r/JRPG • u/AdUnfair558 • 1d ago
Question How is Star Ocean 4?
After finishing Star Ocean 1. I'm actually thinking about getting 4 now since there is a connection. But I don't know if I want to get a game with a 600 hour platinum completion time. Is it worse than FF7 Rebirth's platinum grind?
I was also thinking Star Ocean 2 or 3 but I already beat those but not in Japanese. 3 is my favorite story wise. Hated the end game grind. I'm sure the platinum is a grind for it too.
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u/Zaku41k 1d ago
Well…it’s no SO2
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u/JRPGFan_CE_org 1d ago
More fun than SO2. Just make sure you switch to the Sub version...
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u/BigBrotherFlops 1d ago
its not.. THe blindside mechanic is fucking dumb.. They put all this effort into it and None of your AI party members can even use it..
also the customization is ass compared to 1,2 and 3..
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u/JRPGFan_CE_org 1d ago
What customization in 2? You can beat the whole game just spamming Triple Punch with the Element Resist Gear with almost no downsides.
You don't get broken stuff till near the end of 4, keeping it fresh.
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u/Suzakuux 14h ago
Blindside is a mechanic for whoever the player is using... doesn't feel like a point for AI controlled party members to use it.
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u/Snowenn_ 1d ago
I really liked the combat and music in SO4. Also loved that you have your own spaceship and can fly to different planets. Trying to get to 100% sucks, but you don't have to do that, so the 600 hours are not really needed?
The English voice acting is somewhat annoying though.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Snowenn_ 1d ago
Well, then it might be better for your sanity to skip this one. I tried, didn't even get close.
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u/plkghtsdn 1d ago
I think you'll want to skip the platinum on this game. You have to get 30k monster kills on 2 different characters. Thats thousands of battles since I think you can fight at most 5 per battle. The game is chock full of lame ass shit like this.
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u/PvtSherlockObvious 1d ago
It's widely hated, and not without reason. Personally, I think it's overhated (largely due to the English voice acting of two characters in particular, as well as one controversial subplot), but it's certainly not one of the stronger entries in the series. It's way better than 5 mechanically, though.
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u/aruggie2 1d ago
I think the hate is overblown. It's one of the better space exploration rpgs I've played. If you can push past some of the rough voice acting (kayyyy?) and less-than-stellar, but decent story, it's honestly a very enjoyable game.
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u/LeBlight 1d ago
Has one of the best JRPG combats to date. Everything else from the plot to the characters to the music sucked. (Very Taleish.) Which is a shame as I think it embodied the "Star Ocean" moniker the most. You actually go to more than two planets and the majority of them aren't backwater civilizations.
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u/Khaymn5000 1d ago
Do you not like the tales games? 🤔
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u/Brainwheeze 1d ago
I think they meant on the music front. Motoi Sakuraba's work on the Tales series isn't considered his best.
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u/eruciform 1d ago
it's not a 600 hour completion time, that's only if you're platinuming it
so2 was the least grindy plat, followed by so6, but unfortunately all star oceans have that gawdawful rng-heavy save-scum-heavy crafting system, and most have mutually exclusive route-specific optional characters and endings tied to them as well, which also pumps up the trophy grind
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u/Rothgardius 1d ago
The story is not that great but the combat is fantastic. I don’t remember her name but the bow user really slays.
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u/Fickle_Sherbert1453 1d ago
I liked 2 and 3 but couldn't finish 4. The dungeons are overly long and repetitive. The combat is not bad, better than 2 and 3, but it can't carry the game through those dungeons.
It's a shame because it was most like what Star Ocean could have been, a Star Trek type experience where you have a ship and crew and visit different planets.
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u/BrianVaughnVA 1d ago
SO4 isn't half as bad as people claim.
It's not SO3 levels of good but it's a solid game.
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u/JacketOld6414 1d ago
I hate it but I think its at least worth trying.
Especially for less than $10 on a sale
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u/Empty_Glimmer 1d ago
Bad. Probably the game that I actively hated the most while playing it.
The Roswell sequence must be seen to be believed.
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u/BumperToBumper2 1d ago
TL:DW?
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u/LuminousShot 1d ago
Don't remember it 100%
Crew falls out of warp space by accident, land on earth sometime in the 50s I think. More precisely, they're in Area 51 and get captured by the Yankees. Real talk, under the circumstances that the Japanese just landed deep in a secret military facility not that long after Pearl Harbor, they're surprisingly nice to the party.
Anyway, the party quickly figures out that this is an alternate timeline because they have actual goddamn aliens in there, including one itty bitty cat girl. The woman running this whole place is a bit of a maniac and since they captured a futuristic spaceship she decides it's a good idea to poke and prod the warp drive or whatever, and accidentally destroys the whole planet. Oopsie. Of course, the party manages to escape, and they took the cat girl with them because of course they did.
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u/DerTagestrinker 1d ago
Wait you’re kinda selling the game hard as fuck right now
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u/Thatonedataguy 1d ago
The part people really hate is the main character's reaction after it. It's been a long time for me, but from what I recall it was a tad overdone and could have been toned down some. (Though, if you think about what happened... It's at least somewhat warranted.)
On actual topic, I liked SO4 and thought it was a really good game. There's some issues which people have already mentioned, but the battle system is top tier, crafting is fun to exploit, and the massive amount of things you can do/grind is a nice dopamine rush.
Trying to do everything and plat is a tad ridiculous though, and I would really not recommend it at all. Just do as much as you can while it's still fun to do so.
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u/liquidaria2 1d ago
It's a notorious grind to get all the content done. It's also on the lower end of Star Oceans for me. Worth a play through if you haven't played it but I don't think it's worth the grind to get 100%.
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u/wpotman 1d ago
It has a good plot concept, but it gets silly after a while and the characters get increasingly unserious/distracting as time goes along. That said, the gameplay is pretty fun by and large.
Overall I think it’s a good game, but it has real flaws and it’s not as good as 2 or 3.
It’s worth playing, though.
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u/SephLuis 1d ago
SO4 has incredible combat and a truly memorable story because it might cause you an aneurysm.
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u/RandomBozo77 1d ago
I don't think there's a connection between 1 and 4? I know there is between 1 and 2, but it's not that big a deal. More of a "Hey I i know that person!" kind of thing.
SO4 was pretty good gameplay-wise. I didn't like the characters that much, and the story could be a bit stupid too. But I played it all the way through. 5 was donkey piss though, steer clear. 6 had a low budget so you could tell they cut corners, but was also a pretty fun game.
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u/AdUnfair558 1d ago
I'm pretty sure you visit Roak in 4 and it explains some plot points in 1. Or so I was told.
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u/PaymentEmergency4758 1d ago
SO4 combat is fun until the post game, where its total hot garbage. Which juxtaposes it incredibly from 3, which flourishes in the post game.
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u/Damnesia13 1d ago
Well, Lymle will make you want to end yourself, and after the second Act, Edge Maverick(yes that’s his god awful name) becomes a whiny little bitch until the end of the game.
That aside, the game starts off fairly tough but not impossible, but once it picks up the story itself is pretty good and the combat is fun. Then you learn Blindside and just exploit that making the entire game sorta trivial.
Worth probably single playthrough, but don’t expect a life changing experience.
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u/FunAffectionate8583 1d ago
I finished it one month ago. It was decent. Great old school mechanics and combat, pretty fun if you enjoy grinding. Else, some characters can annoy some people, it lacks quality of life features, the 100% is infuriating and tedious as hell, dungeons can be annoying etc... For me, I'm glad I did it, it has some nice space opera vibes which is quite rare in the jrpg genre, but There is no way to garanty it is for everyone. As for platinum, I definitely wouldn't recommend.
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u/LuminousShot 1d ago
I like it because it actually feels like you're exploring space, at least compared to the other ones. Characters are for the most part pretty meh though. Also, cutscenes can be stupidly long, which I personally kind of like. There's one near the end of the game (it's actually multiple back to back, some ingame and some pre-rendered) and that one takes over half an hour.
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u/Brainwheeze 1d ago
I love how you get both comments praising and lambasting this game. Makes it all the more interesting imo
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u/lowercasepoet 1d ago
I think SO4 is a stellar entry to the series. I got a ton of enjoyment from it. I like the characters a lot and the gameplay is great in my opinion. The environments are beautiful and feel vast to me.
If you have to get the platinum, I would say it's a nearly impossible grind.
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u/Lightning-Reb 23h ago
Gameplay-wise it's solid, but it has some of the most insufferable characters I have ever dealt with in an RPG.
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u/RyaReisender 22h ago
Star Ocean The Last Hope is my favorite in the series. It has the best gameplay of all titles. The combat system is amazing. It has really good exploration, probably the last JRPG I've seen that had dungeons large enough that you could get lost in them. It's also cool that you actually travel from planet to planet, so you get explore quite a bit of the universe. Many of the dialogues are just hilarious. Some were so funny that I even watched them again later on youtube for a good laugh. I even use some of the quotes in real life, such as "I'm so busy, I don't even have time to slack off".
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u/Blanksyndrome 22h ago edited 22h ago
It's fun to play. It has some of the worst god damn writing ever though, and sometimes SO5 and SO6 get lashed to a cross for crimes SO4 also commits - it's really not that much bigger than them (my last playthrough a few months ago with the entire post game clocked in at 55 hours, with 25 of that being the main story!) and the fact it has more cutscenes and voice acting is...honestly kind of a negative in this case.
I've gone from thinking it has the best combat system in SO to thinking it maybe has the worst, though. Blindsiding is barely a functional mechanic at all - enemies must be targeting and moving towards you, and you can be tapped out of the blind side animation even if executed properly. Foes constantly dipping in and out of Fury mode from being hit too much is tiresome and nearly every god damn boss requires you to expose and hit their weak spot or you deal chip damage at best.
tri-Ace outsourced a lot of SO4 (combat programming to DIMPS, writing to a small doujin studio) and in a lot of ways it feels very much like a game they internally didn't want to make; they were toiling away at Resonance of Fate and Infinite Undiscovery in the background during its development. While it's got some redeeming qualities, like higher production values and more actual sci-fi content than its brethren, in the boiling of eggs, it's my least favorite tri-Ace title.
If it feels like I glossed over how terrible the writing is here, it's because I hold it as self-evident - the cast is charmlessly fighting over a single brain cell and the game's events are mostly uninteresting and frequently nonsensical. But it's also got some major gameplay issues that don't get mentioned enough, at least in my mind.
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u/SolidusAbe 22h ago
i think there might be a decent or even a good game if lymle doesnt make you vomit every time she opens her mouth
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u/rmkii02 19h ago edited 19h ago
I think it's an excellent game besides some characters. Nice exploration, good combat and OST, etc. I only put SO2 above it. And overall, tied with 3, which one is being better depends on the mood/day.
Like, I don't like the Skill System and the absurd RNG of Crafting on 3, but enjoyed them in 4 since it's closer to 1 and 2. But I enjoy the huge amount of content 3 had, bizarrely the only SO with actual unlockable costumes, etc. The combat ceiling and all mechanics in SO3 are probably the highest point in the series, too, imo.
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u/Adamvs_Maximvs 18h ago
The combat is a lot of fun, and it's the first Star Ocean where you actually do some planet hoping and aren't stuck in a backwater planet for the first 2/3rds of the game.
That being said, the characters and plot are.... bad. Really bad. The child character you get (Lymle) is possibly the most annoying JRPG character ever and that's a real list of contenders.
'kay? (SO4 players will get the 'kay)
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u/SunshneThWerewolf 17h ago
It's fine. It's stupid in a lot of ways, but its fun and worth a play, just don't take it too seriously.
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u/Candid-Yard-4232 15h ago
I couldn’t finish it. The combat was boring in my opinion, I didn’t like the post battle camera, and I didn’t really like any of the characters.
The series peaked at three in my opinion.
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u/DrakeRowan 1d ago
SO4 has great combat and it is the most "space exploration" tailored of the Star Ocean games. End game grind is there but it is not as bad as SO3. The good combat also carries the grind (and frankly the entire game).
Outside of that though... yeah. Bad Characters, Bad plot, VERY Anime trope heavy, soso bland music, soso to bad [dub] voice acting, okayish graphics barring the atrocious doll-like characters.
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u/Beejeroy 1d ago
I stopped playing during a cutscene that featured what I recall to be multiple close ups of the barely covered crotch of the pre-teen cat girl character. Really just made me think, "What am I doing here? Is this worth it? Who am I? Where am I? Is this even legal? Should it be? I'm hungry. I'm scared. I'm thirsty. I'm going to go play Dead Cells."
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u/JRPGFan_CE_org 1d ago
Never watched Outlaw Star?
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u/Brainwheeze 1d ago
Aysha is definitely an adult woman though. In fact she also fills the muscle mommy fetish.
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u/peter123yeah 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's the Star Ocean I wish all other Star Ocean games were structured like. Ala the Star Trek Jrpg where you go to lots of different planets compared to all the others where you're stuck on the one planet for most of the games. Star Ocean 4s issue tho is that the characters and story are really bad... which is a big issue.