Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope

[Wrath88]

I used that group too, switching out Arumat with Reimi sometimes. The one you should be careful of are the bug monsters. They attack fast, appear in groups, and a swarm can take you out fast. Stock up on healing items just in case, or continuously grind on the first level, until you can reach the level with Metal Scumbags on them.

Arumat-Spam Dragon Roar all the way. The damage is insane even without Berserk.

Reimi-Line up the enemies, maybe uses Bacchus' Black Hole Sphere to hold them in place, then spam Crescent Wings, after initiating Berserk and Critical Hit.

[Shinji103]

Originally Posted by Striding Cloud

they also nerfed a lot of the factors. I believe if you synth the sabertooth tiger fang or w/e in the 360 version you get +18% atk, but got nerfed to 10.

Nope. ST Tiger fangs still give 18% att boost.

What took me a while to find were the 20% def boosters; the Bradygames guide fo rPS3+XBox says Potent Defense Seeds gives that when synthed to your armor, but they don't. They only give you 8%. You get 20% from Fairies of Fortification.

For the Cave of the Seven Stars.....well, I didn't have any problem with that. At all. Even when I got to Gabriel Celeste. Probably had something to do with how I was already level 120 across my party board from extended leveling sessions on Roak in the main story and in the Halls of Termination.

What I do to level is fill my board with 10 exp tiles and only 4 healing tiles, then go on a killing spree. Put Regeneration Symbols/Faeries Bands on your fighters if you find they burn through MP too fast. The only time I ever didn't maintain high MP was when I spammed Reimi's bow Special Arts.

One of the best SA combos for power leveling; Black Hole Sphere->Termination->Black Hole Sphere->Irradiation and spam Rush mode. (Replace the Termination with Irradiation when/if you unlock CP Boost through 100% Battle Trophies) It especially helps when you get the Solo Champion medal from the colloseum (I think it was that one, whichever one gives you Rush Charge Rate +2) and crank that up even more later with Tri-Emblems. Absolutely broken.

[Riot Machine]

Does anyone know if they are making a fifth or if they plan to remake the third because i soooo enjoyed the forth

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Riot Machine

Does anyone know if they are making a fifth or if they plan to remake the third because i soooo enjoyed the forth

Probably not before Valkyrie Profile 3.

[DragoonKain3]

According to this...

http://rpgfan.com/news/2009/473.html

... Tri-Ace is done with the Star Ocean franchise. Then again, they said the same thing about SO3, so one could always hope.

Now if only they would make Valkyrie Profile: Hrist already... but with S-E not being as open to new ways of making RPGs (or so Tri-Ace claims), I dunno if it actually would come to fruition, as VP was always a bit different from other RPGs from the get go.

[Arbitres]

Go figure. Here is to hoping they don't make anymore Lelouch + C.C. look-alikes (...You know who i'm talking about.)

I just hope they will focus on their other franchise as well, and not just VP. But it's skeptical, once they think up something new for Star Ocean that'll bring alot of money in, they will do it again.

Thats how it works, anyways. Money is money... and they want it. Everyone does. Talking about money, what is the best place to farm money? Somewhere that isn't the seven star dungeon.

[Keroko]

Well, I've finally gotten my hands on SO4 international. The Japanese VA and menu-style removed two of my three major turn-offs from the game, so I really had no excuse not to anymore. Only two hours in, and so far the models are as disappointing as I expected them to be, but wrestling away from that one lingering turn-off I so far have had a lot of fun. I love the dodging in this game, it makes playing ranged characters like Reimi actually viable.

[ZeroForever]

doing the grind of the Wandering Dungeon, it's fun but as noted it's a grind specially for geostones levels.

Honestly you should never really have mana issues for anyone other then reimi, 3 ticks of leveled convert is enough to fill any of the melee characters.

decent game, fighting and items systems are good, Edges endless emo.... not so good. He has good reasons for being emo but I don't need to hear him emo about it for hours on end.

[ZephyrLeanne]

Opening words...

Originally Posted by Arbitres

Go figure. Here is to hoping they don't make anymore Lelouch + C.C. look-alikes (...You know who i'm talking about.)

I just hope they will focus on their other franchise as well, and not just VP. But it's skeptical, once they think up something new for Star Ocean that'll bring alot of money in, they will do it again.

Well, they couldn't possibly go on, after SO's producer said that "Personally, I really like to make an ecchi game or something, honestly". Of course his bosses at tri-Ace said no. (source) [NSFW unless you have AdBlocker]

I guess he was behind Resonance of Fate's graphics, or something, because Leanne... oh well, you're better off looking here.


---

Back on topic.
I thought that Star Ocean 4 was pretty OK, in the sense that it wasn't a genre breaker like Resonance of Fate, (which I played not too long ago) BUT it was still better than the game I played BEFORE RoF: FF13. Which goes to say a lot about the flop that is FF13. (In fact, it's so bad, it's now selling at JPY 500. About USD 5)

Reimi in many wys is on a different level from previous SO females, in that she drops the typical whining of the SO characters - only to replace it with full-out sulking. (LOL) And she's unnecessarily harsh on herself.

Then again, her name is REIMI SAIONJI, and I can actually write it in proper Japanese (like so:　西園寺　麗美）　Point: TYPICAL JAPANESE ATTITUDE. In other words, an apologist. Very typical.

Well, not too big an issue. I mean she's better than say, Aya from Infinite Undiscovery. (tri-Ace needs to be more consistent with its characters. More Reimis and Leannes and Seraphinas, less Sophias and Ayas.)

But I bought SO4 not for the battles but the plot (Call me old fashioned, but I think jRPGs need to have a storng plot to sell. Not saying that FF13 was great either. It was bascually a Visual Novel with fighting and no steam. Think Myself;Yourself. Only linear.)

Verdict: Pretty good, but it's not the best of triAce. Prrobably a 8/10.

Endnote:
Confession: I bought Star Ocean 4 for the Private Actions.
And Reimi.

[ZephyrLeanne]

Originally Posted by Arbitres

I'm also aware about the H-game thing. But thank you for sharing regardless. I'd personally would love to see a H-game with those kind of graphics... Excuse me for sounding perverted.

Key should give him a job. Or Nitroplus.

THIS IS TRUTH.

Of course. Especially Leanne.

...But god. How I hated Edge's emo. I wanted to stab it. Hard.

That wasn't a stickler for me.