Now that Tri-Ace's other SNES heavyweight is being so successfully tackled, with Tales of Phantasia being around 4 1/2 hours in the initial run, anyone want to try this one?
I know that it's very nonlinear and there have got to be some very good strategic fighting habits/plot sequences/etc.
Of course the Japanese version would be needed, but another rules question for Bisqwit to lay out: Since the recording-capable SNES9X versions have full SDD1 support, I'm assuming whoever's doing a run shouldn't use the external graphics pack?
Good luck, everyone.
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Since the recording-capable SNES9X versions have full SDD1 support, I'm assuming whoever's doing a run shouldn't use the external graphics pack?
I don't know the full implications (whether the SDD1 emulator or the graphics pack simulates the correct amount of lag within SNES), but I feel like the SDD1-way is the correct way to go - no graphics packs.
Star Ocean is indeed an interesting challenge because of the choice of characters. The choice affects the story, and optimizing that in length (of story and battles) may be challenging.
And of course, the game is cool!
Anyone else actually beat this game? I finally got around to doing so, and it seems to be shorter than its "cousin" Tales of Phantasia or other super-long SNES RPGs like FF6. I tried to get basically everything and got lost mid-game for several hours but hit the last savepoint at 17:22, whereas Tales of Phantasia took me well over 30 hours and I've taken 20+ hours on virtually all of the times I've played FF6. (I know I'm slow and not trying for speed, LOL...there are also times where I fast-forward too much, haha.)
I think 4 hours or less is a reasonable goal; you can skip a lot of early parts of the game until you get inside Parj Temple. I'd really rather not do something this complicated yet--I want to get back to removing the desyncs and finishing my Macross run before I do anything more complicated than a simple shooter--but it's a good game.
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Yes, I've completed it. I don't remember how long it took for me (several days anyway), but it's a good game although a little incomplete (it looks like the creators tried to eat an elephant).
I completed it 2 times (english translation) to get all characters.
When you play it fast with no extras it can be a fast game I think. The second time I played it much faster with not many extras.
You must not get all abilities for all characters, which takes to long for a run and is too much luck. And you must not beat the Special Cave which has 70 rooms I think.
Only bad is, that it sometimes freeze on emulator. So it can be very annoying when this happen in the speedrun.
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run)
WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB)
Matty
Joined: 7/28/2004
Posts: 135
Location: Finland Realms
I have completed Star Ocean once adn for me it was really short game. I don't remember completion times but for example comparing to Tales of Phantasia it felt like over a half shorter.
The thing in Star Ocean is that it's a lot fatter than it is long.
Mastering all the metallurgy, customization, alchemy, music and whatnot things takes a lot of time (which I did not seriously attempt). And also, the game can be completed with a lot of different parties, leading to different game events (which I did attempt).
There are about ten different main characters, a few of which are secret. (Joshua and the catgirl for example.)
This game is lots of fun, and everyone should play simply because it was one of the last SNES games.
You would have to skip most of the cool stuff in the game in such a run (the skits, the secret characters, all the item customisation, colosseum, and the hidden dungeons.. i think there were 3 of them).
Right off the bat, one tip I have is to switch to Ronixis for some battles. Ratix is fast, but he runs around like a freak (oh boy, it's gonna be so awesome to see battles with TAS for this game, since you can do some great manouvres in slow-mo). But Ronixis can really pack a punch with his bow, since he just sits in a corner and shoots. It really helped me to use Ronixis for some of the hidden dungeons, where the enemies pwn you if you get close.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I'm all for it, guys. I can't help since I've not played this game longer than a little while, but I'd still like to see a run of it because of how neat the game itself is.
I want to echo Omega's sentiments here.
A question I have regarding playing SO on emulator: I remember when SO was originally released with graphics packs that you could use with zsnes, the battles would run too fast as to almost be unplayable. The DeJap patch and S-DD1 emulation did nothing to change this, so I played using snes9x. Recently, I opened SO back up in zsnes to test some things out, and the battles appeared to be normal speed now. Does anyone else know if this has been fixed somehow, or does anyone share this experience? About the in-game crashing, IIRC this is a problem with the game itself and not the emulation, right?
Bisqwit wrote:
The thing in Star Ocean is that it's a lot fatter than it is long.
I've seen you correct people's English before, so I know you wouldn't mind yourself. In English the correct terms for this are wide/narrow and deep/shallow: "it's a lot wider than it is deep." Unforunately, deep/shallow has unintended connotations to some people, as in "deep philosophically." Maybe another language like Finnish would be better. (It's like free vs libre in software.)
I'm all for a speedrun of this game, if only that it seems as if I'm completely unable to complete it - every time I try the game eventually crashes (and I mean the game itself, not the emulator.. I heard Star Ocean was rushed, resulting in alot of crashing bugs in the game).
I'm all for a speedrun of this game, if only that it seems as if I'm completely unable to complete it - every time I try the game eventually crashes (and I mean the game itself, not the emulator.. I heard Star Ocean was rushed, resulting in alot of crashing bugs in the game).
I'm confused. Do you:
1) Play without using SRAM.
2) Only use one save state.
3) Play on an emulator without rewind.
I have no other ideas how you could get completely stuck.
I have played the english translation for month. And yes it crash often at some point (near the beginning, in the desert and in the Dark Zone). You must too be careful, when the music stop in some places (Dark Zone), then it can always crash. And when you save, you can ruin your game complete, because then it always crash when you load it again from this Savefile.
But I have hear, that this only happen by the ROM. On real console it should work great without crashes. But I have no idea, because I don't own the game.
And when you often make SaveStates it should work good. Then you have always enough SaveStates before it crashes.
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run)
WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB)
Matty
It's not I get completely stuck, it's that the fact that the game keeps crashing on me every time I attempt to seriously play through it (I'm up to at least 10 attempts now) is so demoralizing -_-;
-There are numerous bugs that are inherent in the game and have nothing to do with the patch
itself (such as an item duplication bug, and various freezing or crashing bugs). Check the
Star Ocean Shrine [...] for info on these bugs.
Strangely though, I was able to complete the game several times with a single crash, and that particular crash was a bug in the translation I was betatesting (the crash was then fixed), not in the game itself.
hmm.. i have completed this game almost 10 times..
i was level 140 - 150 when i stopped playing Star Ocean in 7-Star Ruins (secret dungeon)..
but surely this game is great and beatiful & Awesome :)
hmm i just played this game with ZSNES & SNES9X
with ZSNES i have much more proplems with this game.. sounds/music disappears and game freezes.. with SNES9X There is no so much of bugs..
is there some difference between emulators. ?
or is it just "my Luck"
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Shinryuu: it would seem that Snes9x has higher compatibility, since it can emulate the hardware chip of Star Ocean properly. Zsnes still uses graphic packs. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the cause.
Shinryuu: it would seem that Snes9x has higher compatibility, since it can emulate the hardware chip of Star Ocean properly. Zsnes still uses graphic packs. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the cause.
What? ZSNES hasn't needed the graphics packs since 1.40...Doesn't help matters though :S
Shinryuu, nice to see someone making a start.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Starwolf wrote:
Omega wrote:
Shinryuu: it would seem that Snes9x has higher compatibility, since it can emulate the hardware chip of Star Ocean properly. Zsnes still uses graphic packs. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the cause.
What? ZSNES hasn't needed the graphics packs since 1.40...Doesn't help matters though :S
Shinryuu, nice to see someone making a start.
Ah, I see. I haven't been keeping up with those emulators lately since they can already do most of the things I want them to.
I randomly stumbled upon a rather interesitng Japanese page.
http://ultimagarden.net/square-enix_ta.html
It seems they have times people have beat varios Square-Enix RPGs in...also some of these games appear to have have stratagies attached
Good news is Star Ocean has a nice time (1 hour 54 minutes 47 seconds at the last savepoint) but also one of these stratagy things (doesn't look in depth, I think it only tells you what items to get and what times to get...).
Got it to work now.
I don't recall if you can use the B button to control the other character at the start, but I know later on you can. If anyone is planning on doing a run of this game, you can control every character to do the most damaging attacks/spells. Finally, an RPG run I'd be interested to watch!
I started making the movie of Star Ocean. And I completed it to the eve of contact with Iria and Ronixis.
It is hard to manipulate luck about movement of enemies, hitting, talent, item creation, and so on.
Tri-Ace's game surely has a lot of bugs, but it has no useful bugs for timeattack.
Bug that weapon increase in arena is not useful for timeattack...
I'm sorry my English is poor.
Because I am not so good at English,I use machine translator and English-Japanese dictionary.
