Ughhhh... It's so generic and boring

[Please be nice to me!]

I'm starting to think so4 was a fluke. It had soul, fun and memorable scenes, cool humor, great characters etc.

And what does so2, so5 and so6 have? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ NOTHING. It's just generic mind numbing slop.

And you wouldn't believe it - among many people SO4 considered the worst entry somehow. What the actual ♥♥♥♥?

I haven't played so1 and so3 yet but if they are like so2/so5/so6 - why even bother? I had so much hope for the series after I completed so4 - turns out it was the peak all along.

And i gotta say - SO5 gathered so much hate too but it much more fun to play than so2/so6.
It's still a mid game but at least it had some merits. SO6/SO2 have none.

[Please be nice to me!]

I think at some point (2005-2010) tri-Ace had a bunch of talented writers who produced the most hilarious scenes for their games like this:
https://youtu.be/XlHZrBUimuY?si=jGpoxN2jas2gRpjl
https://youtu.be/sT6wi4D1iBQ?si=c1ZgPoVAk0n7bACA
And then they just left and all enjoyment from their game left too.
Like there is not a single fun scene or dialog in SO6. NONE. In an entire game there is nothing memorable. There are just generic robotic dialogues and soul crashing grind between them.

[Axel Arden]

That's how nostalgia works. You're almost always going to prefer the first in a series you experienced, especially if you were younger when you played it. Personally, none of the other games compare to SO2 for me -- SO3 was okay. SO4 was janky, the combat felt bad, the voice acting was atrocious, and I never finished it. I haven't played anything after 4 because SO2 is all I need. I was 12 when I played it and ages 10-12 are when peak nostalgia forms. But that doesn't mean it's objectively the best and that nobody else is allowed to prefer the other ones.

[Bob Brosse]

I love the ending between Celine and Precis, especially the voice acting from the random man in the JP dub :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZzYE2Vejyw

[Please be nice to me!]

Originally posted by nockturn:

SO4 was janky, the combat felt bad, the voice acting was atrocious, and I never finished it.

So4 combat is the most deep and advanced in the series.
Voice acting is amazing unless you play in dub for some reason. Steam version has japanese + eng subs option.

[ArchBishop]

Originally posted by nockturn:

That's how nostalgia works. You're almost always going to prefer the first in a series you experienced, especially if you were younger when you played it.

This was me for SO3. Played it in 2nd grade c: Though, I have grown to love SO2 as well. I remember being so excited for SO4 when growing up too. Rented it from the local DVD rental store as many times as I could. Never managed to beat it though. Those dungeons are lengthy.

[raelynne63]

Originally posted by nockturn:

That's how nostalgia works. You're almost always going to prefer the first in a series you experienced, especially if you were younger when you played it. Personally, none of the other games compare to SO2 for me -- SO3 was okay. SO4 was janky, the combat felt bad, the voice acting was atrocious, and I never finished it. I haven't played anything after 4 because SO2 is all I need. I was 12 when I played it and ages 10-12 are when peak nostalgia forms. But that doesn't mean it's objectively the best and that nobody else is allowed to prefer the other ones.

This for me, though I was a lot older when i played SO2. It's my favorite of the set. I really did enjoy playing SO1 when it came out on the PSP, but a lot of that was sentimental from SO2 characters and story. 2 will always be my favorite.

[Kenpachi]

Credits are rolling as we speak...I put 300 hours into the original SO2 (I'm 41 now, was 14-ish when I played it IIRC) and all I can say is...this seems like a shallow shell of what I believed it to be, but I think that's just a result of taking of said glasses and viewing it through the lens of an adult..still, feelsbadman...I swear other remakes hold up better than this....but can't think of any...which probably means they, in fact, do not. Growing up sucks.

[250 Kroot Hounds]

Originally posted by Kenpachi:

Credits are rolling as we speak...I put 300 hours into the original SO2 (I'm 41 now, was 14-ish when I played it IIRC) and all I can say is...this seems like a shallow shell of what I believed it to be, but I think that's just a result of taking of said glasses and viewing it through the lens of an adult..still, feelsbadman...I swear other remakes hold up better than this....but can't think of any...which probably means they, in fact, do not. Growing up sucks.

I actually think it holds up pretty well all things considered and this is coming from the lens of someone in their mid 30s that didn't play the OG version of Star Ocean 2 or even its PSP rerelease and their first exposure to the series was at Star Ocean 3. Always heard alot about it and its praises, but R gave me a reason to finally go to it and I was fresh off a SO1R playthrough. I say SO2R lived up to the hype it gets and I like the art style they gave it for this version

It might've been that 300 hours of yours in the original version and knowing that SO2R doesn't really add much but a new coat of paint. You basically seen and knew all it had to offer right from the word go. Probably a closer comparison for me would be Grandia II, loved that game to death when I was younger and then the HD release hit, played it and yea story is hokey/predictable as all get out through the lens of an older me. Doesn't discount that I still love it tho.

[SourPatchKidd]

The reason people hated SO4 was because of the story as a whole. And as far as we know, the "Missing Procedure" was never truly even dealt with, and the final boss we got was.... Faize??? Character-wise, Meracle and Bacchus were the only two I really cared for. Reimi was very generic. Edge had his moments, but he was otherwise pretty bland in his own right. Sarah was your typical ditz. Myuria was just the flirty one with boobs and a somewhat tragic backstory. Realistically though, if you've watched a lot of anime, you've already met most of the characters in the Start Ocean franchise as a whole.

As far as skits though, I think some of it just comes naturally from the fact that SO2 is a product of the late 90s. At that point, game makers were still kind of trying to figure out the right way to tell a story, especially because the only way to tell it at the time was primarily through text. People already bash on SO2 for being very text-heavy at times, so in a way, I can understand why tri-Ace didn't want to add more, even if it would have served to flesh out the characters a bit more - especially in the 2nd half of the game.

As for the plot, SO2 and SO3 are probably the strongest in my opinion, but when it comes to the story-telling, I do have to agree that SO4 does a much better job of it, especially over SO2. I would also agree that SO4's combat has so far been my favorite. SO3's combat will always be my least favorite, primarily because of the Fury gauge, but also because it feels like unless you're using someone like Maria, your attacks are going to miss A LOT in that game I dunno, maybe that latter part is a skill issue on my part.

As for SO5 and SO6, I've yet to play either of them, so I'm not able to respond to how good or bad they are.

[Briscuit]

this is funny to read as alot of people dont like 4

[Seraphita]

This thread is probably a joke. SO4 was a cringefest with 0% seriousness to it. I liked some characters like Meracle in design and battle but that's it. No memorable moments from it. Nothing that would make me want to EVER return to it. The story was worse than SO3.

Like, even with SO3's weirdest plot twist, I still enjoyed the game twice and I hold good memories of it. It's the last game where devs at least cared to make the game look good. SO4 looks like a mountain of memes piled together with terrible attempt at humor. x.x

The only redeeming point of SO4 is the combat. IF anything. This remake as it is, is the definitive version of SO2. With all we've got so far, I doubt anyone could make the game better than it currently is. Not everyone may like it but as a fan of SO2, I was satisfied.

[Second Duke Revier]

shrugs People are entitled to their opinions. Dunno why the poster felt like expressing their hate of SO2 in an SO2 forum though.

[Ranzera]

I think part of the charm of this game is a "you had to be there" component. When this game landed on the PSX, no game was as deep, good looking and thought out as this game in one package. FFVII was about the closest you could get, but this game was just so much prettier. It was one of those quantum leaps forward in quality.

For those of us that were there, we fell in love with it immediately. For those of us that were there, there's a lot of nostalgia attached to it.

[PozerWolf]

To each their own. I thought Star Ocean 4 was by far the worst in the series in every aspect.

[Tiapriestess]

Originally posted by PozerWolf:

To each their own. I thought Star Ocean 4 was by far the worst in the series in every aspect.

SO4 had the best battle system of the first five Star Ocean games (I haven't played SO6 yet so can't comment on that one yet. S03's battle system, bonus gauge, and ungodly plot twist 70% through the game make that one a lot of players' least favorite. SO5 wins least favorite for me since I liked SO3, minus said plot twist. What killed SO5 for me almost instantly was the camera. I'm not known for being susceptible to motion sickness, but SO5 did it for me. The camera was up the character's butt so closely that its constant bobbing up and down gave me vertigo and then some. And since Squeenix never bothered to fix either that or the constant tripping on a pebble in the "live field combat" locations, that game got uninstalled before I even made it to the second town.

Where SO4 failed, and pretty hard, was a combination of some supremely obnoxious VA for Edge coupled with the unfortunate decision to sample Lymle's voice acting at what appears to be at best 11 KHz (her voice is unbelievably grainy and very grating). Reimi, Meracle, and Bacchus are the better voiced characters. I still can't believe Matthew Mercer voiced Edge so badly, as he isn't known for being bad at VA at all. The rotten cherry on top of the moldy VA cake were the stupendously grindtastic battle trophies. We're talking Korean MMO style grinding. When the best way to get battle trophies is to rubber band/tape controllers in a specific way and just walk away for two days, then those trophies were failures of epic proportions. Having to fight 3,000 battles (not enemies, full-on battles) with Arumat shouldn't even have made it out of the planning stage let alone into the launched game.

SO4 had a good story and decent story pacing up until Roak (that planet makes me fall asleep just thinking about it). But its achievement/trophy setup was disgustingly unpleasant, moreso than SO:TSS/SO2R + SO3's flaws combined. SO3 and SO4 really could have used an SO2R style update to private actions. Nothing deflates players' enjoyment more than finding out you had a ton of missables that needed to be done in a specific order at specific times to get even a halfway decent ending.