Is Star Ocean Anamnesis worth playing??

[lovekeane]

Okay, I am really enjoying SO4 so far, despite the weird story. The characters are funny and laughable, although I found the English voice acting to be quite annoying at first despite the fact I love Reimi's voice actress. Since I love the gameplay a lot, I have decided that I will keep playing the Star Ocean series, so underrated and good. One thing is I am going to get the Japanese version of the app Magia Record that I have loved and missed, and along with that I am really considering the Japanese version of Star Ocean Anamnesis. It had an English server, but sadly it ended its service in late 2019, though it is very popular in Japan. I really love the character designs and concepts in the Star Ocean series, and I was thinking that Anamnesis might do the job to make me get used to and start to enjoy the characters a lot, in a similar fashion to how Fire Emblem Heroes got me interested to the characters in the older games. I have a few questions for if I should play it.

1. Is it recommendable and/or good, if you ever got a chance to play the English version? Of course you're probably going to say "iT's A gAcHa GaMe sO It'S dEfInEtLy nOt!!!!" but there's more to that. Gacha isn't my favorite genre, but it's quite a guilty pleasure of mine. I view gacha games more as character collectors than casinos. I rarely care about the cash-grabby parts, as long as it has cool characters, beautiful visuals and/or music, fun gameplay and oftentimes an interesting story, then I will indeed enjoy it. From what I have seen so far, it looks great, with beautiful art, some awesome-looking special units (at least design-wise), and some of the characters have cool models.

2. How do I play the Japanese version? I will be playing it on Bluestacks if I do, and I will be using a translating app to translate the Japanese. Are there any guides to how I can get it on Bluestacks or Google Play?

[askasys]

They annouced the end of the service also for the Japanese version.
This is the announcement:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Star_Ocean/announcements/detail/3035965529906238230

They will make an offline version of the game, but there's no information about it. If you want to play anyway, this is the APK of the game:
https://apkpure.com/star-ocean-anamnesis/com.square_enix.android_googleplay.StarOceanj

[lovekeane]

Ah. Well, I bet it was still fun anyway.

[Daed Gaem]

Originally posted by askasys:

They annouced the end of the service also for the Japanese version.
This is the announcement:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Star_Ocean/announcements/detail/3035965529906238230

They will make an offline version of the game, but there's no information about it. If you want to play anyway, this is the APK of the game:
https://apkpure.com/star-ocean-anamnesis/com.square_enix.android_googleplay.StarOceanj

Damn, this series really went downhill after SO5 on ps4, it is really unfortunate.
SO Anamnesis didn't work for me cause it was vertical oriented, while horizontal would have obviously had much more sense for this kind of game.

[Xengre]

If you haven't tried Star Ocean 2 & 3 and are interested in the series having enjoyed this one I very highly recommend them. Here is my take on some of the other entries.

Star Ocean 1 (including the improved version) is... not a full game. It was mildly enjoyable, I guess, to an extent but basically characters do not see proper development, especially side characters. The story is very minimal. It is incredibly short. It doesn't end properly. Actually, to describe it most accurately... I'd call it a demo. Yes, a longer than normal demo. The demo, er game..., actually feels extremely close to that of a demo due to its inconclusive, unfinished, imbalanced (content/story/characters/pacing/repeated visited areas/etc.) state. About the only positive thing to be said is the visuals in First Departure version are nice despite being an older game. When it comes around to the end I still felt like my party was fairly in the early stages of a brand new just started JRPG, and it was still excessively easy. Yes, you will see playtimes online for about 20 hours. Do not let that fool you. You will understand why people complain about the length and content when you actually experience how it was utilized, especially after having played other Star Ocean games that are better.

Star Ocean 2: Second Evolution (play this version) is a truly superb old school 2.5D JRPG. Solid story, interesting and developed characters (especially through the mini-event system, in a way actually more evolved than in the other SO games including 3), TWO main characters which you can play through the story with focused on either given character and both are good (you can still use the other in your party though, but this does have an impact on a number of things in a given playthrough), solid side characters, quality end game content (SO3 still has the best in terms of bosses/sheer content but its dungeon design is worse than SO2's/Radiata Story from Tri-Ace dev), great length, extra content and stuff like the side-job/skill system (alchemy/writing/etc.) which lets you do some cool stuff. I'd consider the story not quite as good as Star Ocean 3's in terms of core story, but in terms of character development I'd say it is superior and offers a proper romantic relationship routes (a major plus, well done imo, with Rena and Claude the two MCs having a more established relationship if you pursue it in the main story but the possibility of going for other characters as well). The game features an actually absurd number of endings, and I don't mean like 3-5, or 20-30... More. Combat is solid despite its design, being a strong point in the game. I'd say only the two post game superbosses have some design issues with one that can be freely summoned being particularly designed that it can be very hard for some players or just tedious even if you know the right approaches but still a decent challenge. Perhaps my only real complaint is that Ashton bias by dev is way too obvious later on. He is already a strong character throughout the game, though he is a bit more technically oriented if you want to use his skills effectively otherwise he can be considered inferior to other top tier options but... His ultimate ability is literally named after the developer, Tri-Ace, and can basically 1-shot most things in the game including in the post game dungeon you get it during... able to not just out damage any of the most powerful spells (ironic in its own right) but being able to hit max damage very easily with a reasonable casting cost compared to spells making it too efficient and spammable every battle. In addition, that isn't even the worst part... his normal basic attack when manually controlled either with spam (esp with the right equipment) or combo'd into certain skills allow permanent stunlocking even for superbosses (like the troublesome one mentioned before) allowing him to basically solo walk all over anything in the game later on and have the highest damage output. Fortunately, for the average player he wont be that busted until late in the game on your first run as you wont likely figure things out and you might even choose Opera (you got to pick between X, Y, Z side characters to recruit as you progress) is very good, too, so even though you wont have the uber busted Ashton you are totally fine and not really losing out (most prefer Opera anyways for various reasons even tho Ashton is actually superior). Rena is the other complaint. As basically the only healer, and a very good healer/support/dps she is basically guaranteed to take one of your party slots in every playthrough unless intentionally trying to exclude her with a specific challenge run comp.

Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is my personal favorite in the series. Its combat is solid and most characters are pretty decent when used right. Imo, it offers the best support for its HP/MP dual lifebar system for both the player and enemy with appropriate thoroughly well designed enemies around this system to make it truly meaningful in which way you pursue to kill a boss if you choose an optimized battle strategy (of course, you could always opt to brute force through say... just pure HP instead of breaking their far weaker MP bar, etc... definitely doable but for balance/strategy purposes it is well done). Tons of bosses in this game and largely well done, especially post game which features a pretty crazy number of bosses of which they are pretty much all superb. Post game content is very strong here, bar one element... the sheer length (esp Sphere 211 which has every floor randomly generated and, yes, there are actually that many floors... and tons of bosses along the way). Extra stuff like alchemy, smithing, etc. are well done and the recruiting element for this is actually quite a nice addition. The actual RNG element of producing an item, however, a little bit of a negative element but other than that this system is great. Lots of extra content, a nice trophy system/extras (more so back then then in modern days, but still), minor extra ending stuff (not as big of a deal but still okay, has some extra post content bonus too depending on ending). Characters are solid, but nothing too special. Story is good despite being somewhat simple in some regards, though some later twists are excellent. The ending chunks of story, in particular, is truly a highlight though if you read some older reviews and online opinions you will see mixed emotions about it. The reason is because they think the ending undoes/invalidates some of the franchise's stuff and is too absurd but neither are true (it doesn't invalidate anything and the ending is actually based on a scientific concept a great deal of the global scientific community actually believes to be real, though back then it was thought to be utter nonsense by most). The ending is kind of neat, IF you can wrap your head around it otherwise you might fall into the party that it comes across a bit meh to (I advise against looking it up, even if it comes across meh you can still somewhat enjoy it so try not to spoil it). Game features a ton of content/length and solid replayability. I feel SO2 does a better job with romance (this one kinda very lackluster on that front, tho it does afford some slight elements/options here) and relationship stuff/choices/events (inferior to SO2 for sure though). Music is good but a tad repetitive.

I'd consider 2 & 3 to be the best of the franchise by far, both being close to equal preference from me, and which would be your favorite will depend on your tastes. Playing them in either order has no negative consequence/spoilers, either.