As a Star Ocean fan I'm less... disappointed and more indifferent about SO5. Each game in the series has been worse than the last from about star ocean 2 (though you could argue that the SNES version of 1 was the pinnacle of the series).
As a Tales of Fanatic though, it's like both SO's and Tales' studios were liek: "Hey, wanna make a bet for who can make the worse game? ;D " not that the two are related other than having the same origin.
Here's the thing though.
Both Zesty and this have terrible AI.
Both have limited variety in combat and force one specific way to fight.
Both have an insignificant "Rock paper scissor" style that waters down to one type being far more useful than the others.
Both have chests that you can't unlock til "later".
And both have a story as deep as a bag of salted chips.
SO5 certainly wins in the most frustrating category, because not only will the AI take hits to the face like Zesty, but you're expected to protect one of your characters (the one who just HAPPENS to have low defense and HP) multiple times in the story. Oh, and all the enemies will aim for that character by default so unless you grind a bunch or stand in the way of their attacks you'll see often see a game over screen in seconds and have to go through the game's unskippable cut scenes all over again as your characters waddle along like they're zombies for a couple minutes while all Zesty had was an over-reliance on it's fusion gimmick on harder difficulties if you didn't like insta-dying.
Neither AI knows how to heal or revive properly, in SO5 you need to specifically switch to a character to make it do more than tie it's shoelaces in battle. And even if you opt for it, item use is clunky and inconsistent as your character can take between a second or a few to finally decide to throw that blueberry at a character that was begging for their life while our great item thrower decided to randomly ponder about the existential nature of throwing a blueberry to recover ally health.
I guess some amusement can be attained by spamming the same skill over and over because that's what SO5 devolves into quicker than the AI's willingness to run into enemy attacks like it's a stranger giving out free candy, at least if you lack any form of attention span (like everyone who regrets wasting their money on No Man's Sky after realizing how obviously bland it is).
Both of these games feel like they're parallel universe versions of themselves though and it's quite eerie.
I'd rant more but eh, whatever.
I'll be getting the japanese ps4 version of Tales of Berseria next week
As a Tales of Fanatic though, it's like both SO's and Tales' studios were liek: "Hey, wanna make a bet for who can make the worse game? ;D " not that the two are related other than having the same origin.
Here's the thing though.
Both Zesty and this have terrible AI.
Both have limited variety in combat and force one specific way to fight.
Both have an insignificant "Rock paper scissor" style that waters down to one type being far more useful than the others.
Both have chests that you can't unlock til "later".
And both have a story as deep as a bag of salted chips.
SO5 certainly wins in the most frustrating category, because not only will the AI take hits to the face like Zesty, but you're expected to protect one of your characters (the one who just HAPPENS to have low defense and HP) multiple times in the story. Oh, and all the enemies will aim for that character by default so unless you grind a bunch or stand in the way of their attacks you'll see often see a game over screen in seconds and have to go through the game's unskippable cut scenes all over again as your characters waddle along like they're zombies for a couple minutes while all Zesty had was an over-reliance on it's fusion gimmick on harder difficulties if you didn't like insta-dying.
Neither AI knows how to heal or revive properly, in SO5 you need to specifically switch to a character to make it do more than tie it's shoelaces in battle. And even if you opt for it, item use is clunky and inconsistent as your character can take between a second or a few to finally decide to throw that blueberry at a character that was begging for their life while our great item thrower decided to randomly ponder about the existential nature of throwing a blueberry to recover ally health.
I guess some amusement can be attained by spamming the same skill over and over because that's what SO5 devolves into quicker than the AI's willingness to run into enemy attacks like it's a stranger giving out free candy, at least if you lack any form of attention span (like everyone who regrets wasting their money on No Man's Sky after realizing how obviously bland it is).
Both of these games feel like they're parallel universe versions of themselves though and it's quite eerie.
I'd rant more but eh, whatever.
I'll be getting the japanese ps4 version of Tales of Berseria next week
