Star Ocean: The First Departure R

This new remaster is based off a PSP remake released in Japan in 2007, of a Super Famicon game released in Japan in 1996. It features all the upgrades of the PSP version with some extras and tweaks to boot. Arrive to the year 2019 and we get the best starting point into the Star Ocean series with Star Ocean: The First Departure R, available on Switch and PS4.

You have access to a surprising amount of voiced scenes in both Japanese and English. There is a new recording of the original Japanese cast as well so you have 3 options to go between if you wanted a change. The only point where the voice acting can be considered a downside is something you'll experience in battles and during the victory screen after battles. Combat arts and spell phrases are shouted out by characters as soon as they are used, with no delay or priority. You are going to get these clusters of intersecting voice clips that mash into nonsense. Victory screens share the same issue where all characters will say their victory lines all together. It's an odd issue that I feel could be easily improved by adding delay between clips, and balancing the audio to be quieter for non-controlled characters. They can still do their voice spamming but it'll be less annoying.

Alongside the character portraits from the PSP version; there is a new updated option which adds so much more life and detail to the characters. You are free to swap between them in-game.

Amongst the new additions to the game, the most helpful of them is definitely the x2 speed when travelling. It'd be more accurate to call it a sprint though as it doesn't affect anything else other than movement speed outside of combat. It makes travelling about the world both breezy and delightful.

Overworld movement is played out on a downscaled environment. The overworld is 3D modeled and the camera can be rotated left/right around the character. Battles are fought through random encounters as you move about. It's similar to Final Fantasy 7 through Final Fantasy 9 at least in world map movement.

Early on you'll gain access to a skill that unlocks a specialty that allows you to increase or decrease the encounter rate at will. Specialties are basically "out of combat" abilities.

Combat itself feels fun but is overall lacking in depth. Beside basic movement; fighters have access to their basic attack, and 2 assignable buttons for combat arts. Blocking, jumping, and aerial attacks all happen automatically. You can't even swap out your arts or equipment in the middle of battle. If an enemy ends up absorbing whatever element your weapon or art has then you'll just have to run away or hope it's not a boss encounter or arena fight, in which case you'll have to die.

It's not until much later in the game you unlock a counter skill but even that is unreliable.

Spellcasters on the other hand have access to their entire spell list, or 'symbology' as per the game terms. However, symbology sufferes from unskippable aniamtions that halts time for everything and everyone in combat. It's a waste of time to have any more than 1 mage in your active party otherwise you'll be watching more than playing.

Combat encounters mostly comes down to stunlocking or interrupting an enemy until it's dead.

There was one point where the combat difficulty spiked. I needed to craft and grind for a bit to make any progress but thankfully it was a once off incident, or at least it was in my case.

The First Departure R has a bunch of recruitable characters. Beside the 4 main characters, you can recruit an additional 4 party members from a pool of 9 optional characters. Frustratingly, without a guide you can easily lock yourself out from even meeting these characters alongside many private scenes involving them.

The relative short length of the game is to it's favour when it comes to learning about these characters and where they end up. You see, there is multiple ending scenes according to which characters you have and what affection level they have with each other. The overall ending is the same however.

I managed to complete the main story in just over 20 hours. Compared to other JRPG's that length may feel quite short. I personally appreciated the refreshing length though, the game did have some pacing issues but it never felt slow or boring at any point.

Would I recommend this game? Absolutely! The game is mostly basic but it is enjoyable. It's a grand starting point for players new to the genre or the Star Ocean series as a whole. For €20 the price is reasonable for the amount of time players will be spending with it, and there is even more to offer for those willing to grind and delve into the secret dungeons and hidden enemies.