Star Ocean: First Departure

Reviewed by Jason Venter (November 30, 2008)

It's all quite basic and it works smoothly without any noteworthy hitches except the obvious one: it gets repetitive. By the time you reach the end of the game, you'll probably have faced more than 800 different enemy groups, with most battles won simply by spamming your basic sword strokes and perhaps the same projectile spell. You can experiment with numerous variations if you like, but there's no incentive to do so... especially since almost any rival can be overcome simply by level grinding (though frankly, that's seldom even necessary).