Cyuss: He temporarily joins Roddick and Ilia early on for an Item Shop Request.I will use the spelling for their names from the PSP version which is different for most in FDR. Before I forget, Dorne permanently leaves the party early on due to storyline reasons before the main story begins. I say this because she also appears in every other Star Ocean game and looks exactly the same. Welch, who is also recruitable in Second Departure either doesn’t age or is some kind of Time Traveler. You can see the comparisons in artwork very nicely here. There are only 8 character slots and some characters require either specific characters or that you don’t have more than a certain amount when the chance to recruit them comes.īefore I break it down, there are 4 characters you will always have: Roddick, Ilia, Millie and Ronyx. While the game does have linear storytelling, what sets FD/FDR apart from most RPG series is not just the fact most of the playable characters have very specific recruitment conditions but it is impossible to recruit all of them in a single playthrough. I actually got a new adapter for my PSP 3000 via Amazon over the summer so I could replay both UMD games starting with FD (You can’t get them digitally for the PSP or Vita on that note). It is easily the most popular game in the entire series and I’ll do my best to explain why in a separate review. Fans are clamoring for Second Departure to get re-released, myself among them. Star Ocean 2 was also released on the PSP as Star Ocean: Second Departure. Originally released on the Super Famicom (Japan’s version of the SNES) by Enix (now Square Enix), Star Ocean and its direct Sequel Star Ocean 2 would not be released outside Japan until 20 respectively on the PSP. FDR is a port of FD which itself is a remake of the original Star Ocean 1. The artwork for the characters in FDR is updated but like FD, their respective personalities are not changed. If it wasn't for the level strat I'd probably have dropped this, and it made me commit a major JRPG sin - knowingly skipping sidequests.I’m showing the artwork for both but First Departure R (Henceforth FDR) is identical to First Departure (henceforth FD) aside from the different artwork. Since I'm a stubborn idiot I almost always did the latter. I eventually did a cheese quick level strat and the latter half of the game was mostly a breeze, despite continuing to be annoying(worth saying that the encounter rate is ridiculous, even with the Lv10 Scouting skill lowering encounters it's still like 3 a screen).Īnother hilariously frustrating thing is how some enemies have movement skills that make them effectively impossible to hit, so there's a bunch of battles in which my option was to trigger the 10sec long escape function or take the gamble and spam X and watch as my entire party chases around the enemy and hope that turns out quicker. If you don't, you get stat checked into oblivion. It's full of complex systems that don't get explained in the least, are extremely prone to failure(love that even a skill that you have leveled up to 10 on a character that has specific talents for it still fails like 30% of the time), and yet the gameplay never goes beyond mashing X and hoping the AI companions don't act too stupid.īoth the length/story problem is massively exacerbated by the fact at least a third of the game is backtracking, and yet you're expected to keep on leveling up as if you're climbing a progression curve. The 20ish hour campaign has about 20 minutes total of character development and story combined. The simple mechanics provide a very low skill floor, but there's often room to display mastery.įirst Departure R kinda turns all of that on its head. The often excessive length makes you care more for the characters, the world and the story being told. JRPGs are a genre that is divisive in part because it has some built in give and take.
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