Star Ocean TTEOT: most awesome music evarz!!

[Xenus]

Some of that maybe seen as cheap but it's actually accounting for balancing. Otherwise with a little item creation and Dimension Door you could ream just about any enemy in the game in about 2 or 3 attacks. Well besides the arena freaks. It just causes you to think more on how you approach the enemies.

 

[Rolf N]

Some of that maybe seen as cheap but it's actually accounting for balancing.

I really don't think so. Play Tales Of Symphonia for a balanced version of that exact same battle system, one that doesn't need to rely on such shitty tactics as "we'll let you
do two attacks per minute while the enemies do a hundred, 80% of your attacks will miss, bring lots of hp". The game takes control away far too often. There are much more pleasant ways to make stats matter, and the game could do it simply through the amount of damage dealt per hit, which it already does.

Otherwise with a little item creation and Dimension Door you could ream just about any enemy in the game in about 2 or 3 attacks. Well besides the arena freaks.

That's of course ignoring the absurd amounts of time and money you must pour into item creation before the good things become available. You need lots of money (or otherwise very expensive stuff) to even hire the higher-level inventors, and then you need more money to make them invent something, and then yet more money to buy copies for your team. You either grind battles for seventeen hours in a row to raise the cash or you produce "fugly doll" for roughly the same amount of time, as anything but low-level garbage is too risky to produce if you're doing it for profit.

While I was at it I chose to grind battles, as I needed the xp anyway. Seemed to be the better overall waste of time. And I have no idea what that Dimension Door is.

How long did you play? Way above 100 hours I figure?

Item creation takes absurd It just causes you to think more on how you approach the enemies.

I approached many enemies with "there's nothing I can do to control this battle". E.g. on moon base I avoided the flying armors and just fought the spiders all the time because their design is less broken. They obviously appear together so they should be in roughly the same league of difficulty. In fact the spiders give more xp and money, so someone at Tri-Ace apparently thought they were more difficult to kill, which they very clearly are not.

 

[Xenus]

I agree item creation is broke. It's more luck and guessing then anything else.

I don't have it with me but I think it only took 80-90 hours to beat the game and that's with trying to get most battle trophies off the bosses. I only level grinded a few hours and that was usually by running to a place with monsters higher then I should be facing at the time usually at first by accident then by design. I used the level rings synthesized into a weapon and chains and therefore got a pretty damn nice amount of experience on each battle. The only ridiculously over powered enemies I have faced so far are the bosses in the Ursla Lava Caves extra dungeon after you beat the game. Though the last 2 in the group arena were a major pain.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Wow zeckensack, it sounds like we both came to the same conclusions. SO3 finally gets to the point where you just have to cut your losses and give up.

If you're looking for an RPG with great music and a compelling plot (i.e. no filler, consistently exciting, and doesn't resort to denying you information in order to keep you hooked), have you played Xenogears yet? How about Final Fantasy Tactics?

 

[baten]

This was the only RPG - and I play a lot of them - that I could not drive myself to finish. I completely lost any interest somewhere at the begining of disc 2, I dont really remember where.
Not exactly a bad game, I've finished worse ones (like the first Shadow Hearts) but I could not find any reason to go further - it simply got less and less interesting the more I advanced.