It's impressing to see this game running on a Super Famicom. From the beginning, where you are treated to a Star Trek-like scene with a full English voice acting performed by none other than Robert Belgrade, to the rest of your journey where you have a world full of options to explore and systems to fiddle, SO is truly a marvel in forcing its hardware to do things it shouldn't even be possible.
The action gameplay is fun enough not to become boring, although the very frequent random encounters do turn annoying, it's nice to change characters, builds and work with the skills and crafting/smithing/alchemy/whatever mechanics the game offers, and even though you control only one character, the AI is surprisingly effective for the rest of your party members, they hold themselves in combat pretty well and I rarely had to change the Strategy on the Tactics section, although it is an option to guide the members better, it's far from mandatory.
The story is kinda bland and the sci-fi and futuristic setting gets a bit sidelined for the most part of the game, and you only get focused on it in the beginning and the end of the game. It adds a bit of charm and mystery to the advanced technology present in the lore and it may be more developed in the sequels, but for those who are expecting a Star Trek RPG, it's good to be forewarned of this condition.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

If you've played Star Ocean: The Second Story, you've pretty much got the idea behind Star Ocean. This isn't a knock against either game, though; it's more of a testament to how groundbreaking the original was. Er, is. You've got the same basic combat system, along with lots of skills that can be leveled up, and a whole crapload of mostly-useless items. Private Actions are also possible, where you hit a button before you go into a town, and your party splits up to explore the town individually. In the end, though, it just ends up as a way to have even more people to talk to in town. Though it has a use or two.

The combat's very different, though. All the action takes place on one non-scrolling screen. This eliminates a lot of running around like a dumbass from the second game, and makes the battles a lot more strategic. This also makes the “run-behind-the-enemy-and-then-attack” maneuver invaluable, as there seem to be a lot of enemies that block all your attacks from the front. Of course, in the second game, all that move did was suddenly make you run around in circles instead of, you know, attacking.

I know, comparisons in reviews suck. Especially if you have no idea that a Star Ocean 2 (or 3!) even exists. But really, Star Ocean is a great game with beautiful graphics and music by The Man, Motoi Sakuraba. It has one of those “hey, if you're not at a certain level right now, you're going to be slaughtered here, but oh wait, you can't go back to previous areas from this point so you can level up” things going on at the end, but up until then it's great.