YMMV / Star Ocean

• Awesome Music:
  • "New Human Race", the theme that plays when you fight Neo Revorse. This theme is made all the more awesome upon the realization that It's the same melody that is played by Dorne's music box and by Pericci when she's playing her flute. It's also rather odd when you consider that the soundtrack was made by Motoi Sakuraba, who is often known for rather... chaotic-sounding music. Some of the music is definitely his style, such as Immediately Before, but New Human Race still takes the cake. Immediately Before just comes in close second.
  • And as usual, the typical awesome of Sakuraba's music can be heard in the battle theme For Achieve, and the remix in the remake also did this justice.
• Difficulty Spike: Moving from the Astral Continent to the Van region of the Silvalant Continent in the remake is when the gloves come off as enemies will start dealing triple-digit damage on a regular basis and store-bought equipment falls behind the curve.
• Disappointing Last Level: Fargett acts as a conclusion to a few mysteries established in the past as well as events from early in the game - while they aren't delivered in a painful way, Fargett is remembered negatively because simply put, the game's final act is short. Roak of the past was a bit limited, but opened up later on. Fargett has one event (Rescue your kidnapped allies) and then one place to go after that, Revorse Tower. There aren't even any private actions - meaning all character development slows to a dead halt.
• Demonic Spiders: The Muah Royal Treasury is home to Shadow Beasts and Stirges, and even the high level gear you find there won't save you from them.
  • Stirges are fliers that harass, occasionally paralyzing targets. Their main issue is that one of their attacks shoots five knives outward, capable of one shotting anyone hit by it point blank by this point in the game, and the AI is smart enough to ignore paralyzed targets.
  • Shadow Beasts are wolves that aren't problematic alone, but like to gang up on one target and swarm them, tearing down even your best tank in seconds. At its worst, you can find a group of six Beasts. And unlike the Stirges fire weakness, there's nothing you can use to make your life against them easier. The worst part? The boss of the area has no less then Seven of them with her!
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the recruitable characters, Cyuss is the most popular due to his boisterous personality, his Hidden Depths, and his relations with Lias and Phia.
• Fan Nickname: Sometimes fans likes to affectionally reverse Roddick's name into 'DickRod'
• Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
• Ho Yay:
  • In one PA, Ronyx is a little too interested in what Roddick's tail would feel like to touch, and it freaks poor Roddick out so much that he runs straight to the other side of the bridge they're on!
  • One PA involves a freakishly effective love potion getting spilled on poor Roddick.
  • Roddick dreamt of himself being Cinderella and his 'Prince Charming' ends up being Ronyx.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some of the criticisms targeted at the PSP re-release. The game actually is pretty short for an RPG. (One can practically breeze through the game in 15 hours... or less.) Most people didn't exactly realize that the Super Famicom version was just as short (if not even shorter, because the remake added new possibilties), and that most of the time is spent micromanaging the (rather thorough) skill system and getting PAs that develop the characters further.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: How some people view the remakes of being. Rather than Adaptation Expansion, the remake(s) were straight up adaptation but with more polish added. Its main critique is its length, and this was kept in the remake with Fargett only being a few areas with all Character Development brought to a halt.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Ronyx is a prominent and good character in story, what with being the first known Kenny family member (he's not the chronologically first within the timeline though, that would be Stephen) and the father of the hero of the second game, but players tend to be less inclined to use him due to his awkward play style (a marksman that uses magic, turning him into a Master of None). This even carries over to Anamnesis, where he's once again a bottom tier character. This is mainly an issue in the remake, as mages were given several balance buffs that Ronyx can't take full advantage of due to his equipment options.
  • Phia is typically placed in the lower tiers. She can only equip 1 accessory, which makes a huge difference come endgame/postgame, and most of her attacks have long delays that leave her quite vulnerable. Her best moves come from her Gods of War SFT, but should you recruit her by breaking her out of jail you are completely unable to obtain it, crippling her even further in terms of usefulness compared to the other party members.
  • Erys is generally known as the more natural progression to Mavelle's character, and even as a mage, she is generally considered as one of the more powerful ones. The problem is that she's in a Star Ocean game where spells freeze time and will deal less damage than physical skills. Mavelle is a physical attacker and her Galaxy skill is considered one of the more powerful skills. Therefore, there's a lot who would opt not to turn Mavelle back to Erys so they can still access her skills.
• Memetic Loser: Ronyx tends to be a Low-Tier Letdown in every games he appeared. And he also holds the record of the only member of the Kenny family to die on-screen and definitely not in a peaceful way (though granted, his death is Played for Drama), while the other Kenny members (Claude, Stephen, Emerson and Marielle) usually survive their stories and pass away off-screen, definitely in peaceful times.
• Mis-blamed: While it's not exactly the height of polish either way, the game garnered a reputation for being glitch-ridden and crash prone (including, at one point, an Obvious Beta entry on the main page) that was almost entirely due to ZSNES inaccurately emulating the game. Battles also ran twice as fast, which gave the impression of the game being much harder than it actually was.
• Retroactive Recognition: Alucard (Robert Belgrade) from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night doing the voice of the captain in the opening scene of the Super Famicom version!
• So Okay, It's Average: General consensus is that the game (both the SNES and PSP versions) is considered decent to mediocre, with unrefined gameplay and weaker characters compared to later entries. While the later half of the game is maligned for how rushed it is, it doesn't compare to the backlash of the third game's infamous plot twist.
• Strangled by the Red String: Roddick and Millie in the first game, no matter how much you tried to set him up with Ilia. This became a retroactive necessity to ensure Claude's existence since it's heavily implied by the second game that Ilia is his mother.
• That One Level:
  • The Van region as a whole due to the Difficulty Spike, as enemies start dealing damage in the hundreds as soon as you step out of the first town of the region.
  • The Muah Treasury. Despite the (temporary) high-end gear you're given throughout the dungeon, the Shadow Beasts and Stirges found there can rip players a new one due to their fast attacks, their unusually high damage output, and the fact that they often come in swarms. Gets even worse with the boss, where she has seven Shadow Beasts backing her up in the fight.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some prefer the original names in the Japanese version that sound more unique (Ratix, Ronixis), and Phia was originally named Fear, a rather badass name. Ioshua was named Joshua in the fan translation.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • T'nique... but only the SFC version. He appears in no private actions in that game, meaning he essentially is just a bonus character. This was averted in the remake, where he is still a Secret Character, but he gets to interact with others in private actions.
  • The party members from the past. They get to meet with everyone else again, but this time they are Fish out of Temporal Water. No private actions exist to have them react to the desolate world of Fargett, nor even the knowledge of what exists beyond their world.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Oh boy, where to begin with this game? A lot of criticisms directed at the game can be tied up to this trope.
  • Fargett in general. It appears to come out of nowhere, but was actually foreshadowed as early as before going back in time. From Fargett, we learn that some of the Muah were stranded here - and were forced to survive on a planet with no resources and see just how much of a Crapsack World Fargett is. Unfortunately, Fargett has only a few zones and no private actions, meaning that:
  • The game's third act involves Bringing the party back together, and even calling your allies from 300 years ago into the present. Ronyx and Ilia disobeyed orders in order to save Roak from the virus, but they are just given the okay to do it again to bring back four people from the past to solve a problem that they can't simply deal with on their own. The ethics of doing such a thing, especially for the six people you recruit for an assassination mission are never brought up - they're just given a simple Hand Wave.
  • Similarly, only one character (Pericci) has a private action in Fargett. The idea of Bringing characters to their future never gets touched upon otherwise.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Roddick isn't very interesting compared to the other party members.

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