star ocean problem

Man_Over_Game · Post by **Man_Over_Game** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:08 am

I understand that star ocean has a few bugs, but I was hoping to find a way around them. For starters, my sound is really messed up. When town music is playing, sometimes the game spews out really bad sounds with it, like it is trying to scream out the music the best way it can. My background music is often off at random times. Reloading a game (not with save/load state) will fix this, as will entering a battle or leaving and coming back. Sometimes my sound will turn off (both sound effects and background music), then my game freezes. Even if I rewind, this still tends to happen near the same time it did the first. None of these problems happen during battle, only while traveling, or during a movie. Is there a way to fix this? The sound is no problem to me, but the freezing is a big problem, because I normally use save states, and I've had to restart three times because I accidentally save before it freezes.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:41 am

The freezing is actual game problems. Even on a real system, it crashes.

Emulation may or may not exacerbate the issue, but... there's no way around it. Save states are not an adequate recovery mechanism, because they save the conditions that led to the game crashing in the first place. Same for rewind, which is just a collection of state saves anyways.

The only thing you can do in Star Ocean is to make real saves frequently.
Which is actually good advice for any RPG, since there's no chance of recovery with state saves.

Man_Over_Game · Post by **Man_Over_Game** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:53 am

-_-

eh, well thanks. That was pretty much my solution anyway. Thanks though. I wasn't quite sure if it was a problem in my configuration or just a problem with the translation. But if the original game did that, I'm not as irritated. I pity the people who don't have emulators who play.

Guess I'll just have to save more often. It looks suspiciously similar to Tales of Phantasia. Both great games. I really get irritated after I find out I missed the chance to get a secret character on Star Ocean though. The intro reminds me of All of Your Base. Is it worthwhile to keep Ciel, or drop him to get Ashlay?

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 8:12 am

Man_Over_Game wrote: Guess I'll just have to save more often. It looks suspiciously similar to Tales of Phantasia.

Good eye!

The team doing Tales of Phantasia quit due to creative differences with the company(there was much debate about how Tales of Phantasia should go, including the actual title) and formed tri-Ace, the developers of Star Ocean.

Post by **grinvader** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 9:14 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:The freezing is actual game problems. Even on a real system, it crashes.

The only real freeze with a realsnes is the talent get freeze, really. All those music glitches leading to freezes come from current zsnes releases subpar timing.

You can use better emulators to improve that part (and man, that's a big part. The crimson shield - demon world event froze 9 times out of ten when I played through).

Man_Over_Game wrote:I really get irritated after I find out I missed the chance to get a secret character on Star Ocean though.

You can't have all the chars anyway, and Perisie isn't exactly worth it if it's your first game. You can always make another game where you'll grab her. Star Ocean games (1-3, didn't play 4 yet) don't have any sort of new game +.

Is it worthwhile to keep Ciel, or drop him to get Ashlay?

You mean Cius. Ciel is either a church soldier with a serious curry addiction or a scientist working on a energy solution to stop the war between reploids.
Anyway...
Ashlay is rigid. Always starts with all the talents he can get. Cannot get any he doesn't start with. He's quite powerful when you first get him, but has quite an awful stat growth and ends up behind Fear (even Marvel can dish out more damage with the right weapon and link combos). Limited skillset, too.
However, you need him to access the dragon ougis for ratix, not exactly straightforward either.

Many things in Star Ocean games are only accessible with some teammates. Just make several games with a varied roster... Pretty short game before you dive in item creation.

Man_Over_Game · Post by **Man_Over_Game** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:34 am

Huh, guess I'll stick with Cius then. And I guess I mixed him up with that girl from Megaman Zero. Which, by the way, I am having a huge problem with. I have played the original before on rom, but now I am having serious trouble trying to get it to work. I kinda thought all of the other MZ games sucked, though. I like the fact that EVERY little mistake you do affects your gameplay. Sure, it was difficult, but it made you redo the same mission 4 times to get that impossible S rank. Bah, hated that game (love that game!)

megamanzer0 · Post by **megamanzer0** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 8:10 am

3 is probably the best one. haven't played 1 and 2 in a long long time.

Post by **grinvader** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 9:51 pm

Since 3 has the worst item creation system of the first 3, I doubt it is the best.

It's also limited to three characters per team. Which prevents the existence of the Astral Shift battle formation. This causes more suck.

Honestly, the second had the best creation system all things considered, despite the inconsistencies - SO1's was too unbalanced and easy to exploit (yay for massproducing violins) and way frustrating for minor benefits (YES, I customised the aura blade, and man, it sucks), while SO3's is just... what ? You don't even understand what you're doing until you either cheat and read FAQs, or spend an ungodly amount of cash too early to find what number affects what. Characters don't have upgradable abilities and talents anymore, just set numbers and 4 attributes that alter HP/SP and completely non-self-explanatory stats that mod battle AI - which, if you fail to realise what they affect and increase them too much for some characters, makes them utterly useless when left alone in battle (no way to decrease the values). Also the book system to make anyone your main healer early on is -epic fail-.

SO2 kept the badass from the first, balanced it the best it could (which caused the inconsistencies), and extended the abilities party wide.
Plus, giant robotic fist equipped loli.

Now of course SO3 has pretty awesome battles after a couple games when you know what to spend where with whom and so on, and the synth system (NOT the creation system, which is horrid - can only make random shit even after creating the items ? oreo double wtuf) is pretty powerful.
The first time through is a rough ride, though.
The party members could have used more variety, too, but the limited races actually make sense given the plot development, unlike FF12.
And I didn't even comment on that crazy giant turtle dinosaur mine cart minigame thing. >:3

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 7:18 am

grinvader wrote: Plus, giant robotic fist equipped loli.

PARABOLA BEAM!
PARABOLA BEAM!
PARABOLA BE-*brick through TV*

Post by **Agozer** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 12:51 pm

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
grinvader wrote: Plus, giant robotic fist equipped loli.
PARABOLA BEAM!
PARABOLA BEAM!
PARABOLA BE-*brick through TV*

lol

Post by **odditude** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 1:01 pm

SPECIAL ATTACK: WHIRLWIND!

Post by **grinvader** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:41 pm

how can you not love the precis D;

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 9:10 pm

grinvader wrote:how can you not love the precis D;

It's not that I don't love her. It's that her voice literally makes my ears bleed. LITERALLY.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 9:22 pm

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 11:50 pm

I swear Precis barks whenever you get a back attack. Not to mention she "threatens" the enemy by saying "I'll turn you into a beehive!!" Wait, wasn't that Opera?

Post by **grinvader** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 11:55 pm

@Gil: There's an undub patch if you want... ^^

Post by **Agozer** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 2:17 am

grinvader wrote:@Gil: There's an undub patch if you want... ^^

Mind throwing that my way, too?

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:48 am

grinvader wrote:@Gil: There's an undub patch if you want... ^^

I actually have a copy of that somewhere, actually.

Post by **grinvader** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:01 am

This seems to be verily actual.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:09 pm

Small deviation from topic. I just put in an order today for the remakes of Star Ocean and Star Ocean Second Story on PSP. Anyone play these? Any comments?

megamanzer0 · Post by **megamanzer0** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 3:32 am

don't get first departure it sucks balls. and SE is only slightly better. nether is anything I'd spend money on.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 3:37 am

I haven't played much of First Departure, but from what I did it was almost nothing like the SNES version, except for the storyline.

It's much more what FF3 NDS was than FF1 PSP.

Post by **grinvader** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:56 am

They added a world map, blasphemy.
Also character names in ALL CAPS will surely make for QUALITY experience.
Not even talking about milly's radioactive hairdye.

And apparently they tried hard to make the script as different from the original as they could.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:15 pm

Wow, some pretty strong opinions. Maybe I should have pirated before I purchased huh?

In any case, if I turn out not to like them, I can always run them in to gamestop or hastings here. I still want to play the original with the translation patch, but I'm not in front of computers as much as I used to be.

And just to confirm things, the second one on the psp is a remake of SO:Second Story right?

Post by **grinvader** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:24 pm

SquareHead wrote:And just to confirm things, the second one on the psp is a remake of SO:Second Story right?

There's still no love for Blue Sphere.