☆ Why I Love Star Ocean Blue Sphere ☆
Hi! Been a while since I wrote something for this blog again. I was pretty busy with my work for the past few days but since it's already vacation till a new school term starts again, I have decided to write about my most favorite video game EVER which is Star Ocean Blue Sphere!
Star Ocean Blue Sphere is a direct sequel to Star Ocean the Second Story / Second Evolution. The premise is that 2 years after the events of Second Story, Claude, Rena, Celine, Precis, Bowman, Leon, Ashton, Dias, Ernest, Opera, Chisato and Noel have a new adventure in the planet Edifice.
Star Ocean Blue Sphere is a great game, and I personally consider it one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Don't let the fact that it's a Gameboy Color game make you think it's just a simple RPG considering the platform it belongs to. This is one of the most complex Gameboy Color RPGs I have ever played, gameplay-wise.
I love its gameplay very much, which is why it still remains as my most fave game ever even after I've played more modern games across the years! Here are some features that I love from Blue Sphere.
☆ Ability to Play as Multiple Playable Characters / Protagonists ☆
Star Ocean Blue Sphere lets you play as ANY of the party characters back in Second Story, in any combination, and you can switch characters in and out anytime, as long as the characters become available as the story progress (which is early on actually).
In other words, you are no longer limited to just having Claude and Rena as your overworld avatar or your main character in cutscenes (yes, dialogues can change across characters). Want to use Leon as your main character? Sure! Want Dias instead? Why not?
Heck, you can just HAVE BOTH LEON AND DIAS in your party together cause why not? And yes, it also means you can put Bowman and Precis, and Opera and Ashton in the same party too!
☆ It has LOTS of Exploration ☆
Star Ocean Blue Sphere's world is quite huge, there are lots of dungeons and there are a bunch of non-story/optional dungeons to explore too.
Battles are no longer random, you can see your enemies on the overworld and even do a preemptive strike to give you an advantage.
You can also swim if your character learns the skill for it. There are also some characters who can hover across gaps, use grappling hooks or even pick up plants.
☆ It has a very, VERY fun and interactive item creation system ☆
And finally, the feature that made Star Ocean Blue Sphere really, REALLY fun is how effort was put into the item creation. Now to start off, Star Ocean Second Story already has a robust item creation system, albeit quite basic and mainly menu-based. Blue Sphere takes it further by making item creation VERY interactive. How interactive? Well, here's some examples:
You stir and cook your own food. Manually.
You grind and process medicinal herbs to make medicine yourself by controlling the mortar and pestle yourself.
You can even forge your tools yourself by controlling the hammer.
Personally, the first time I played this I had minimal knowledge of Japanese but I really enjoyed it anyway because I just played around with it and enjoyed exploring the game world and playing the item creation minigames. It's worth experiencing for the depth of gameplay it has!
I have yet to find another game that feels as a complete, satisfying package of fun like Blue Sphere has been for me.
Well, that's it for now! Thanks for reading :)
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