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Star Ocean 5 screens and character art

Jiraiza

Member
ETHEREAL BLAST! Also I see there's a +500% EXP bonus on the gauge lol. Awesome.

You guys can keep whining about the witch. Meanwhile those who play it will find a ridiculously fun game, especially when improving over SO3.

Not sure if I agree with their decision to make the text sideways.
 

Zolo

Member
I'm always somewhat confused why even in the presence of female characters that are dressed entirely acceptable people focus on the one or two that are not. I mean I get it, people want to get indignant about whatever they can but the witch is the outlier in this where the other female characters are dressed like

And there is a white haired female that is dressed almost exactly like the blond guy. Why is the exsistance of a single less appropriately dressed character an issue?

I have a feeling the female MC is a robot or something because her face is really off compared to the others.

Best if you quote the images to make them smaller. It also looks like the childhood friend has a rune on her leg, or am I seeing something else?

Edit: Looking at the concept art, it looks like it's some kind of leg brace actually.
 

Negator

Member
I hope all of you will be done talking about the witch by the time this game comes out, it's going to be super annoying having to read all those posts in the OT.
 

Zolo

Member
I hope all of you will be done talking about the witch by the time this game comes out, it's going to be super annoying having to read all those posts in the OT.

Has this ever been a problem before? As far as I can tell, most would get swept up talking about the quests, story, and whatever else.
 
I hope all of you will be done talking about the witch by the time this game comes out, it's going to be super annoying having to read all those posts in the OT.

That outfit is just beyond stupid though, why even wear clothes? It is such blatant pandering to teenage boys that I would be embarrassed to be caught playing this game.
 

LowParry

Member
Here's hoping Welch is in there somewhere.

Please. For the love of God, no.

I hope all of you will be done talking about the witch by the time this game comes out, it's going to be super annoying having to read all those posts in the OT.

If you go by MGS5's reaction with Quiet to what we have now in terms of what gets talked about, SO5 should be fine. :D
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
Do we know if she's human? Alien? I figure as a Star Ocean game, she's alien.

Technically no one shown is an Earth human. Or so they claim, at least.

I'm always somewhat confused why even in the presence of female characters that are dressed entirely acceptable people focus on the one or two that are not. I mean I get it, people want to get indignant about whatever they can but the witch is the outlier in this where the other female characters are dressed like



And there is a white haired female that is dressed almost exactly like the blond guy. Why is the exsistance of a single less appropriately dressed character an issue?

I have a feeling the female MC is a robot or something because her face is really off compared to the others.

That there's one female character some people find completely ridiculous only serves to exacerbate why they see it that way, rather than mitigate it.
 
That outfit is just beyond stupid though, why even wear clothes? It is such blatant pandering to teenage boys that I would be embarrassed to be caught playing this game.

AKIMAN is in his 50's, and i'm pretty sure he designed her for himself if you've ever seen his Twitter. His Twitter acount basically revolves around three types of tweets and retweets. Gravure models, art that's in line with Fiore (the witch), and action figures. I'll never understand this concept that a sexy character is only targeted toward teenage boys.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
Readable, yes. Distracting, quite. It's just strange to see.

It's similar to the other games...

star-ocean-till-the-end-of-time3.jpg


sotlh_battle-skill.jpg


...though SO3 does have the percentage read normally (there's only one number though). I think they just did it this way so they don't have a bunch of numbers jutting out from the side of the bar to save space. They could make the "9 Hits" and "Long" smaller though.

Anyway all you have to know is that SP is at the bottom, FOL is at the middle, EXP is at the top. The percentages are read from bottom to top. IDK, there's nothing very complicated going on that would make it very distracting after a little play.
 

LowParry

Member
Considering there are 5 bars filled, it's probably just related to that. Not really hard to see how much it indicates.

SP and Fol are always at 0 though, I wonder how you raise those.

I don't see it being a big deal. I completely forgot it's like that with previous games too. See? Everything is fine.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
Considering there are 5 bars filled, it's probably just related to that. Not really hard to see how much it indicates.

SP and Fol are always at 0 though, I wonder how you raise those.

It's the SO3/SO4 bonus board thing and a Tales-style super attack gauge sorta rolled into one.

You get the bonuses based on the kind of attacks and actions you make. You can also fill the gauge to perform a special attack (Fidel's appears to be Ethereal Blast).
 

Wagram

Member
Remember there is a SO3 Welch who wasn't annoying. Welch wasn't just in SO4.

And since SO5 is supposedly taking more after SO3, hopefully that version of Welch returns instead of her SO4 incarnation.

Welch was pretty cool in S03 in my opinion. Though her incarnation of SO4 didn't bother me either.
 
I don't see it being a big deal. I completely forgot it's like that with previous games too. See? Everything is fine.
I'm not really defending the vertical text either. Just saying that if you want to see how many exp bonus you have shouldn't be too difficult...

It's the SO3/SO4 bonus board thing and a Tales-style super attack gauge sorta rolled into one.

You get the bonuses based on the kind of attacks and actions you make. You can also fill the gauge to perform a special attack (Fidel's appears to be Ethereal Blast).
Did they actually explain it would be similar though?

idk, it looks different =X

I guess it's just been too long since I last played SO3.
 

Hexa

Member
It's similar to the other games...

...though SO3 does have the percentage read normally (there's only one number though). I think they just did it this way so they don't have a bunch of numbers jutting out from the side of the bar to save space. They could make the "9 Hits" and "Long" smaller though.

Anyway all you have to know is that SP is at the bottom, FOL is at the middle, EXP is at the top. The percentages are read from bottom to top. IDK, there's nothing very complicated going on that would make it very distracting after a little play.

I still think it's strange. Text is normally read top to bottom when reading so it feels off to me. Plus the text seems smaller to me compared to previous games so that amplifies the issue. I essentially just want them to flip it.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
It's the SO3/SO4 bonus board thing and a Tales-style super attack gauge sorta rolled into one.

You get the bonuses based on the kind of attacks and actions you make. You can also fill the gauge to perform a special attack (Fidel's appears to be Ethereal Blast).

Etheral Blast is only a special attack? Hmm well I like the attack in SO3, but it's a little slow to use in some fights, so if the special attacks are useful then this seems like a decent change.

Also this seems to be Air Raid (or something similar)?


Going by the characters' HP and MP, it seems like you might get it early? Would be cool since it's one of my favorites from SO3, but you get it late.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
I still think it's strange. Text is normally read top to bottom when reading so it feels off to me. Plus the text seems smaller to me compared to previous games so that amplifies the issue. I essentially just want them to flip it.

The Bonus Gauge done the same way in SO3 and SO4 too with the vertical text

BonusBattleGauge.png


SO4_BonusBoard.png


I don't think SO5's bonus gauge won't be that difficult to read since the SO3 and SO4 bonus gauges weren't difficult either. Of course this just my take on it.
 

sensui-tomo

Member
On a side note, anyone have the threads to SO4's reveal, want to see if there was a bigger outrage for the cat loli than there is for the witch design.(since the catgirl has that bad revealing outfit with a distinct feature) Witch design beats that cat girl easily.. I like lewd stuff but that was about it for me.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
I'm not really defending the vertical text either. Just saying that if you want to see how many exp bonus you have shouldn't be too difficult...


Did they actually explain it would be similar though?

idk, it looks different =X

I guess it's just been too long since I last played SO3.

Well they didn't explicitly state which actions give which bonuses, just that certain actions like guarding from weak attacks or building up a combo will fill it. The gauge can apparently be filled with all three, so that one shot has it fully filled with EXP stuff so you get a 500% EXP bonus, but one shot from the magazine has it slightly filled with 2% EXP, 15% Fol, 12% SP.

The yellow bar and the number seems to be your "Reserve Rush" stock, which are for the super attacks.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
Etheral Blast is only a special attack? Hmm well I like the attack in SO3, but it's a little slow to use in some fights, so if the special attacks are useful then this seems like a decent change.

Also this seems to be Air Raid (or something similar)?



Going by the characters' HP and MP, it seems like you might get it early? Would be cool since it's one of my favorites from SO3, but you get it late.

Fidel seems to have a lot (at this rate maybe even all) of Fayt's moves. From what I've seen he has Side Kick, Air Raid, and Ethereal Blast. And yeah Ethereal Blast might not be his super attack, it's just that they had that screen shot there in the part of the magazine page where they explained it.
 
Well they didn't explicitly state which actions give which bonuses, just that certain actions like guarding from weak attacks or building up a combo will fill it. The gauge can apparently be filled with all three, so that one shot has it fully filled with EXP stuff so you get a 500% EXP bonus, but one shot from the magazine has it slightly filled with 2% EXP, 15% Fol, 12% SP.

The yellow bar and the number seems to be your "Reserve Rush" stock, which are for the super attacks.

Yeah, I started to pay attention there. Depending on the bonus there is a different color filling the bar. But it's no proportional at all lol, I thought it would be like 100% = 1 bar, but it's like: 49% exp = barely anything.

It's really weird.
 
I hope all of you will be done talking about the witch by the time this game comes out, it's going to be super annoying having to read all those posts in the OT.

Considering most of the people complaining are saying they aren't going to buy the game, there shouldn't be much to worry about in the actual OT.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
Yeah, I started to pay attention there. Depending on the bonus there is a different color filling the bar. But it's no proportional at all lol, I thought it would be like 100% = 1 bar, but it's like: 49% exp = barely anything.

It's really weird.

Going to fun trying to maintain a maxed out bonus gauge like in SO3, knowing that a critical hit landed on your currently controlled character will shatter the whole thing and you need to start over build it up again.

I wonder if the multipliers will come back again...like if you keep your bonus gauge for 10 battles without it being broken you get a 2x bonus effect, and 50 battles it goes to x3 up to a max of x5.

500% x5 seems kind of overkill, but considering the max level in a Star Ocean game is 255, and with item creation it's possible to make level up gear that gives you like 400% exp growth stacked with a full bonus gauge.

They could easily balance it out by needing to split the exp pool 8 ways since you now have your entire character cast as combat characters instead of the previous games which were limited to just 3 or 4 member teams. so 100 / 8 characters means a 100 exp enemy only gives everyone 12.5 exp a piece. This only implies IF they do it this way.
 

sensui-tomo

Member

Thanks, time to check if there was any issue for the catgirl at launch (which i hope we can all agree is a worse design than this witch by any stretch, because i'd love to see people defend Catgirl with labia(i think thats the right term) especially when the character is supposed to be young. ( i get that one of the devs on the project wanted to make eroge... but damn was i not fine with SO4 for the most part... except gameplay)
 

mothball

Member
Thanks, time to check if there was any issue for the catgirl at launch (which i hope we can all agree is a worse design than this witch by any stretch, because i'd love to see people defend Catgirl with labia(i think thats the right term) especially when the character is supposed to be young. ( i get that one of the devs on the project wanted to make eroge... but damn was i not fine with SO4 for the most part... except gameplay)

it's from 2009, before gaf was the way it is now, so i doubt you'll find much
 
Going to fun trying to maintain a maxed out bonus gauge like in SO3, knowing that a critical hit landed on your currently controlled character will shatter the whole thing and you need to start over build it up again.

I wonder if the multipliers will come back again...like if you keep your bonus gauge for 10 battles without it being broken you get a 2x bonus effect, and 50 battles it goes to x3 up to a max of x5.

500% x5 seems kind of overkill, but considering the max level in a Star Ocean game is 255, and with item creation it's possible to make level up gear that gives you like 400% exp growth stacked with a full bonus gauge.

They could easily balance it out by needing to split the exp pool 8 ways since you now have your entire character cast as combat characters instead of the previous games which were limited to just 3 or 4 member teams. so 100 / 8 characters means a 100 exp enemy only gives everyone 12.5 exp a piece. This only implies IF they do it this way.
Oh boy, 2500% exp bonus, why not? lol

Maybe instead of splitting the exp itself (which then would make it harder to balance for people who can't keep the gauge up) they could split only the extra. That would end with 312.5% extra to each character on a full party (or 357% if there's only 7 characters).

Although, looking at previous games, I don't think they are too fond of balancing =P

Still. It will be pretty fun keeping the gauge full in-between battles.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
Oh boy, 2500% exp bonus, why not? lol

Maybe instead of splitting the exp itself (which then would make it harder to balance for people who can't keep the gauge up) they could split only the extra. That would end with 312.5% extra to each character on a full party (or 357% if there's only 7 characters).

Although, looking at previous games, I don't think they are too fond of balancing =P

Still. It will be pretty fun keeping the gauge full in-between battles.

In previous games it was easy to make weapons that give 800% EXP on top of 150% Maxed bonus board for a total of 950% bonus exp. Again you only had 4 characters to a team and not 8.

So 2500% exp bonus shared between 8 characters with experienced divided isn't much worse compared to 950% bonus shared between four. The game clock would still easily hit the 140 hour mark by the time you reach 255, so even with the insane exp gains you really aren't rushing through the game.

They even rebalanced some items in the PS3 port of SO4 so the exp gain tricks aren't not nearly as effective too.

Once you hear the reason she dressed like that, you will be ashamed of your words and deeds.


Get it all out now while you can guys. I mean it's not like this isn't the 4th or 5th Star Ocean thread in which a majority of the discussion was focused on...this one character.

Unless of course you actually LIKE talking about Fiore? Hehe.
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Love the environments of this game.

Also I just noticed the game looks less realistic-looking than SO4:

 
In previous games it was easy to make weapons that give 800% EXP on top of 150% Maxed bonus board for a total of 950% bonus exp. Again you only had 4 characters to a team and not 8.

So 2500% exp bonus shared between 8 characters with experienced divided isn't much worse compared to 950% bonus shared between four. The game clock would still easily hit the 140 hour mark by the time you reach 255, so even with the insane exp gains you really aren't rushing through the game.

They even rebalanced some items in the PS3 port of SO4 so the exp gain tricks aren't not nearly as effective too.

Yeah, but then it's what I said there. They would have to find a way to balance the main story itself to make it so that no one becomes horribly overleveled by being good at the game.

iirc those items in previous games couldn't be made so early on. Something that gives 2500% exp from moment 1 in the game would mean that good players are just going to breeze through everything or that not-so-good people would struggle and have to grind.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
Yeah, but then it's what I said there. They would have to find a way to balance the main story itself to make it so that no one becomes horribly overleveled by being good at the game.

iirc those items in previous games couldn't be made so early on. Something that gives 2500% exp from moment 1 in the game would mean that good players are just going to breeze through everything or that not-so-good people would struggle and have to grind.

Even at level 255 the Ethereal Queen, Lenneth, or even Freya bosses on Universe difficulty would destroy you without being careful and timing your specials carefully, due to that Anti-Attack Aura having returning all damage to the attacking character.

Star Ocean 4 wasn't much better either since it turned most of the post game bosses into HP sponges when Universe seemingly tripled their HP values, so instead dealing with a boss that had 40 Million HP, they had 120 Million and it turned into a one-hit kill fest with you feeding revival items to your AI partners as meat shields while the player controlled character did a majority of the damage dealing.

I can't imagine what sort of chaos Star Ocean 5 will bring with 7 or 8 characters in battle all at once at the same time.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
In previous games it was easy to make weapons that give 800% EXP on top of 150% Maxed bonus board for a total of 950% bonus exp. Again you only had 4 characters to a team and not 8.

So 2500% exp bonus shared between 8 characters with experienced divided isn't much worse compared to 950% bonus shared between four. The game clock would still easily hit the 140 hour mark by the time you reach 255, so even with the insane exp gains you really aren't rushing through the game.

They even rebalanced some items in the PS3 port of SO4 so the exp gain tricks aren't not nearly as effective too.

FYI there are 7 party members not 8.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
FYI there are 7 party members not 8.

Well it could very well be 8 or more...and they just didn't reveal the character yet. I mean traditionally dating back even the first Star Ocean the entire team you could recruit was comprised of 8 characters total, same for SO2, 3, and 4.

Also there is factoring alternative characters joining. Like in SO3 choosing between Nel, Albel, Peppita, and Roger. Just the same Star Ocean 2 you could choose between Celine, Ashton, Dias, Opera, Ernest, Precis and Bowman, and whoever else I'm forgetting.

I mean they could just be showing off currently 7 but later on you could possibly have a max of 8 like the previous games as well as being able to alternatively recruit different characters based on Private Action responses. I'd expect tri-Ace to keep some things a secret at least.
 
Based on the recent Famitsu article the battle system takes a lot of notes from SO3 with some slight improvements/alterations, which is cool to me as I feel it has the best battle system of all the games. Personally I would have liked to see MP-death return too, but that's just me, it seems to have been pretty hated by a lot of people.



Off the top of my head Shining Resonance and Tales of Zestiria don't transition to separate battlefields. SO5 appears to have made one of the better overall attempts at this however.



Yeah I guess it's good that there's some kind of excuse, but it still feels pretty flimsy and transparent (pun not intended). Traditionally the runes are red and clearly visible, so I don't know why hers don't seem to be noticeable until they glow or whatever. My only guess is that they're actually all over her body or something, which makes me fear there'll be a scene where they all glow or something and the camera just has to pan all over her body to show them, but maybe they'll show some restraint (lol).

If it just wasn't so damn two-dimensional yeah. In fact, most everything 3 did in combat would be aces if they weren't so damn two-dimensional. You either broke it or were miserable following rules that the game didn't really function under.

Here's hoping Welch is in there somewhere.

SO5 to have a Hell level?!?
 
Even at level 255 the Ethereal Queen, Lenneth, or even Freya bosses on Universe difficulty would destroy you without being careful and timing your specials carefully, due to that Anti-Attack Aura having returning all damage to the attacking character.

Star Ocean 4 wasn't much better either since it turned most of the post game bosses into HP sponges when Universe seemingly tripled their HP values, so instead dealing with a boss that had 40 Million HP, they had 120 Million and it turned into a one-hit kill fest with you feeding revival items to your AI partners as meat shields while the player controlled character did a majority of the damage dealing.

I can't imagine what sort of chaos Star Ocean 5 will bring with 7 or 8 characters in battle all at once at the same time.

Hmm. I guess...

I didn't play SO4, but that sounds rough =X

I also wonder what they'll do with 7/8 characters now. There's so much they could do (or not, considering hardware limitations...)
 
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