[23] In order to tell a "bigger" story, space was chosen as the setting. [9] Certain characters cannot be recruited unless the players party is a specific size, or the players has made specific story decisions.
[25] Despite appearing in North American video game magazine Nintendo Power in 1996, the Super Famicom version was never officially released anywhere outside Japan. It’s a real-time battle system where both friends and foes face off in a small arena. Many of these characters only offer up a single chance to be recruited before they’re gone forever and even those that can join you can conflict with other party members, so trying to recruit some of the more elusive characters like Erys will require some preparation. Though the new character artwork and Japanese voice track are nice additions, this is still very much the same Star Ocean game that fans played a decade ago. [17][18], The game takes place in S.D 346 (A.D 2432), and starts off in a small town of Kratus on the under-developed planet of Roak. [56] PlayStation Universe called attention to the title's "simplistic gameplay" and repetitive combat, but commended the animation of its character sprites and updated portrait art, ultimately declaring that "RPG aficionados looking for something simple could find something in First Departure, but don’t expect much more than a slightly polished remake of a remake. [50][51] In a 2009 retro review, NintendoLife praised the game's technical aspects calling it "one of the best-looking Super Nintendo games ever created" and that the soundtrack "never ceases to amaze". [2] The English localization was handled by Nanica, Inc., with voice-over production services provided by Epcar Entertainment, Inc.[30] First Departure uses a slightly altered version of the engine used for Star Ocean: The Second Story with similar features, including prerendered backgrounds, 3D battle fields and hand drawn facial animations. The First Departure R artwork is a lot more fleshed out, with art drawn by the Baccano! The Super Famicom version was never released outside Japan due to Enix closing its American branch shortly before the game was finished, as well as Nintendo's focus on supporting the then-upcoming Nintendo 64 video game console.
Travel even farther back in time and steal a sample of blood before the host goes missing. Unfortunately, the combat isn’t particularly great for the first Star Ocean title.
Each character utilizes both standard attacks as well as a pair of techniques mapped to the L1 and R1 buttons (even your AI partners are limited to only bringing two techniques to battle), with an obvious exception made for the few spellcasters in your party.