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Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
Sotteotbox.jpg
North American cover art
Developer(s) tri-Ace
Publisher(s) Enix
Square Enix (Director's Cut)
Distributor(s)
Director(s) Yoshiharu Gotanda
Producer(s) Yoshinori Yamagishi
Hajime Kojima
Designer(s) Masaki Norimoto
Artist(s) Jun Sato
Keiichi Asai
Writer(s) Yoshiharu Gotanda
Hiroshi Ogawa
Composer(s) Motoi Sakuraba
Series Star Ocean
Platform(s) PlayStation 2
Release date(s) Original Version
  • JP: February 27, 2003
Director's Cut
  • JP: January 22, 2004
  • NA: August 31, 2004
  • AU: September 30, 2004
  • EU: October 1, 2004
Genre(s) Action role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player
multiplayer (Director's cut only)
Aggregate score
Aggregator Score
GameRankings 80.99%
Review scores
Publication Score
Famitsu 32/40
Game Informer 8.25/10
GameSpot 7.9/10
IGN 9/10

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (スターオーシャン3 Sutā Ōshan Surī?, Star Ocean 3) is the third main game in the Star Ocean series. The game was developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2 console. It was released in Japan, North America, and the PAL territories. The original Japanese release date was in February 2003 by Enix, its penultimate release before its merger to become Square Enix. It was re-released in 2004 as a two-disc Director's Cut version with bonus features such as new characters and dungeons. The North American and European versions are based on the Director's Cut version.Till the End of Time takes place four hundred years after the events of Star Ocean: The Second Story.

While having many similarities to its predecessor, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time includes many elements that make it unique among the majority of role-playing video games. Instead of menu-driven combat, Star Ocean 3 offers real-time interactive combat, similar to the .hack and Tales series. Battles occur when running into enemies on the main travel field or when certain pre-scripted events occur. In battle, the player directly controls one character, while the other two characters are controlled by AI. The player can, however, choose the tactics used by AI characters or switch which character they are directly controlling.

Enemy attacks can target either a player's hit points (HP) or mental points (MP). Players will also lose HP from using special attacks or lose MP from using symbology or runeology, which is functionally equivalent to magic in other games. If a character loses all of their HP or, unlike most games, if they lose all of their MP, they are knocked out and unable to continue participation in the battle (unless certain revival items are used). Each character also has a Fury meter, which governs how fast the character moves over the battle screen, and how often actions can be performed. Standing still will replenish Fury, while any movement will continue to drain it or cause the character to lag. If all three characters are defeated, the game is over and the player must reload from their last saved game. If all the enemies are defeated, the player is awarded money (Fol) and experience points (EXP). When some groups of enemies are defeated, the player's characters can also receive a small amount of HP/MP, to counteract the HP/MP that was lost as a result of using special attacks or symbology/runeology.


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Wikipedia

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