Let's play Star Ocean 3! (Intro)

hi everybody!! i said i'd be doing this eventually so here we are. this'll be the sort of intro post and i'll start the let's play proper in the next one.

the only screenshot lp i know of this game glosses over half the content and is super mean-spirited so fuck that, we're making a screenshot lp that's POSITIVE because i like this game. if you don't like it that's fine, but we're being sincere and enthusiastic about this, even the parts that are objectively not very good.

so, star ocean 3 is a 2004 jrpg (2003 in japan) and i played it a bunch that year and i thought it was the coolest thing ever. fast-forward to 2020 and honestly i haven't really changed my mind. a lot of people don't think it's a great game for various reasons (gameplay, story, characters, you name it) but i don't care what they think because i find it a lot of fun and they can always go play something else.

so3 is the third game in the series, but is chronologically the last one for reasons that'll be made obvious ~2/3 of the way through the game. it's set far enough later than the others that you don't need any extra context before just getting started.

i'll be mainly focusing on the story of the game, and won't include much gameplay, but i'll give quick explanations on how the gameplay works as is relevant. since the game has dialogue choices, i'm going to be using save states to show the variants for each one, since some get pretty different. i'll also be grabbing as much optional dialogue as possible, though i might not include it all in the posts proper, since there's a LOT of npc dialogue in this game. almost all npcs have dialogue that evolves based on which story triggers you've passed, and many of them have their own little mini-arcs to follow.

on that note, the game also has 10 different ending variants based on which character likes fayt the most (if any). i'll be running with choice routing that allows choosing an ending fairly late on (around halfway through the game), so until then i can keep it open what ending(s) to do. i'm not sure how i'll pick which one to go for yet but we'll see when we get there. similarly, while 6 of the party members are mandatory, the remaining 4 are optional, and more precisely you can only pick two to come with you around said halfway point. so that's another thing we'll need to decide on. the optional party members are nel, albel, roger, and peppita. i'm running 2-3 save files in parallel to grab everything, we're all good :)

if you think the game looks fun you should totally pick it up and give it a spin, the hd port is available on the ps4. i'm personally recording on an emulated ps2 (since i don't have a capture card to play it on physical ps2), which is going to mean some slightly distorted visual effects for a handful of scenes.

i'll edit this post as we go in case there's anything i've forgotten.

table of contents
hyda iv (and adjacent): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, extras 1 (npc dialogue)
vanguard iii: part 5, part 6, part 7
elicoor ii: part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 16.5 (sidequests), part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21, part 22, part 23
moonbase: part 24

^ the part numbering above is temporary, and i'll likely merge/split parts later on when i do a second pass to add videos, to make things flow better etc