DUMA, the futuristic, thingy-doobry flying device, gives this an extra star out of whatever by itself. Once you get it combat gets a lot more fun and it really helps whipping around the world. It raises an otherwise dreadful game into something I definitely... played.

The rest is a mess. Ignore anything saying this is a return to form for Star Ocean. That's laughable after just playing the done up second one recently. Everything other than zipping about hither and dither is boring! The story is drivel, all the characters are dead inside, and the cutscenes where all the plot are stored are amaturish.

I got through this game by skipping entire cutscenes. They're all needlessly wordy blah blah that add nothing. Barely plot, definitely not character. I don't know why they were even cutscenes, it was just character models standing relatively still with some basic camera scans. This could have been all chat as you keep traversing one end of a map to another in what makes for the bulk of the game. But they probably didn't do that because when that happens half the game functionality doesn't work! No pause menu, no map, no scanning for stuff. Shut the hell up, I got stuff to do!

It's got a massive cheapness to it that is distracting. It's hard to go to this after playing Tales of Arise that is a relatively similar game, with a similar budget and team, taking fairly similar shortcuts too keep that down. But where they knew where to skimp and where to polish, this just looks like ran out of time and money.

Bom jogo, do começo até quase o fim.

Alma de jogo de ps2, charmoso, bom sistema de batalha e, em geral, com um ritmo ótimo.

Infelizmente, o final do jogo quebra interrompe o fluxo, tanto na narrativa quanto no design das dungeons. Não é o suficiente para invalidar o resto da experiência de jogo, mas quase desisti no fim.

Considering that Star Ocean V might genuinely be one of the worst games I've played within the last few years, I was pleasently surprised to see that Star Ocean VI was significantly better. That's not to say that this game is great, it's just not bad either -- it's comfortably... decent.

The game's combat is really strong and feels great. Building combos is a lot of fun, especially when you're working out how to chain certain moves together. Combat, however, does get dry by the game's end since you'll have unlocked your entire moveset by the halfway point.

The story here is plodding. It never really hits any particular highs and the characters are fairly "functional" with very little depth. They work well together and their interactions are charming but the party isn't a particularly memorable bunch unfortunately. The story also takes a long time to actually get going and when it does it settles into, again, just being very "okay".

Visuals are really nice until you need to look at a character's face, which are doll-like and so expressionless that the disconnect between the (actually pretty good) voice work and the character faces is genuinely really uncanny. Music is fine, just typical Motoi Sakuraba stuff, nothing you're going to remember once the credits roll.

In short this game is very much "okay" like if you can grab it for dirt cheap or something then give it a whirl. You're unlikely to find much of note here, but it might be, if nothing else, a nice thing to play between other games you care about. If nothing else if Star Ocean VII is an improvement over this one, then we could have something good on our hands.

I ended up really enjoying this, even though you can feel the budget a lot and the engine runs really poorly on PC. The combat is as fun as it’s ever been and since you can basically fly, exploration is fun in a way that I haven’t experienced in other games.

Weirdly, the game’s best parts are kind of opposed: the exploration and combat really excel in the game’s wide open spaces as you fly and dash around but the plot really gets good in the back end as you end up on ships and high tech installations. There are some well-done Star Trek style ship combat cutscenes where everything plays out on the bridge because there’s no budget to show actual ship combat.

I do hope Tri-Ace get another one of these as they’re definitely on the right path with this series.

Steam Deck report: Steam says this is not compatible but I played a fair amount of it. The problem is performance: there are areas which just hobble the frame rate for seemingly no reason and in some areas the Deck will be in the high teens without actually showing anything interesting. There’s a room in a town full of crystals which maxed out my 3080 to the point where it dropped to 45fps, just with some crystals. Weird stuff.

As a more general PC port point the game tries to pre-compile shaders with varying levels of success as the game will still stutter on quite a lot of effects. Weirdly the downloadable shaders on the Deck don’t seem to stick either which made the first run through in some cutscenes genuinely painful with multiple-second pauses.

brinca muito com a omissão de informações, o fato de você poder escolher um dos dois protagonista para ser seu principal realça a estética daquele personagem (fantasia ou sci-fi) nos primeiros terços do jogo, até que eles alcancem o entendimento mútuo.

a forma mais clara disso é, claro, separar os personagens em diversos momentos. so6 tem a coragem de confiar que quem jogou vai se satisfazer não presenciando os eventos que acontecem quando o outro protagonista não está por perto. quando os protagonistas estão no mesmo patamar de conhecimentos (cada um interpretando a tecnologia de seu jeito) as cenas não divergem mais tanto, pois os conceitos no último 1/4 de jogo são bem alienígenas para ambos.

lindo estudo sobre consciência na internet e como nossos quartinhos mentais tomariam forma num meio virtual.

After I realized I was twenty levels under the recommended level for the two final bosses, I stopped trying to brute-force them and just watched the ending on YouTube. This game's approach to difficulty in general kinda confused me sometimes, but if you're ready to grind (which I am not) then you'll have no issues, I think. Other than that? I think the first ten hours were the most straight-up fun I had with a JRPG in a while: the vibes and towns and music and visual design is just really lovely and well-done in this game and actually carried me just until the ending. I love these little villages and towns with their own color schemes and hidden secrets. The graphics of the game are really good in that aspect, and I'd argue, in general. Theres a roughness to it all that's really charming. The character designs are all really lovely, too! I just like this games' vibes a lot. The story is middling at best but at least finds an interesting enough plot point to settle on in the last hour. Gameplay is also fun enough and I really appreciate the games insistence on throwing 10+ enemies at you at once, those were the best battles. The entire experience lost a lot of steam for me after the 15hr mark, but those first 15hrs were really great and what came after was still good enough!

Star Ocean 2 is one of my all-time favorite games, for its visual splendor, loveable cast, strange narrative choices, combat that is goofy and sometimes opaque but also flexible and tough. Against all odds, Star Ocean 6 delivers on all of those things I loved about its clear inspiration (structurally, aesthetically, and narratively, Star Ocean 6 is the sequel to Star Ocean 2, not 3, 4, or 5, down to the starting choice between a blond space-faring male protag or an earnest local girl). The implementation is wholly modern, with the huge obnoxious compass pointing your way, fast and flashy combat, layers of menus with elaborate UI that take sometimes takes several seconds to load, and (most entertainingly) the ability to zoom and leap around all the buildings. But its core design, including structure, pacing, and narrative presentation, haven’t updated a bit. The cutscenes and dialogue feel strange and stilted until you realize the way the characters move and talk is straight out of 1999. It’s the soul of the Playstation 1 in a smooth, shiny, modern mech suit. It’s also the snappiest and crunchiest popcorn-bucket RPG I’ve ever played. Zooming around really is a constant delight. Laeticia and Midas are two of my favorite characters in any video game, elevated by exceptional (if goofy and stilted, of course) voice acting. The environments are gorgeous, with absolutely wild skyboxes in the planetbound early game, and later sci fi imagery that more than fulfills their promise. Just like Star Ocean 2, and as much any any other RPG I’ve played, it delighted me from start to finish.

The Divine Brute Force

My friend worked his *ss off on this game and wasn't credited so thanks Tri-Ace.

That being said, the game sorta feels like a return to a more ambitious A-RPG for the series.

The highlight of the game is of course the ability to dash in the air and have some vertical exploration in the needlessly big environments as well as some fast-paced action in battles.

Said battles are very easy and don't require much strategy except slashing your way through everything as fast as possible.

The story takes quite some time to begin but is pretty fun to follow once it starts.

I enjoyed the characters but the models and animations look absolutely dreadful.

First Star Ocean I have ever played. Finished a single playthrough with Raymond with no post-game done aside from farming for ultimate armors/weapons at the end.

I'm not really a fan of combat systems that use a single Action Point resource for all attacks/actions, specially when you are forced to wait in the middle of battle for it to recharge. Luckily this is not that big of an issue thanks to the ambush mechanic that allows you increase your AP bar before and during battle. I quickly set into one combo that I basically used during most of the game. Personally didn't have an issue repeating the same button combination 90% of the game but I think is something it needs to be mentioned.

Really liked that the EXP is shared between all party members, even if they aren't one of the four active ones. If you keep an eye on upgrading the equipment of your reserve members, you shouldn't have an issue when you inevitably unbench them. The difficulty curve was fine most of the time, only had issues with some bosses were I had no trouble with the dungeon but the boss at the end just straight up wiped the floor with me. Learned the hard way to have a save just before the boss encounter to be able to exit the fight without lossing the progress done during the dungeon.

The story is just serviceable. It showed some promise of adressing the issues of "futuristic" characters influencing the medieval characters during the first act, but I feel this was left aside at around the second half of the story. Not really a fan of how the Private Action scenes are handled, felt like you had to backtrack to previous locations after each story beat to see all of the conversations with your party.

My biggest issue is the heavy reliance the game has on RNG. Just straight up ignored most side quests that required gathering items from monsters, since I was burned up pretty early by some bad luck when farming item drops.
The crafting system also leaves you at the mercy of the RNG, but I guess its the price to pay to being able to just plow through the game with OP weapons and armors as soon as you unlock the smithing/crafting abilities.

I played on Xbox One in performance mode, they aren't kidding when they say that the resolution will be sacrificed since the game was a blurry mess. The issue is that the framerate still drops a lot both during combat with lots of enemies or effects, and during exploration in a couple of areas. Only had two crashes during all my playtime, both during boss fights which forced me to restart the encounters in both cases.

This is a "7/10" game in the most complimentary of ways. If other platforms can handle the game on a stable framerate and/or less blurriness I could increase the score to an 8, so looking forward to revisit the game on PC and hope the technical issues aren't as noticeable.

there are cool things added but unfortunately the loss of being able to set allies to manual and keep them on standby to be called as an assist for combos was disappointing especially when characters like nina have moves that would be so good for said purpose. the big areas in which you fight would also fight would also make this awkward even if you could do such a thing. not a fan of how a lot of moves simply don't affect a juggled enemy beyond doing damage and letting them just drop to the ground and not experience knockback is really disappointing. vanguard assaults can be cool but not being to do the manually aimed one at will in combat without awkwardly trying to get every enemy offscreen first is frustrating (and also trying not to accidentally fly out of the fight area and escape in the process)
also, not a fan of losing max AP whenever you get in hitstun, making the game rough on characters who don't get access to no guard's super armor and even more of a pain in boss fights where there's only one enemy where it sucks to try and regain max AP.
I like ray's english VA and the princess is mega cute though I wanna pinch her face

Dipping my toes into this one, since I've heard good things. So far, I am enjoying the slightly brainless combat, it's legit fun just running around and beating the heck out of everything.

You can kinda tell where they cut corners because of budget reasons. Aside from the characters, which all look really good, the rest feels like they're re-using FFXIV assets? I can recognize some of the "emote" animations. Very rudimentary facial animations. It's very odd, but somehow still charming?

I'm diggin' it, tho. Surprisingly fun. I just hope it can deliver more on the sci-fi aspect, because I want dumb anime Star Trek adventures.