It tried to innovate where no innovation was necessary, to mixed results, but ultimately everything came up lacking.
The combat is the best part of it, and to be fair it's a lot of fun, but the camera is horrid and nausea inducing.
One of the experiments they tried that definitely didn't work out was how they handled cutscenes. Basically, there is no break in the game when you have an important conversation, you can still control your character, and the camera remains where it had been while you explored the city as the cutscene dialogue plays out. I kiiiiinda see what they were trying for, here, but whatever ultimate goal they were going for, I can tell you it failed here. As a result of how this works, not only do important events and conversations lack gravitas due to feeling like any other NPC conversation, but you're liable to actively miss important dialogue if you didn't know ahead of time that this was how the game was going to do things, since you'd assume you could freely roam, and the volume of the talking person varies based on how far away they are.
The story is okay. nothing I found objectionable or praiseworthy. Unlike past installments of the series, where the narrative focuses on a spacefarer interacting with primitive civilizations, in this game you play a member of a primitive civilization who happens to encounter said spacefarers. The world and its politics is interesting enough, though I was unimpressed with the lack of space travel and other planets to explore. What little of the sci-fi there was, it largely felt tacked-on and superfluous... which, I know could be said of SO3, but at least there the game dedicated a third of its runtime to stuff happening elsewhere. Here, you mostly just travel in relation to one member of your party, and exploration is pretty limited.
Honestly, though, I'd have been willing to overlook a lot of the small things that bother me if it weren't for the one utter dealbreaker that sealed the game's fate of being subpar, for me: it is SHORT. I don't mean that in the "well, I mean, if you blitz through the story elements you can beat it in 20 hours" way, like how detractors of FFXV try to claim that THAT game is short, I mean that, all extras included, don't expect to be playing the game more than 25 hours. I wouldn't be surprised if a bare-bones playthrough could be completed in 10 hours or less. I don't know if it was a budgeting issue or a deadline issue, but everything about the conclusion feels rushed and unsatisfying.
Definitely a 4/10 for me. Small hints of promise bogged down several small but cloying annoyances and a horrid run time. I recommend fans of Star Ocean, or JRPGs in general play it at some point, sure, but I wouldn't pay more than 20 bucks for it.
