PS2

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Role-playing (RPG)Adventure

Time to beat: about 45.2 hours
Plays offline: Yes

Overview

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is an action role-playing game, the third main game in the Star Ocean series. The game was developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2 console. It was released in Japan, North America, and the PAL territories. The original Japanese release date was in February 2003 by Enix, its penultimate release before its merger to become Square Enix. It was re-released in 2004 as a two-disc Director's Cut version with bonus features such as new characters and dungeons.

While having many similarities to its predecessor, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time includes many elements that make it unique among the majority of role-playing video games. Instead of menu-driven combat, Star Ocean 3 offers real-time interactive combat, similar to the.hack and Tales series. Battles occur when running into enemies on the main travel field or when certain pre-scripted events occur. In battle, the player directly controls one character, while the other two characters are controlled by AI. The player can, however, choose the tactics used by AI characters or switch which character they are directly controlling.

The universe of Star Ocean is science fiction in nature, although like the first two games in the series, much of the plot is set on an "underdeveloped planet". The game is set in S.D 772 (A.D 2858). It features a galaxy-spanning government in the Pangalactic Federation, several races and species of aliens, different factions, multiple colonized planets, and advanced technology. Despite having a science fiction atmosphere, a form of magic exists in the universe: symbology, also known as heraldry in the Japanese version and in Star Ocean: The Second Story. Standard symbology involves tattooing crests and runes onto one's flesh to draw out apparently latent power in the form of spells, and numerous underdeveloped planets make extensive use of it.

One of the major influences of the design changes from Star Ocean: The Second Story to Till the End of Time was Star Trek. The combat system was mostly unaltered from the previous title, but characters were rendered in 3D instead of 2D and more strategy was incorporated into the fights. Transitioning to a completely 3D environment from a 2D/3D mix was a lengthy process, and was only possible due to the increased power of the PlayStation 2 console. In terms of story message, game producer Yoshinori Yamagishi stated that the main message the game communicates is one of "trust". Several characters and dungeons did not make the cut for the final version of the game, but most of what developers wanted found its way into the game.

Initially, the game received a somewhat negative impression in Japan. Parts of the game were alleged to be buggy, and the game refused to work at all in older SCPH-10000 PlayStation 2s. Enix blamed Sony, as they had coded Star Ocean 3 with features from updated libraries that were apparently not backward-compatible. Sony denied all responsibility. Regardless, it impacted the game's sales, and Enix released the Director's Cut in 2004 to assuage grievances about the original by fixing the bugs and adding features.