While Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is not the worst game this year in the RPG genre, it's certainly not one of the best. Unless one is really starving for RPGs, consider picking up Tales of Symphonia or Shadow Hearts: Convenant instead, as both of these are recent top games in this category.
This Star Ocean title suffers most of the same problems as the previous game in the series. This includes things like an uninspired character development system and relatively bland items. While the story is reasonably good and moves along at a decent pace, the real-time combat system is terrible and should have been abandoned. As one gets farther into the game and encounters get more difficult, computer-controlled allies frequently get completely destroyed unless the player is right there using items and magic to continuously prop them up. The two allies operating on "Auto" tend to run around in a panic and get pummeled, even when the same characters controlled by the player can stand their ground and do just fine... And this is with the "AI" mode set to request an all-out attack!
Overall, there's really nothing that stands out as being either an innovation or a source of great enjoyment. The item crafting system seems interesting at first glance, but it quickly becomes just a distraction that doesn't add much. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time could be enjoyable, but it would really need a different game engine bolted on underneath the story.
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