Title: Star Ocean: First Departure R
Developer: tri-Ace, Tose, Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: Dec. 5, 2019
Available On: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch
The Star Ocean franchise often takes a backseat to other Square Enix RPG franchises, but it’s become prominent recently with First Departure R leading the charge.
This action RPG is an HD remaster of a PlayStation Portal remake of the original game. Star Ocean released for the Super Famicom in 1996 but never made its way to the West. This game kicked off the science-fiction/fantasy blended series.
Tose later remade the game as Star Ocean: First Departure, which released in 2007 in Japan and 2008 worldwide. The 2019 HD remaster brought the game back to a Nintendo console for the first time since the original iteration.
Since First Departure R’s release, Square Enix has released a new mainline game and a remake of the second game.
First Departure R is unlike any RPG I’ve played before, which is admittedly still a shallow pool, and one that’s worth visiting for those interested in visiting the franchise’s roots.
Synopsis: To the Stars and Back
On the planet Roak, Roddick, Millie, and Dorne act as a local village’s Defense Force. The trio is usually bored until one day, a disease starts turning residents of a neighboring village into stone.
Millie’s father attempts to help but contracts the disease so the crew travels to Mt. Metorx to collect a potentially curing herb. On the mountain, the trio meets Ronyx and Ilia, two members of the starship Calnus.
Ronyx and Ilia explain the disease’s origins and how it connects to an intergalactic war. The group learns through a series of events that the Roakians’ blood can be used to give one side an advantage in the war.
Dorne contracts the disease and ultimately succumbs to it, prompting Roddick and Millie to join Ronyx and Ilia as they go back in time to find the true origin of the virus.
Gameplay: A Standard RPG With an Action Twist
Star Ocean: First Departure R follows a standard JRPG format of traveling to upgrade your armor and weapons so you can fight the next boss. It is the combat where this game differs.
Battles happen as random encounters similar to turn-based RPGs with a separate battle screen and music. While in battle, a party of four can move about freely to attack with action-based combat. This includes both close-range melee attacks and long-range magic attacks or healing.
Another unique element of First Departure R is the skill system. Players collect experience points from battle to help them level up. Upon advancing a level, players are awarded skill points to put toward developing skills.
These skills range from item creation to controlling how often you have random encounters along with other unique abilities. The group can also develop group skills depending on where each individual is with their specific individual skill.
The game also employs a party system with eight spots for any given party. Only four, however, can participate in combat. What’s unique is there are more than eight playable characters, meaning you can have a different party on any given playthrough.
There are four required characters and nine optional characters. There are specific requirements for each optional character with some requiring you not to recruit other optional party members.
Analysis: An Uneven, Enjoyable Experience
I didn’t quite know what to expect when it came to Star Ocean: First Departure R. I had played the demo for the most recent mainline entry Star Ocean: The Divine Force, but that was my only exposure to the franchise.
What I got was a unique and enjoyable experience, albeit one with its share of shortcomings. Still, enjoyment is what counts and I walked away thoroughly satisfied.
Gameplay
I think gameplay is where First Departure R is so unique.
While I had a lot of fun immersing myself in the combat, there needed to be more tutorials. The game threw me out in the world and expected me to learn, leading to a lack of understanding game mechanics.
The fortunate part is combat is action-based and was simple in the early goings. It wasn’t until I hit a disproportionate difficulty spike at almost the halfway point that the lack of a tutorial started to hurt gameplay.
The game tells you skills are important, but never really gives you a reason to be strategic about what you build out. This was frustrating at times because I found myself saying regularly, “If I had known that earlier, I would’ve done it!”
I mentioned a big difficulty spike that happens near the halfway point. Up until that point, the game had progressed nicely, but then I started struggling in battles once I reached the third continent.
This forced me to grind for a few hours to catch up. This is a point where knowing the skills would’ve been nice because some skills boost your stats while others allow you to learn how to craft stronger weapons.
While I was progressing nicely with random skills, I hadn’t built out the crafting skill so my weapons were severely lacking. After a few hours, I caught up and could advance smoothly.
While I’m never a fan of grinding as a way to lengthen a game, it did allow me to explore the combat system.
At first glance, it seems like you’ll just button-mash your way to success and that works in the first part of the game. Once enemies became more difficult, you had to get more strategic in your approach.
While you do have a party, you only control one member at a time. Usually, that was Roddick, but I came across some tough battles where I needed to let the computer take over Roddick and I controlled my healer Millie. This caused me to strategize and manage my party better.
Action RPGs get a bad rap for just being button-mashers, but First Departure R bucks that stereotype. What makes it work is having the action happen within a designated battle screen where you can pick formations and determine how you attack enemies.
Once you overcome the learning curve for First Departure R’s combat, it becomes extremely enjoyable. It’s just unfortunate it takes a bit to get there with no help in learning it.
That’s not to say the game is difficult. It’s one of the easier games I’ve played and I didn’t have too much difficulty once I got closer in level to the enemies. The game took me about 30 hours to complete though many gamers say 20 hours is the average.
Story and Characters
First Departure R‘s genre-bending is unique because many RPGs opt to go one way or the other. I would say that fantasy does take the bigger role in this game, but you do get a good mix as the game wears on.
You would think this leads to an intriguing story, but ultimately, the narrative becomes generic. It starts interesting enough, but the meat of the game features your generic JRPG narrative of fighting the big bad to save the world.
That’s not to say there aren’t unique lore points throughout the game. The small nuggets of lore piqued my interest, but we don’t get a ton of exploration of the lore, just enough to reach the end.
I don’t want to spoil the game so I’ll leave out specific details. First Departure R stumbles a bit at the ending as the big bad ends up not being your final destination. Rather, the game tacks on an epilogue-feeling final chapter that isn’t firmly connected to the story.
This was disappointing because you don’t have much reason to care about the final boss.
This brings us to the characters in the game. There was a strong foundation for building out these characters, but the shorter runtime made it harder to fully engage with them.
There’s not a lot of depth to the main characters, but many of the side characters have interesting stories. Cyuss and Phia were two I recruited and they had a lot of interesting backstory to them and I loved learning about them every chance I got.
That said, some of the characters fell flat and didn’t offer much of a reason to care about them. I added Welch and Pericci later in the game and largely forgot I had them.
There is a private actions mode that you can initiate before entering any town. This allows you to interact with your party one on one. Interactions range from one-liners to deeper dives into their personal history.
I enjoyed these at first, but quickly grew bored because there was mainly one-liners that barely added anything. By the end, I would rarely initiate these actions.
Even though the characters fell flat at times, their combat skills were a lot of fun as there was minimal overlap in their abilities. It means you’ll want to be strategic about who you recruit because of your limited party.
Recruiting the characters was fine, but the game isn’t clear on what you need to do to recruit them. At first, I didn’t like this approach, but as my playthrough wore on, I ended up liking it.
It hearkened back to pre-Internet days when you and your friends would exchange rumors on how to unlock characters in games and you just had to trust them. Character recruitment weirdly sparked some nostalgia in me that I was not expecting.
Having only the eight slots means you’ll want to replay the game to find the ones you missed, leading to a potentially new experience on subsequent playthroughs.
Overall, the story and characters were passable with glimmers of greatness. While several of the characters feel shallow, there are many with deeper backstories, making you want to return to the game to recruit them all.
Audio and Music
Don’t go into First Departure R expecting a stellar soundtrack. The music is good but repetitive as several towns have the same theme or slight variations. I didn’t have any song that stuck with me after turning the game off.
Where the game does stand out is it’s fully voice acted. Each player has a portrait that appears when they speak, but the voice actor reads the text to you.
You have three options when it comes to the voice acting: the English dub, the Japanese voice acting from the 2007 release, and the Japanese voice acting from the HD remaster.
Along with this, you can select which portrait to use between the ones from the 2007 remake or the current remake. I preferred the newer portraits as they seemed smoother.
As far as voice acting, I kept it on the English dub although both Japanese tracks are really good. As for the English, expect all the energy and drama from an anime.
This anime-style voice acting works well because there are a few anime-style cutscenes that look gorgeous. It shows the love and care put into this remake and its HD remaster.
Having voice acting was a nice change of pace and it never felt annoying or overbearing. It helped add a bit to the quality of the overall game.
Final Score (3.5 out of 5 stars)
Star Ocean: First Departure R is a fun game with a lot of great qualities.
Its combat is unique and a lot of fun, provided you learn it properly. The game blends fantasy and science fiction seamlessly into its tale and allows for the best of both worlds as you explore Roak and beyond.
There is a difficult learning curve that can inhibit play. This includes a big difficulty spike at about the halfway point along with minimal instruction on how to learn the intricacies of the game.
I would recommend First Departure R if you are looking for a good JRPG to pass the time. It won’t take you long to beat.
This is a great game to visit if you want to see the origins of the Star Ocean franchise, especially if you’ve just wrapped up Star Ocean: The Second Story R.
I really enjoyed my time with First Departure R and it made me even more interested in the franchise as a whole. Despite its flaws, you likely won’t be disappointed in giving this one a shot.
Featured Image: Square Enix (via Nintendo)
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