There is a huge contingent of gamers out there who will swipe up anything with the moniker on it, no matter how horrible the product, even if it has the words UNLIMITED SAGA on it. Call 'em fanboys but at least they're passionate about their company. Now the latest game has rolled off the Square Enix production line and it's quite a deviation from what most have come to known the company for. Nearly two years after the merger was announced, gamers are finally starting to see the second half of the deal come into fruition and it begins with one of Enix's lesser known, but well crafted franchises.

Never mind the fact that the release date has been stalled multiple times and that the North American version is actually a port of the Japanese director's cut. The big question everyone wants to ask is, was the tortuous wait worth it? For the most part, it was. Star Ocean 3 boasts one of the more innovative battle systems in the console realm. Fans of the tri-Ace team in particular will love the additions made to the battle system, as well as the simplifications with item invention and skill development. What prevents this game from rising to the top of the pack of titles is the ridiculously generic storyline and disc loading that helped the title's release. Nevertheless, the title remains strong.

Star Ocean is a sci-fi RPG that takes place well into the future. Interplanetary travel has been revolutionized and entire planets are devoted to vacationers. This is convenient because it just so happens that our main character will be vacationing on one of those planets when an event changes his life. While Fayt and his are relaxing on the shores of Hyda IV the planet is attacked by an unknown enemy. As the vacationers flee Fayt's father hints that he may know the cause of the attack but is separated from his family before he can reveal his thoughts. Fayt and his childhood friend, Sophia, are rescued and placed upon a transport ship where they are able to rest off their worries, but before they can call it a night that ship is also attacked and the two become separated. As they flee they're sent in different directions and Fayt is left to fend for himself as he searches for his loved ones. Of course these sort of things never go quite as planned and before it's all over, you'll travel all across the galaxy as you embark on a massive quest.

As the game's namesake implies you will be doing a little time travelling as well, but not in the most orthodox manner. Instead of physically warping between time periods the game takes place in one set time. The "time travel" actually occurs when your characters travel to different planets in varying stages of development. Early on you crash land on a planet that has developed to the equivalency of 15th century Earth. Laws have been instilled to ensure that further evolved planets don't interfere with the development of lesser ones. This is done by preventing the use of technology and objects that wouldn't normally be available at the stage of development. This was an amazingly brilliant move on the part of the developers. Other games place artificial limits on what the player has access to, here the game instils a more practical one that's understandable to all parties.

Throughout the course of the game you often find yourself in the role of the reluctant hero. When your craft crashes into the middle of a medieval town your first priority is to escape and search for your parents, but that's before you get imprisoned. Soon afterwards a spy from a neighbouring town will come and free you on the condition that you help them win their ongoing war. This is how Star Ocean's structure generally pans out from the start, placing you in situations that don't necessarily have anything to do with your quest, but may play a crucial role in the balance of the universe.

In addition to Fayt you'll take control of several characters throughout the course of your adventure. They all have their own reasons for fighting alongside Fayt and you'll soon grow to love them. Being the smart-ass that I am I immediately fell in love with Cliff, the wise-cracking sidekick with the boyish good looks. He adds plenty of much-needed comic relief, his comments about a predominantly female kingdom in particular.

I've always been a huge fan of RPGs but I played them mostly for the plot development and secondly for the storyline. It's not that I can't bear to read 50 million lines of text, it's just that most RPGs suffer from poor character development. Luckily Star Ocean is able to avoid this pitfall by providing gamers with characters that they can relate and empathize with. When the vacationing protagonist, Fayt, would rather stay in the hotel and play video games instead of going to the beach with his friend you can sheepishly say, "Yeah. I've been there before. That's me." Furthermore, the characters have genuine feelings and they behave as we would expect them to in real life. This is a huge positive for the game because it's amazingly storyline heavy. To put into perspective you'll go more than an hour before you get into your first fight. Most of the key dialogue is spoken but the secondary dialogue, such as the boxes that pop up when you speak to villagers, appears as written text.