straightforwardly

Recently, I’ve been playing Star Ocean: First Departure R on the Switch! ( storytime about my history with the game beneath the cut )

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

( some of my thoughts so far, with spoilers up to van kingdom )

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.)