’s and be able to traverse through buildings by walking straight into doors that give way when you faceplant them. NPC’s show emotion by using speech bubbles which you can see with the whistling kid above. Moving around is pretty easy but occasionally you get stuck on objects/cant find a way to a particular place you need to go which can prove highly frustrating as you cant move the camera.

By now anyone that has played the game will realise that these Screenshots that I have are from fairly early on in the game…Anyway the combat is very JRPGish, click a button to choose your attack (you can set up to 2 special attacks to be used on L1 and R1 buttons) and then choose your target. The major problem you will come across in this game when it comes to combat is the AI.

You can program your teammates to follow certain routines when it comes to attacking, the problem lies in that the commands lack diversity…I like Celine (my spellcaster) to blast the living shit out of mobs while I go through and mop up…what I dont like however is when she waits till I kill off most of the mob and approach the last living creature where she casts a full screen aoe attack…when I can easily kill it without trouble. Note: This scene is pictured above.

Oh yea…at the end of every combat your heros will say something based on how the combat went…ie: “That was TOO easy”…It seems so trivial…but really when I picked up this game and heard Claude and Rena claim their victory I was taken aback at the onslaught of nostalgia…the voices and the music stuck in my head for years between play and I could still remember the names of most of the characters which made for an awesome nostalgia conversation on xfire with Fireryda who also played the game.

To sum the game up I cant really go much further than to say its very typical of a JRPG that is to say the gameplay is familiar and the game focuses highly on the characters, music and dialogue over the actual story line. But to an extent I like that, in fact I would say that I enjoyed this game far better than the Final Fantasy series (albeit I’m not a huge FF fan really but I still enjoy it).

Anyway, that is my gaming experiences as of late thrown into a quick summary of the game. Time to go find some cash to get Global Agenda…somehow