tri-Ace presents: Infinite Comedy Tropes Ocean 5 MK 2016

We all know (and knew) where this was going, so I’ll get the obvious outta the way right now …

… no ifs, ands or butts (tbh though i cannot comply w/ one of these, guess which one )






So!
We do have the usual fare, nice-ish gfx that are somehow a bit sterile/lack behind other titles,

a kitschy and almost-unbearable main cast …

and last but not least,


kill aliens from planet kill on a peaceful mission.

What else do you need?

(more to come when uploading of pxxx works again…)

the eurogamer review was actually just ten paragraphs of bafflement at what standard-bearer jRPGs are like now

I almost want it

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i’m always shocked when i hear there’s a new star ocean or tales thing
do people actually like / play them

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Man, like, people go to anime conventions I see pictures of it on the internet and everything so almost certainly.

The only people who still anticipate new Star Ocean games love them. They’ll do the super-hard optional dungeons and cry when they defeat a boss. That’s the sort of audience tri-Ace is courting. It’s also worth noting that the devs came up with the subtitle before anything else. I skipped through a seventy-minute gameplay video and it looked excruciatingly boring. If anyone here is interested, you should prob just watch a cutscene compilation.

Maybe not even that, though. I doubt 5’s narrative is as insane and bad as 4’s.

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I worked on a portion of the English dub for this game. There is a massive, massive amount of talking in this game.

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I’m kind of excited to play this game when it drops in price a bit. I enjoyed Star Ocean 2 and 3 a lot – and I played 3 this decade, so, my tastes haven’t changed that much. I am sure it will be a dozen kinds of a mess, but that’s what I like out of Tri-Ace’s games.

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So, I guess I am a weirdo then, because I have never - i repeat, never - beat anything optional in tri-ace games (and I am super-smug about that as well, like an inverted taking-pride-in-achieving-sth kind of way. been always hanging on when the ride got bumpy, and pulled through by sheer luck/making good use of all the items to your disposal).


I'd rather suggest that some gamers/or maybe only me are in it for the battle system, Motoi and/or the unintended comedy that is a trademark of a proper tri-Ace game.

Regarding 5’s narrative … well, it’s the usual weird Star Ocean fare so far (10 hours in).
Like, here are those four teenagers and a child who wanna loiter around the front line in a war, does that sound like a good idea? Yes, that’d be a great help! - followed by mysterious girl X stuns Kill Aliens from Planet Kill to be killed before they kill us/kidnap (literally) mysterious girl, followed by hey there, bring mysterious girl X to place Y, maybe they have clue! (because it hasn’t worked the last five times and we always ended up being surprised by FOEs/Kill Aliens that wanna - rinse&repeat.

But it looks so nice!





well, actually, I kinda should show what you’re seeing most of the time, before continuing
=> continuing where creep left off:
taken a random screenshot from Mademoiselle Welsh for a friend to tease him, and look what I’ve got by accident:


it’s like the game’s purpose is solely to be 1/2 innuendo fanboy heaven when it isn’t a j-teenager fanfic drama with spaceships in the remaining 1/2 half.



That aside, when you are not watching butts of some sort:

followed by


followed by

followed by

  • you’ve probably guessed it, most of the time you have absolutely no idea what*s going on in battle, and you’ll be seeing that a lot.

19 hours in, and I started making good use of the systems to players’ disposal:
using an EXP-boost-accessory + a “trading EXP for SP (skill-points)” accessory plus the ocarina (seriously)-skill to respawn enemies is a godsend, and makes you max most of the skills you can get up till then. And farm some not-so-easy-to-find items.





space-soap-opera-drama-wise it continues to be comedy at its best, what with overloading-warp-drive-to-blast-up-enemy-ship-galore and all.

doubling up - 38h gone, and I’m not done. In a game that supposedly is over in sub-20-hours, nontheless.




time then to update what I’ve seen during that time:
(and let’s get the quite obvious thing on everyones’ mind out of the way first then)

… and focus on what really matters:


and

and

…… whatever the hell happened there???






anyway, the best feature of this game? almost always full control over the camera + emotes.



yes, they do have an emote-skill in this game. In a surprising turn of events, what sounds like a terrible idea, turns out to be one!

…… yeaaaaah sure.





anyway, random shots-galore!

(now who’s the slowpoke, eh?)











tl;dr-version:
if you like to have HOT duelling action

while kicking back sometimes …

… meeting some cute kittens …

… or grown-up, manly men …

… enjoying wonderful breaking-the-fourth-wall-moments …

… while playing games where you can let swords do the talking …

… and, last but not least, enjoy some clipping into weird furries action -

  • then it just might be your game.
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Integrity, Faithlessness and Dat Sweet, Sweet Ass

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yes, that sweet ass…………hole called Fidel is back for good, in the last part of our tumblr-soap-space-opera called Integrity & Faithlessness (come to think of it, Faize (spoken as Faith or Fate in the game) has been part of the last game, Lost Hope, and I can 100% vouch for him not turning up in the game, so technically it is Faizeless … but i digress)

so, Spoilerz ahead, beware and turn around as long as you can.














still here? well, here goes nothing:




last time we left our heroes, Monsieur Fidel was laughing at a poor dude he killed just moments ago, and continuing to get the juvenile jokes out of the way first, away 'ye go

and on to the stuff you’ll be encountering around every corner in this game,

like killing dinos,

playing pranks on 'yer mates as a ghost,

slipping on slippery spaceship floors,

unleashing the drama-queen inside you,

talking to futuristic spaceship walls,

engaging in wonderfully bizarre spacetime-blah theories,

talking endlessly about stuff like it’s too dangerous to try to appease the kill aliens from planet kill

yet turning up there seconds later …

… only to find out that the kill aliens from planet kill aren’t as cool as expected, just some jerks …

… you do away with in the usual fashion


(hey there mr. kenny, you seem to be enjoying the hell out of this mess, eh?)





… but in the end, it’s not about fighting, it’s about the deep stuff:


…… says who?





anyway, because Monsieur Fidel is such a great comrade, together they head off

to listen to more space-opera talk,

before heading off

to fight the real menace of the universe

in what looks suspiciously like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia

… to listen to some more bs-talk before Monsieur Supervillain decides it’s time to duel:

… not without taking the chance to chat some more


because he’s so happy he finally meets our Kenny in RL.




Still, he’s not-so-versed in movies, what with his TRON costume X Minion(s) mashup

… before realizing that he just maybe could transform to his final form to state the obvious:

and having another epiphany …

… before being wiped out in an easy-to-follow-Michael-Bay-would-be-crying-fashion:





no need to hate on that poor director for the trophy in that screencap, we’re talking about a game where ailments continue to be displayed in cutscenes,

and tbh, the cast …


… I rest my case.











… so, after all is said and done, all’s well that ends well, right?




#… or Not.

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tl;dr:

I had a great time with it!
My version of the tale might have one or two things mixed up on the timeline, granted, but it sure as hell is a bit of a convoluted mess of a space opera that doesn’t hold a chance against what games can do in 2016™.

Is that a bad thing though?
I think not, because I tend to take forever to finish games, and this has been wrapped up after sixteen days, sth. that might be a new record for me when it comes to finishing games.




Yes, the cast is almost unbearable (especially Miki and Relia, this is not a kindergarten rpg, for gods sake…) and the game jumps the shark through some hoops in warp-5 mode when it wants to progress the story, and this happens on some occasions and in such a fashion that you start to think that some parts of the game (as intended) were just outright cut or never done and they somehow had to connect the dots of the set pieces, so they went ahead and left out some parts that might(?) have been great to see … but after playing the game, i wonder if maybe not.

As the short recap already suggests, the best time was had when you could (mis-)use the emotes to create your very own space-soap-comedy-opera. idk, maybe it is just me that expects more™ out of the games I spend time with, but comparing it to the last, rpg-ish game I’ve played recently, Fallout 4, does show how far behind this game is in terms of environment, story telling and pacing, and basically any aspect.

… which is fine. I like that it sticks to the J-RPG formula that seemed to have died years ago! It just is a blast to play, what with the effect-overkill that happens for 30ish seconds when you encounter foes, or the cheesy set pieces like the alien spaceship(s). It’s just that the cast was unbearable childish and anime-tropey, and that the game stuck to one planet only - abandoning a thing has been one of the strong points of the former games (at least 3 and 4) is something that I consider a shame, because you could create more diverse set pieces without having to faux-explain their existence.


But then it's a J-RPG. Why would you want to expect more than the convoluted junk food story telling that it is?
So, after all is said and done:
  • was it good?
    Kinda.

  • Good enough that I’ll continue playing the aftergame-content?
    Definitely, because I’m done with the story!

  • Can I recommend playing it?
    If you like what you saw and you thought “man, haven’t had a motoi sakuraba OST-themed game for a long time!”, then yes. YES.

  • what is your favourite emoteeee~?
    laughing heartedly or strike bodybuilder pose, just can’t decide which one fits best most of the time.

  • how long did it take 20ish hours?
    nope, 52. Because I did all the side quests … I enjoy the fighting in this game a lot, so I had a great time chasing after enemy X that has item Y. If you like that kind of thing, here’s your game in a nice 2016 edition! Just don’t expect too much and you’ll have a good time.





so, after all that tl;dr-text, the real tl;dr version:
#~fin~

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You have done a brave thing.

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this is my shit

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this makes me sad that I still can’t play lost odyssey in an emulator because there is a part of me that craves this but I just don’t want to sit in front of a TV for it

then again the last story and xenoblade didn’t do much for me but those were trying too hard in a way that this is distinctly not

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@Felix hmmm … tbh, going back to lost odyssey after playing sth like SO5 (or let’s just say a modern JRPG-ish game) would feel like moving from a platinum game like VANQUISH to a strategy RPG.

It
just
would
move
at
a
glacial …




pace …

… sth. that isn’t wrong, mind you; but you absolutely would have to be in the mood for the more sluggish’y feeling of a RPG. If this is what you are looking for, then I’d really give it a shot - it’d be interesting to hear someone playing a game that feels like a successor to FFX in 2016.


I _do_ know, however, that I won't touch anything non-tri-Ace RPGish for a while until I've forgotten about the sheer _speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed_ of the experience …
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Have to say I love what garish messes of hot garbage this and SO4’s final areas are

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