Star Ocean 4

[chaosblade02]

I found this game to be really hard for some reason, especially endgame in the last dungeon, my party was either getting whacked by normal enemies, or the fights were 5 minutes minimum.  The difficulty curve went straight up in the last dungeon.  One of those curves where the enemies hit 5x harder and got 5x more health than in the previous dungeon.  Panzer soldiers were completely trashing my party in the last dungeon, so much that I was just completely discouraged from even continuing the rest of the game, because I knew I would have to farm a ton of rare materials for some weapon crafting, and was hoping to get to end game to do that because it would have been much quicker.  If normal enemies give those kinda problems, then I would have never beaten the boss, even if I somehow struggled my way to the end.  Been a long time since I had a moment in an RPG.  I didn't spent a lot of time farming and doing upgrades and recipes, I more or less just rushed the game through.  I had to retry on most of the boss fights, some multiple times.  Some of the boss fights I was even convinced it was one of those fights I had to lose, so I just laid the controller down just to find out I actually had to win that lol.  This game was a big surprise for me, considering most new gen RPGs are too easy, I personally thought this one was on the other side of the extreme.  The boss fights were more like solving a puzzle than a real boss fight, you either had to time an attack at the right time when it exposed a certain part or etc, and you could literally retry 5+ times before you even figure out how to damage a certain boss.  I suppose if someone understood exactly how to defeat the boss fights, it wouldn't be that hard, and maybe a guide could spoil this to make the game easier, but I didn't use one. 

If anyone is looking for a hard game this is it.  I thought it was even harder than Demon's Souls my first time through.  I found it also much harder than any of the DQ games, which are known for being more challenging than FF games.  SO3 was a pushover compared to SO4, I waltzed right through SO3 no problem, bonus dungeons and all.

[Zeikuu]

*coughs*

Topic: Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope

[chaosblade02]

Sorry, but the red message came up asking me if I just wanted to make a new one because that one was over a year old and decided to just make a new thread.  I kinda got the impression they didn't want people necroing an old thread here.

[pprincess]

I guess it's fine to start a new topic. Dunno if anybody is still playing this but Sunny platinumed the game, one of few people to do it.

I played through the ending but didn't complete the optional dungeons. I just got bored with the leveling up and the trophies. Hands down the most tedious game I've ever played in terms of the amount of detail to get the side quests done.

Basically I took Myuria, Sarah and Lymle and made them straight healers. Usually I just used Myuria and Sarah and Lymle was the sub if both other ladies went down. But all three could heal and raise.

The game is completely winnable if you level Meracle. She is totally broken once you get X-Claw for her. Broken as in, everything in the game can be beat by Meracle pretty much alone and just healers for support.

The recipes help a LOT. There is a food item that keeps Sarah alive and out of battle so she can focus on healing. Pump Meracle with food before a battle, and she will just kill everything.

[chaosblade02]

I guess it's fine to start a new topic. Dunno if anybody is still playing this but Sunny platinumed the game, one of few people to do it.

I played through the ending but didn't complete the optional dungeons. I just got bored with the leveling up and the trophies. Hands down the most tedious game I've ever played in terms of the amount of detail to get the side quests done.

Basically I took Myuria, Sarah and Lymle and made them straight healers. Usually I just used Myuria and Sarah and Lymle was the sub if both other ladies went down. But all three could heal and raise.

The game is completely winnable if you level Meracle. She is totally broken once you get X-Claw for her. Broken as in, everything in the game can be beat by Meracle pretty much alone and just healers for support.

The recipes help a LOT. There is a food item that keeps Sarah alive and out of battle so she can focus on healing. Pump Meracle with food before a battle, and she will just kill everything.

I didn't even use Meracle in my game outside of the times I had to use her.  I mostly used Bacchus, Edge, Myuria, and also switched Arumat in there to replace one of those 3.  I was destroying everything with black hole sphere with Bacchus, until the last dungeon, where the gimmick was up.  Mostly because it took 5 straight minutes of Black hole spamming to win the fights, and I ran out of items after about 4 battles and had to go back.  And sadly it was the best strategy I could come up with vs those panzer soldiers, anything else I tried got me wiped in under 15 seconds.  I tried to avoid using Lymle, because she had the most annoying voice actor, I basically had to play the game on Mute when I had to use her.  I had to use Lymle in that boss fight on the Cardianon mothership, which was probably the toughest boss fight I faced.  I literally hammered that boss for 40 minutes straight until I ran out of items, and still didn't figure out how to damage it, and when I did it still took another 30 minutes to beat it because it only exposes that part for a short animation.  I almost quit the game right there after seeing a game over screen after a 40 minute boss fight.

I would honestly prefer a basic X masher action RPG, to this as long as its mildly entertaining, this game was a headache and I couldn't play it for more than 45 minute to 1 hour intervals.

[pprincess]

yeah I agree about Lymle, honestly I had a meltdown for about 3 days after getting her as a character. I thought it was over for me with RPG gaming forever. I mean, the characters getting younger and younger with like no adults. Luckily Myuria and Bacchus saved the storyline somewhat, being married adults. But I grew to appreciate Lymle a little because her doggie spam is actually a good move if enemies are fire-weak. Also, I kept her in reserves because she could save a battle with her rolling move. I could just roll her around the battlefield, tossing a resurrection card or item and then just go back to rolling again. Once everybody was up and going again, I put her back in reserve.

Can't believe you didn't use Sarah, one of only two characters who can use Resurrection. I even got the Sarah trophy for beating the final boss with her. Arumat does do well in the end battle.

But Meracle is the broken one, and she totally owns and outdoes everybody else. She toss an enemy in the air and literally keep them spinning in the air and helpless. XClaw too is insane. I fed her steaks and whatever else to boost all her stats before a battle and it was total kitty maul. Every other character was practically unnecessary. Reimi is similarly broken once she gets her Sparrows attack, but I don't think you can get that until post-game.

I found the side quests just got to me finally on Roak. I got to where I didn't want to farm anymore Tasty Mushrooms ever again and just about every recipe for side quests required those mushrooms. Also the trophies were just a tedious pain. The post game dungeons were also too tedious for me, though I enjoyed watching rinimt work on those, she was good at the game and liked all the work farming and leveling. I quit after trying to beat the first post-game dungeon a couple of times and failing due to needing to level up the rest of the team more. Have nooo desire to take up the game again. But still the battling was fun up to a point, too bad the post-game dungeons require such an insane amount of leveling over and above where you finish out the story line.

Needless to say, I didn't do much bunny racing either.

[chaosblade02]

There were a handful of normal enemies I couldn't figure out how to take out.  Those phoenix enemies in EN II, I beat those to a pulp, tried every element type I had to see what did the most damage, everything just scratched them.  It was like beating on a boss without hitting its weak point, so I just avoided/ran from those.  I haven't played an RPG since the 8 bit era that had normal enemies that gave me as many problems as I had in this game.

I didn't like the item creation in SO4 at all, I thought the previous 2 SO games had done a better job in this aspect.  I didn't have to grind for anything in SO2, or SO3.  All of the materials you needed for crafting you could buy or craft, and I liked it that way. 

[pprincess]

The Phoenix are those yellow light type things with the long tails, right? Black Hole spam FTW with Bacchus. One of the few enemies he does well with.

I guess it came down to character levels and also leveling up the skills. I beat the game somewhere in the level 70s but I think Meracle, Sarah and Myuria were higher than that, level 85ish or so. I got to around 120s with Meracle after the game and Myuria and Sarah not far behind. But I had Edge, Reimi, and Bacchus back in the level 90s and it was just too hard to catch them up except by pure grinding and I just didn't feel like doing it anymore.

The side quests, boring as they are, did level up everybody enough for me to have no problems end game.

[chaosblade02]

I must be really bad at this game because I was level 85-90 when I first walked in the last dungeon and I still got smacked around like nobodies business.  I was not very good at using all of the games mechanics like blindsides.  And I was never able to do a long range blindside in the tutorial, even after 60+ hours of playing the game.  I basically never beat the tutorial lol.  There was one boss where I had to use a blindside to do damage, the return to Aeos boss in the bottom of the caves, it took me 5 tries to win, but once I figured out how to win he dropped really fast, and even then I still couldn't reliably do blindsides.  Games that require precise timing, are not my strong areas, every time I play fighting games with my friends, Street fighter 4 or Tekken they own me pretty bad, the timing for blindsides reminded me of me trying and failing to do moves in Street Fighter 4.

This game basically made me adopt a new rule for gaming, if I can't beat the tutorial, I won't even bother continuing the rest of the game after that, lol

[pprincess]

Ah I see. I could not do Blindsides myself and the game nailed me much earlier on for that, one of the cave bosses that spawns scorpions or lizards or whatever. Couldn't beat it, had to learn to Blindside. That's how I got started with Meracle, because she's the easiest to do Blindsides with. Eventually I was able to do them with everybody, but Edge is more difficult. Reimi is best in Beat mode, don't think I completely mastered that just because Meracle was such a killer. Her Blindside, if you keep it going, makes it completely impossible for a boss to attack.

[Hikagesan]

I really wanted to play this game, since I enjoyed SO3 so much. I was really annoyed when it was released for Xbox360 only........

[DragonSLAYER45]

There's an international version which you can buy that's for the PlayStation 3 if you own one.

[LastOneRight]

I really want to play this game, I played up until a certain part in 3. I actually found that on to be a bit on the hard side but it was also my first so. Sadly tho I can't find this game online or in the stores for ps3 :/

[chaosblade02]

I finally finished Star Ocean 4 a month ago.  The last boss was easier than I anticipated, still a tough fight but not nearly as hard as some other final boss fights I had beaten.  I beat the last boss even though I was still getting destroyed by some mobs near the entrance of the place.  Getting Fairy Star on Myuria was the game changer in the last boss fight.  I basically had to solo the dragon boss to open the post game content, because that stomp attack he used would just destroy the other AI attackers.  I would have to run around in circles to kite, and blindside, and it took about 30 minutes to whittle his health down.

The PS3 version is way harder post game, because they screw you out of getting the best attack in the game, Dragon Roar with Arumat until you basically beat cave of the seven stars.  They made it where you need an ice ring to get the Dragon Roar chest, which was locked with a darkness ring in the 360 version, which you get from beating the dragon boss that unlocks the cave of the seven stars.  I saw some youtube videos of how uber that dragon roar attack is, and if I had that I might be ok in there.  Tons of damage, wide area hit box, good range, and hits knocked down targets.  Very spamable, looks way better than X claw with Meracle.

I'm still stuck in the post game dungeon, if I start fighting mobs, that group of 5-6 bats just destroys me every time, and I don't have access to weapons decent enough to take them out in a timely manner yet.  And I don't think I can make it to the last floor to get the duplication skill with the equipment I got.  I'm around level 80ish with my party.  Levels I don't think are the problem, its better equipment that I am in great need of.  I can't even craft that 2800 damage moonstone sword for edge yet, if I had something like that I might be able to do ok in there and we aren't even talking about heavy synthesis here, which doesn't seem practical until you get duplication.

The best weapon I have is a laser weapon 900 damage, and I only have one of those.  The other weapons I have on the other characters are under or around 500 damage.  Is there a way I can get some better equipment for post game, at least carry me to get duplication?