Star Ocean is a fundamentally troubling game. There are a number of superficial reasons for this. The game is – and I mean this in the most negative way possible – absurdly anime. By that I mean the main character is a hydrocephalic neon-haired waif named Edge Maverick. A number of characters speak in registers that only dogs and dolphins can hear. You will not be surprised to find your ears bleeding after an hour of play – half from the terrible screeching and half from the so-bad-it’s-bad dialogue. Terrible anime chops notwithstanding, though, Star Ocean is also an incredibly dated game. It feels like a PS2 game with bloom and in higher resolution. For some reason this deeply troubles me.
I guess it could be worse, he could have a tail.
Back in the NES days, RPGs were always the forward-looking genre. Although granted, it’s not hard to be forward-looking when placed next to a game that challenges your fundamental levels of bad-dudeness. RPGs always seemed to try and push beyond their technical limitations and create a setting and story that lived in spaces far removed from the rudimentary RISC processes of the NES. They fed your mind and allowed your fantasies to run free.
Things continued in this way through the SNES and PSX eras (following the consoles with the best RPGs, naturally). Games like Final Fantasy VI and Tactics Ogre experimented with story and characters, creating a world much bigger and profound than the sweet looking explosions of Contra III. There was a whole world in these games. Yet again, RPGs pushed that artistic boundary of immersion and setting beyond the interface and beyond the technology.