I could go on forever! Let's play Star Ocean: Till the End of Time!

I see this game get bashed on all the time, and it...kind of makes me feel bad. Not like "damn, apparently I just have really bad taste" - I just feel like people expect and want something the game isn't, and have a hard time coming to the game on its terms. So this is a LP, first and foremost, about the game. And the music. I don't think the plot is secretly SUPER AMAZING, but I'm not really looking to skewer and roast it at every opportunity either.

That said, the story and PAs are a part of the game, and I'm not looking to glance over them entirely either. I've actually never gotten any of the character-specific endings, and this seems like a decent excuse to go all completionist for one of those. That road starts early, though, so this first post is going to introduce all the party members, and present three questions, two of which affect the first update.

Core party members:

Fayt Leingod is the game's main protagonist, a college student from Earth. He's the sort of anime hero you'd expect from this sort of game: upbeat, generous, incorruptible, that sort of thing. Mechanically, he's also the usual JARPG hero, that brash-untrained-swordsman-who's-sort-of-quick-and-generally-balanced-all-around-in-all-attributes-and-styles-and-never-leaves-your-party. And he has the highest natural Defense in the game, which can be relevant, or not. He has no special ending; you see him hanging out alone if you don't meet the requirements for anyone else's.


Cliff Fittir is the brawny, masculine sidekick, and the first character to stick around for more than a few minutes. He's a slower, close-range fighter, usually used for lockdown or "tanking" - to the extent that it's easy to underestimate the sort of damage he can put out under the right conditions.


Maria Traydor is Cliff's friend and trusted ally, though they're seen as rebels by Earth's leadership. She seeks Fayt and his dad for reasons that are...well, pretty much the whole point of the plot. In battle, she has a few short-range attacks, but her focus is on blasting things from range with her gun. She's an easy and safe character to control, but also incredibly deadly.


(For some reason, I couldn't find any "official art." That's ok though since he looks the coolest anyway.)
Adray Lasbard is...awesome. An old warrior for Aquaria, one of the warring kingdoms on Elicoor, he's treated with disdain by some of the people in the castle, presumably because they can't stand how cool he is. His daughter is also part of the military leadership, and he loves the hell out of her (maybe too much). Despite his appearance as a sort of shirtless samurai, he's actually more of a back-line spellcaster.


Sophia Esteed is a long-time friend of Fayt's family, and, at least at the start of the game, his girlfriend. Predictably, she's also a caster, with a bit more of a focus on defensive spells and stunlocking.


Mirage Koas is Cliff's oldest partner in crime. She appears early on, but as her addition as a playable character was new for the Director's Cut (the only version released internationally), she doesn't join until late on. She plays similarly to Cliff on the surface, but without some of his signature moves, her role is a bit different, with some advantages and disadvantages.

The Optionals:

Nel Zelpher is a Kunoichi from Aquaria, who works as a sort of "secret agent" with two subordinates whose brilliant cover is coming off as too airheaded for anyone to care about and too obnoxious for anyone to tolerate trailing them. She's a fast combatant with a wide range of elemental abilities and a few decent range moves, as well as a few support spells, but is relatively difficult to play due to those same factors and her frustratingly long hitstun.


Roger S. Huxley is an obnoxious little boy with all of the self-same delusions; that he is super badass and totally a magnet for females in his appropriate age group. He's a fast, slightly fragile bruiser, and while he picks up a few "range" moves later, his focus is pretty solidly on mashing things at very close range. Due to an oddity in equipment allocation, he's probably the strongest character on Disc 1, but once that levels off he regains his rightful place as pretty much the worst character in the game.


Albel Nox is the subject of the preponderance of the game's yaoi fanfiction. He's a slower, harder-hitting swordsman than Fayt, with a solid range game and a few interesting mechanics, but I find it nearly impossible to give even the slightest care about him.


Peppita Rosetti is a traveling space circus performer who stole Dante's catchphrase. While initially baffling in combat, she's secretly an extremely versatile, rounded unit who particularly shines on the higher difficulties...if you can learn how to use her.

So then, the prep questions:
1) Who do you want to see hang out with Fayt at the end of the game? Any of the nine responses are acceptable; one with the highest votes is the one I'll start answering PAs "for" as soon as I start playing (probably Sept 1 or 2).
2) Which difficulty do you want to see? My current plan is to use screenshots for story/overworld bits and recording many of the interesting battles. Here's the rundown:

Earth: Not doing this. The "standard difficulty" in Second Story, 3 and 4 demote it to a "-1" mode where everything is really easy and you can't earn Battle Trophies. I would be bored, and so would you.
Galaxy: The new default, and the only other option available until you've beaten the game and earned a decent share of BTs. I've played this game a lot, so suffice to say, I would mostly destroy this without much effort. Maybe that's what you want to see!
Universe: Kicks things up a bit difficulty-wise, with enemy stats raised 50% over their Galaxy values. The AI is a bit more aggressive as well, but overall it's a pretty natural step up for someone who's learned a few tricks from playing the game a couple times. This is (I'm pretty sure, haven't played through in a while) a pretty "average" difficulty relative to my playing.
4D: The highest difficulty, enemy stats are doubled from Galaxy (and go even higher in post-game). Enemies also run MUCH faster and use a ruthlessly mechanical decision-making process (although this can be abused in its own way). This would play out as a very different game from the other two, as a lot of the time the "team" element is nearly impossible to maintain, forcing more technical and occasionally tactical play. And lots more use of subsystems like Item Creation. Do you want me to suffer? (If you are playing M14, I would not be surprised if the answer were "yes") I'm ready to suffer.

Finally, the poll is to vote for which optional characters you want to see. Vote for two, at your convenience. You'll probably get to see all of them in action a little before the big decisions come up, so there's no rush. I'll keep this running indefinitely, and when it comes time to choose the first, I'll pick the one with the highest votes of the available options. Then when it's time for the second one, I'll take the remaining highest. After that, everyone else is out of luck.

Thanks for reading!

I'm pretty sure I enjoyed this game a lot when I played it, but reading the first post I'm realising I've forgotten a lot of it. I do remember that I played it with the voiced dialogue boxes set to automatically advance, which made it impossible to pause or speed up cutscenes, which I changed after spending like 40 minutes waiting for one to end so I could get lunch. Also I remember that one amazing thing that happens.

For the questions: No opinion on which ending character at present. I'll vote on the poll for optional characters when I remember which ones I didn't use. Difficulty-wise, I am interested in subsystems, and I was(/am?) playing M14. So I'm leaning towards 4D. Sorry.

Do the first set of simulated battles on 4D then restart and drop down to Universe while we aren't looking. And there's no reason NOT to show us item creation. I abuse it on every difficulty, so I fully expect a 100% pimped out super-weapon on everyone.

The second battle seems to bite me pretty bad once in a while and the third is just a total pain in the ass because I refuse to learn how to play beyond "spam the hell out of super move X!" So I wanna see how I need to play to not suck.

I say Fayt should pair up with Mirage because Sophie is boring and Maria is what I tend to go for in my completionist saves.

edit- I totally forgot how many of the 4 optionals you can have.

Derp, I accidentally voted for Roger when I meant to check Nel's box, but it seems like the midget isn't doing as well anyway, so hopefully he won't win by one vote or anything...

I also voted for Albedo Albel Albeldo Crispin Freeman, because I remember using him extensively when I played it.

Looking forward to seeing someone else play through this game, since I don't think I'll ever replay it!

I didn't mean there wouldn't be any IC, just that on 4D it'll start early, instead of sometime around Arch Demon or Super Blair on Galaxy probably because seriously even postgame is mostly a joke until Sphere 200 or so. Also, you need a maxed-out Metal Pipe for BTs but I already wasted my life on that and am SO never doing it again.

Also, winning all three holodeck battles is incredibly difficult even on Galaxy. Probably worse than soloing Lenneth due to lack of skills and items. (If you somehow mean the robots in the escape corridor though, that's a doddle.)

Then I expect 100% fully upgraded Longswords as early as possible.

1) Doesn't matter.
2) Galaxy or Universe, whichever you prefer.
3) Nel, because the other three are annoying as hell.

Looking forward to this; I, too, enjoyed this game, mostly for the combat and music.

4D it is. Nel is the only character I remember really liking from this game, so go with her, I don't care who else.

Full disclosure: Since I am bad at video games, and partially because I got bored, I haven't finished this game myself.

Totally Nel, she's a breath of fresh air. And love that scarf.

Shame she doesn't have any pants.

I never could get into Star Ocean, mostly because of the whole space thing. I will be watching this thread to see if it changes my mind.

But Star Ocean is notoriously not about space!

tri-Ace is good at adding just the right amounts of things to make everybody sad.

Except me.

Also: 2 optionals. One vote is fine, two votes is great, three votes will probably cause me to ignore one arbitrarily.

Oh right, forgot to vote for a difficulty.

Well, if you think you're capable of 4D and can pull it off without the entire LP becoming a chore for you, then sure, go for it. Lord knows I'll never attempt it myself.

Though I'd be fine with just Universe if 4D becomes too overwhelming.

Yeah I vote Universe just for the sane option.

I was pretty surprised to learn this myself.

Can you end up with Cliff? One of the few things I remember about this game is how slash-friendly Fayt/Cliff was. If not, Nel.

Do something sane for difficulty. I never beat this game because it was so damn hard later on.

I'd love it if you could unlock and show off the alternate costumes as much as possible.

I played through this once on Galaxy. I'd love to see exactly how much more difficult Universe is.

Also voted for Nel and Albel.

I remember wasting multiple hours on the Item Creation screen, basically waiting for an RNG to decide I'm ready for whatever ultimate weapon. I really did like this game, but between that and The Twist, I don't think I'll be playing it again. Looking forward to seeing it in screenshot form though!

I'm looking forward to this, since every time I've tried playing it, I find the battle system frustrating, and have always felt like I'm doing it wrong. Hopefully I can see how to really play the game, and give it another shot.

Can I just say 'do a Fayt/Sophia/Peppita run at the final boss anyway'?

At any rate. Yaaaaaay, TtEoT! A game I played but never beat! And because of that... go for 4D and, if this amounts to anything, try and beat the game using that set as soon as available. (Which I *know* will take a while because of when Sophia joins the group...)

Also I'm bored and sick of Albnel because that's what EVERYONE picks. And Mirage. So yeah, really not interested in anyone but those three I listed. (Cliff IS cool though.)

Please include screenshots of each and every single eye-gougingly inane box of endless dialogue.

I vote for Universe difficulty.

I actually just started a game of this a week ago after having the discs sitting around for a year, so this might end up being the first LP with which I play along.

I vote for 4D difficulty

Universe difficulty, I've beaten the game on world mode and found it hard enough that I couldn't beat the last boss without using Sophia, after going through the rest of the game without her. I want to see how the game ought to be played, minus any 4D misery.
If there is an ending with Mirage I would like to see that. If not, just snub Sophia at every possible opportunity please.

Get Peppita because I hear she's the only person who can make a philosophers stone that doesn't, you know, require a philosophers stone to recruit. No matter what lies my strategy guide tells me.
I guess Nel is good for the other slot, but she gets kind of boring/unscripted once you leave her planet.

And thus why it baffles me that so many people want her in the party. I voted for her, but only to make sure Albel and Rodger didn't make it in.

End it with Adray.

Take Peppita and Roger with you, because I had Nel and Albel in my playthrough.

Adray Universe

And I voted for the little annoying fucker in exchange for not voting for 4D.

Nel is the only reasonable option.

Also, let's go with Universe

4D minimum post length padding.

1) Adray.
2) Universe.
3) Albel and Peppita.

Reasons? Adray is clearly awesome, Universe is the sane option, and a mix of Peppita sounding useful and being cute... and Albel sounding like he'll be good for a few yaoi-riffic laughs.

That's certainly true.