straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2025-05-29 10:20 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2025-05-29 10:20 pm
308 | star ocean first departure r, initial thoughts
Recently, I’ve been playing Star Ocean: First Departure R on the Switch! I have played a good chunk of the PSP version of this game before, but never finished it—I was having a good time with that one too, but then I somehow got lost and confused about what I needed to do, lol, and I never got back to it. I always intended to do so eventually… but then my brother showed me a youtube video comparing the various versions of the game, and I was so charmed by the updates made in the newest version that I immediately looked it up in the Switch’s estore—and then immediately bought it when I saw that it happened to be on sale for a very good price.
(This is also the story of how I spent the last 30 minutes of 2023, lol. Frantically running around to make that purchase before the year ended, and with the end of the year, that good sale…)
I fully intended to start playing it immediately—but then it turned out my Switch didn’t have enough space for me to download the game files, so then I needed to get an SD card, and by the time I’d wrangled all that, it was several weeks into January 2024 and I’d gotten distracted by other things.
But it’s still a game I very much wanted to beat—both out of a love for that game in particular and out of love for the series that it’s a part of & my desire to actually play all the (main) games contained in it, hence why it ended up on my 10 in 2025 list! And now we’re here, with me actually playing it <3
I’m handling some things pretty differently in this file than in my first one—namely, with the party members. I didn’t know anything about the optional party members going in the first time around, and so agreed to take Cyuss on even though my feelings on him were “he’s fine, I guess?”, only to later find out that doing so locked me out of story content about a complicated & tragic sibling pair. Worse, I’d found out about the existence of Ioshua and his sister after I’d already made some choices that made recruiting Ioshua impossible for that file. My agony, it was endless, lol.
So, with this playthrough, I was very determined to get my tragic siblings, and specifically, get the combination that could net me Erys if I so choose. (I think I will so choose.) I was so nervous about messing up, lol, but now, I have Ashlay, I have Ioshua, and I have Mavelle, meaning I also have success! \o/
I am struck by how powerfully having different party members shapes the story. The experience with having Ashlay on my party is far different than when I had Cyuss! It’s super interesting and super fun to me—and also has me tempted to do more playthroughs, which;;;; nooo, my limited gaming time… but also, fun story differences and character dynamics…
The mad respect Ashlay gets from everyone is pretty entertaining to me. Having him on the party is like a ticket for everyone else to get the VIP experience wherever they go! I was amused by the conversation in the Van Kingdom capitol where Ilia pointed out that just walking up and asking to speak to the king as nobodies was a pretty tall order, and Ronyx went, ‘true, but it’s not like we know someone who has an inbecause we’re aliens from a different world & time’, only for the camera to metaphorically swing and point at Ashlay, known Famous Person. I was very amused at him offering to do the talking.
Ashlay himself isn’t a character I’m super invested him—I like him, but he’s not a contender for my favorite character—but I do like his dynamic with Roddick. The whole “my boy” thing is weirdly sweet, even though that’s not something I usually go for?? And I like how he looks at Roddick, sees potential, and wants to help him reach it. Idk, it’s heartwarming.
My feelings about Ronyx & Roddick & Ilia & Millie are pretty similar as they were the first time around—I like them, and feel like they’re all really shippy* with one another. (Well—the first time around, I struggled a little bit with Millie because of her voice actor, but I have Japanese voices on this time around, and that VA works better for me, so problem solved.) I’ve taken to calling them the illegal polycule in my head (due to the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact, lol.)
* with one exception: the jealousy aspects with Ilia → Ronyx is incredibly tiring. I know this can be a thing with the romances in Star Ocean games—it was my least favorite thing about the Claude & Rena dynamic in The Second Story—but I am so, so not here for it.
I do find—well, actually, I find pretty much everything about Ronyx in this game hilarious when taken in the context of how Claude views his father in SO2, but in particular I’m endlessly amused and delighted by his becoming a battle mage.
Lastly, tragic siblings! I have been spoiled, so I know who Mavelle is… not that the game is particularly subtle about it. Her nervously sweating as she’s all, “well, I don’t have wings, so I can’t be your sister!!!!” amused me. Also: her hiding the fact that she's his sister even though she knows Ioshua is desperately searching for her is hitting alllll the iddy notes for me, in a way that reminds me very much of my childhood (...and adulthood, lbr) screaming/flailing over Hiei & Yukina from Yu Yu Hakusho.
But also: Ioshua! I had a feeling I would really like him, and ahhhh, I was so right. Instantly charmed <3 Though, now I do understand why his recruitment window is so small… if Roddick and the others aren’t there, he probably ends up having been beaten straight into paste, RIP. I expected to be eating up all the sibling stuff with a spoon, and I absolutely am, but what I didn’t expect was for Roddick & Ioshua's dynamic in particular to be compelling to me as well. The Ronyx & Mavelle friendship is another dynamic which I did not see coming, but is also working for him.
In general… this strikes me as a game with many delightful characters and plenty of compelling relationship dynamics—I can see myself shipping so many things, and caring about even more of the platonic relationships. There’s a rich well here!
Beyond the story/character aspects, I’m also just having a delightful time with the gameplay itself. Since the system in the remake is based off of the SO2 system, it hits all the right nostalgic notes for me.
In short, my current feelings about this game can be summed up as: <3 <3 <3
(...I meant to end this entry with the above sentence, but while tagging this for posting, I discovered that I did not yet have a tag for the Star Ocean games! Which, considering how much this series means to me, feels like sacrilege. HOW.)
(This is also the story of how I spent the last 30 minutes of 2023, lol. Frantically running around to make that purchase before the year ended, and with the end of the year, that good sale…)
I fully intended to start playing it immediately—but then it turned out my Switch didn’t have enough space for me to download the game files, so then I needed to get an SD card, and by the time I’d wrangled all that, it was several weeks into January 2024 and I’d gotten distracted by other things.
But it’s still a game I very much wanted to beat—both out of a love for that game in particular and out of love for the series that it’s a part of & my desire to actually play all the (main) games contained in it, hence why it ended up on my 10 in 2025 list! And now we’re here, with me actually playing it <3
I’m handling some things pretty differently in this file than in my first one—namely, with the party members. I didn’t know anything about the optional party members going in the first time around, and so agreed to take Cyuss on even though my feelings on him were “he’s fine, I guess?”, only to later find out that doing so locked me out of story content about a complicated & tragic sibling pair. Worse, I’d found out about the existence of Ioshua and his sister after I’d already made some choices that made recruiting Ioshua impossible for that file. My agony, it was endless, lol.
So, with this playthrough, I was very determined to get my tragic siblings, and specifically, get the combination that could net me Erys if I so choose. (I think I will so choose.) I was so nervous about messing up, lol, but now, I have Ashlay, I have Ioshua, and I have Mavelle, meaning I also have success! \o/
I am struck by how powerfully having different party members shapes the story. The experience with having Ashlay on my party is far different than when I had Cyuss! It’s super interesting and super fun to me—and also has me tempted to do more playthroughs, which;;;; nooo, my limited gaming time… but also, fun story differences and character dynamics…
The mad respect Ashlay gets from everyone is pretty entertaining to me. Having him on the party is like a ticket for everyone else to get the VIP experience wherever they go! I was amused by the conversation in the Van Kingdom capitol where Ilia pointed out that just walking up and asking to speak to the king as nobodies was a pretty tall order, and Ronyx went, ‘true, but it’s not like we know someone who has an in
Ashlay himself isn’t a character I’m super invested him—I like him, but he’s not a contender for my favorite character—but I do like his dynamic with Roddick. The whole “my boy” thing is weirdly sweet, even though that’s not something I usually go for?? And I like how he looks at Roddick, sees potential, and wants to help him reach it. Idk, it’s heartwarming.
My feelings about Ronyx & Roddick & Ilia & Millie are pretty similar as they were the first time around—I like them, and feel like they’re all really shippy* with one another. (Well—the first time around, I struggled a little bit with Millie because of her voice actor, but I have Japanese voices on this time around, and that VA works better for me, so problem solved.) I’ve taken to calling them the illegal polycule in my head (due to the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact, lol.)
* with one exception: the jealousy aspects with Ilia → Ronyx is incredibly tiring. I know this can be a thing with the romances in Star Ocean games—it was my least favorite thing about the Claude & Rena dynamic in The Second Story—but I am so, so not here for it.
I do find—well, actually, I find pretty much everything about Ronyx in this game hilarious when taken in the context of how Claude views his father in SO2, but in particular I’m endlessly amused and delighted by his becoming a battle mage.
Lastly, tragic siblings! I have been spoiled, so I know who Mavelle is… not that the game is particularly subtle about it. Her nervously sweating as she’s all, “well, I don’t have wings, so I can’t be your sister!!!!” amused me. Also: her hiding the fact that she's his sister even though she knows Ioshua is desperately searching for her is hitting alllll the iddy notes for me, in a way that reminds me very much of my childhood (...and adulthood, lbr) screaming/flailing over Hiei & Yukina from Yu Yu Hakusho.
But also: Ioshua! I had a feeling I would really like him, and ahhhh, I was so right. Instantly charmed <3 Though, now I do understand why his recruitment window is so small… if Roddick and the others aren’t there, he probably ends up having been beaten straight into paste, RIP. I expected to be eating up all the sibling stuff with a spoon, and I absolutely am, but what I didn’t expect was for Roddick & Ioshua's dynamic in particular to be compelling to me as well. The Ronyx & Mavelle friendship is another dynamic which I did not see coming, but is also working for him.
In general… this strikes me as a game with many delightful characters and plenty of compelling relationship dynamics—I can see myself shipping so many things, and caring about even more of the platonic relationships. There’s a rich well here!
Beyond the story/character aspects, I’m also just having a delightful time with the gameplay itself. Since the system in the remake is based off of the SO2 system, it hits all the right nostalgic notes for me.
In short, my current feelings about this game can be summed up as: <3 <3 <3
(...I meant to end this entry with the above sentence, but while tagging this for posting, I discovered that I did not yet have a tag for the Star Ocean games! Which, considering how much this series means to me, feels like sacrilege. HOW.)